Communication Masterclass | How to Paraphrase

You explained it clearly you checked if they understood and they said yes three days later though You find they did something completely different from what you asked. Well today We're gonna look at the one communication habit that could stop that from ever happening again Hey, everyone. I'm Shane leaving Welcome to education leaders the chat topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you as an organizational coach I've helped thousands of leaders worldwide lead with greater confidence make better decisions and create winning teams And on this show we explore the strategies that are going to help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership This episode is supported by the International curriculum Association and teaching walkthroughs. Stay tuned to learn more Now let me start with a scenario that I promise you are gonna recognize you're in a meeting You've explained something you think really really clearly maybe it's a new assessment process. Maybe it's a change to how departments are gonna run their planning meetings

You go through it and it makes total sense to you and at the end you ask does everyone understand and everyone nods Great done But a couple of weeks later you find out that three different people took three completely different things from that same conversation Maybe one person they did exactly what you asked Another did something related but not quite right and one didn't really do anything at all because they weren't sure what you meant and felt a little Bit awkward to ask Was that so familiar to you? Because the thing is when we think about this It's not actually that you communicated badly in that situation and it's not even that your team weren't listening It's more that we have this very human tendency to assume that because we've said the word the message landed And it almost never does in the way we think it did Now I see this pattern a lot when I'm working with school leaders, especially in international schools Just think about it You've got that added complexity different first languages different cultural norms about how direct it's okay to be with the Align Manager for example all of that But honestly it shows up everywhere and the reason it keeps happening has nothing to do with how smart or capable you are There is just one habit missing and when leaders build this habit the quality of their communication Well, it changes almost immediately It's called paraphrasing and today I want to teach you exactly how to do it So before we get into this technique, I want to explain why we don't actually do this naturally because it's not laziness There are some pretty predictable reasons why we skip the step even when we know better The first is something called the illusion of transparency There's a lot of great research from this Thomas Gilovich and colleagues at Cornell They ran this experiment where they had people give speeches and then asked the speakers How obvious was your nervousness? How much could everyone tell and the speakers were convinced they thought it was totally obvious that everyone in the room could read exactly what they were feeling but then they asked the audience and Interestingly, the audience barely noticed the nerves at all and you've probably felt this right from the other side You've told a friend when they're really nervous and they probably can't see how anxious you are as much as you think they can because it's true what's happening in your head feels loud to you and Silent to everyone else now Here's where it gets really relevant for leaders because similar studies have been done in workplace settings Specifically around feedback and what they found is that managers they overestimate how clear their feedback is by over 40% There's nearly half and it's worse for difficult feedback because we tend to be a bit more indirect when a message feels Uncomfortable, don't we we soften it we hint at it We're kind of hoping they're gonna pick it up and then we walk away thinking right they know what I meant and they really don't So practically what this means is whatever you think is obvious to your team It probably isn't and you need to be stating things a lot more explicitly than feels necessary And if it feels like you're over explaining you're probably just explaining it, right? The second reason we skip verification is called the curse of knowledge This one we think about a lot as teachers actually It's the idea that once you understand something really deeply you literally can't reconstruct what it was like to not understand it You've heard a piece of music. You can't unhear it

there was this brilliant study from Stanford done by Elizabeth Newton where she divided people into tappers and Listeners and the tappers they had to tap out a rhythm very simply to a well-known song something like happy birthday You know, I'm tapping my microphone now Right that kind of thing and the listeners just had to guess what song it was and before they started she asked the tappers What percentage of listeners do you reckon will get it? And they said around 50% because when they were tapping they could hear the melody they could hear the words in their head But guess where the actual success rate was? 2.5% just one in 40 people get it because the listeners they only had taps they had absolute No context and this is the curse of knowledge, right?

The tap has couldn't unhear music and as a leader when you're explaining your strategic plan or your new timetable change or your shift In your assessment policy, you've got the music playing in your head, but your team they have just got the taps So those are two of the biggest reason we fail to verify understanding and this is where it gets important because just knowing about these Biases does not fix them. There's been proven research as well You can be completely aware that you're probably being less clear than you think and your brain will still behave in the same way You need a structural habit a repeatable thing that you do every time and that's where something like paraphrasing comes in Quick one before we continue I am really excited to be partnering with the International Quick Limb Association on the international leaders conference 2026 if you're serious about growing as a leader This is the one event you need in your calendar this year We have got some of the biggest speakers in education coming together for this and because we know our audience is literally all over the world We're running it twice across different time zones. So wherever you are, you can be there live It's the 7th and 8th of May head to international leaders conference.com or grab the link in the show notes Leaders tell me all the time that they struggle to find a practical way to get evidence-informed practice into every classroom And that's where teaching walkthroughs come in They transform the most effective teaching techniques into five-step visual guides that are actually easy to follow And what happens when your team use them?

Well enthusiasm spreads teachers improve their craft and they genuinely love using them and I do too That's why I'm proud to be a consultant for teaching walkthroughs You can find out more at walkthroughs.co.uk or using the links in the show notes Now I want to be clear about what paraphrasing is doing in a conversation because it's doing two separate things and both of them matter The first thing it does is make that person you're talking to feel genuinely heard There was another study back in 2012 by Seehausen and colleagues where they had people in conflict Situations and some participants had someone paraphrase what they were saying and others were in a control group and the other person just took notes And the people who were paraphrased reported significantly less negative emotion afterwards They spoke more calmly in the subsequent questions. They had lower voice intensity. They were literally calmer

So if you're having a difficult conversation with someone a performance issue Disagreement a tense exchange and you're not using paraphrasing as a tool Well, you're making it harder for yourself than it needs to be The second thing it does and this is super important is it reveals misunderstandings immediately so you can fix them This is one that most leaders underestimate when you paraphrasing the person says no, that's not quite what I meant You've just surfaced a gap that neither of you knew was there and now you can actually fix it right there in the conversation Instead of everyone finding out later and you know in my leadership intensive. I run I practice this strategies with participants And they report massive impact of just doing that alone So here's the technique. Let's break it down. There are three parts signal Restate check. That's it. So part one signal

You're gonna let the person know you're about to paraphrase and you do this with a short phrase something like okay So what I'm hearing is or maybe something like let me just check I've understood or It sounds like you're saying this you're queuing them up You're letting them know what's coming next is your attempt to reflect back what they've said And this really matters because without that signal people can find it a little bit jarring, right? You want them to be listening for whether you've got it right not confused about why you're suddenly rephrasing everything Part two is to restate and this is the really important one You restate what they said in your words not theirs And this is where sometimes people confuse paraphrasing with parroting right parroting is literally repeating the exact words back And anyone can do that. It's pretty useless because if you just repeat back the words You haven't actually checked your understanding at all. You've just proved you were listening Paraphrasing means Translating right you take what they said and you put it through your understanding and then you say it back and It's that translation process that reveals the gaps So let's say someone says to you. I just think we need to improve collaboration across the team

If you say, okay, so you want to improve collaboration. Well, that's parroting because nothing useful has happened there But if you say so You're maybe thinking about something like a shared planning block each week where the teams can review each other's work now They can say no, no, no. No, I didn't mean anything that structured. I just meant maybe a shared folder where we can see each other's planning Now, you know now you've revealed a gap by restating that in your own words and asking that kind of clarifying question And part three is you check you give them the space to confirm or correct you something simple like Did I get that right? Or is that what you're saying? It doesn't have to be elaborate

You just need to open the door for them to come back if you've missed something So that's it simple as that signal restate check three steps Now I want to name something here because when I teach this in my intensive There are a few things that come up in the room pretty consistently The first is that people feel quite nervous doing it You're listening really hard right to what someone's saying and you've got to hold it all in your head And then you've got to translate it and say it back and there's this moment where you think oh, what if I've completely missed a point What if I say something that makes me look like I wasn't even listening properly that kind of thing And actually I think that feeling is telling you something useful Because the fact it feels risky to paraphrase something back just shows you how much real listening takes most of us Let's be honest. We're half listening while we're simultaneously planning what we're going to say next. We're making assumptions We're connecting it to our own experience and the nervousness Well, that's just kind of catching on to that The second thing that comes up is people find that paraphrasing changes a whole conversation Not just the moment where they're deliberately doing the technique So a few people in my cohort last month They said that after they'd done this paraphrasing practice that they noticed they were listening differently Even when the conversation went more casual afterwards. They were more present They literally shifted into a different gear which makes sense when you think about it Right because you're primed to absorb what the person is saying rather than just waiting your turn. I think that's pretty cool

And the third thing which is really important to those of you working in international settings Is that paraphrasing is even more valuable when you're working across languages when you've got colleagues or team members for whom? English is maybe their second or their third language that gap Between what they meant and what you understood. Well, that can be pretty huge and nobody's aware of it So paraphrasing makes that visible You don't have to just wait until someone's done wrong to find out you were working from different assumptions super powerful Now here's something you need to be prepared for because it's going to happen So you're going to start doing this, right? You're going to signal you'll restate you check and the person might look at you a little bit strange or they say yeah Yeah, I know. I just said that

Or maybe you'll get a look that says Why are we going at this pace? What's happening there? Is that they're not used to it and most people in most conversations are not asked to verify their understanding, right? And they're not used to having someone Actually reflect back what they've said it can feel a bit unfamiliar They can misread it as you're not listening maybe or as being slow So I think the way to handle this if this happens to you is to name what you're doing You just say it out loud So i'm going to paraphrase back what you've just said to me to make sure i've properly understood Or maybe you could even say i'm working on communicating more clearly. So i'm just checking my understanding here

The thing is when you name it people get it And more often than not when they see you catch a gap. They didn't realize was there Well, the resistance goes pretty fast. I certainly found that in my communications right so The reason most communication breaks down in school Isn't because leaders are unclear But it's because there's no habit in place to verify understanding before that conversation ends We share something we get a nod we walk away And by the time the gap becomes visible it's two weeks later You've got three different interpretations and a lot of back and forth that really didn't need to happen and paraphrasing Well, that is the habit that closes that gap signal restate Check do it when someone is explaining something to you to make them feel heard and to catch anything you've missed Also, do it when you explain someone to someone and you want to check that they've actually understood It works in so many places. It works in meetings. It works in corridor conversations in difficult one-to-ones

It works in writing as well. You can do it in an email You can literally type just to confirm my understanding you're asking me to X is that right is the same principle? So one thing i'd really encourage you to do this week is to pick one conversation just one And see if you can use that technique signal Restate check see what happens I think you're going to be surprised at how quickly it changes the feel of the conversation And if you like that technique and you want to go deeper on this This is one of the core techniques in my education leaders intensive where we spend, you know, a good 10 weeks Building systematic communication habits. So you've actually got the headspace to do the thinking that needs to happen in your role There's more on my website. Shane Leaning.com forward slash intensive. You can find the link in the show notes, too

Education leaders is hosted by me Shane Leaning Thanks to the show editor Pete McGill for production assistance by Skylar Rose-Sturman and the original music by Guillemer Silver Thank you so so much for tuning in today. If we don't speak before i'll see you here next week If you're interested in learning more about teaching walkthroughs or the international curriculum association check out the links in the show notes