Strategic Schools

Ep. 29: Looping for understanding

• Dr Simon Breakspear • Season 1 • Episode 29

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In this episode, Simon explores the power of “looping for understanding”, a simple technique to improve communication, build trust, and avoid misunderstandings. Simon unpacks how listening attentively, paraphrasing, and checking for understanding can transform everyday leadership conversations. A practical, people-focused skill every educational leader can use to foster stronger relationships and greater clarity in high-stakes or everyday dialogue.


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Speaker 1:

I'm Simon Breakspear, and this is Strategic Schools, the show that shares practical ideas and tools to enhance your educational leadership. Well, hey, everyone, it's Simon, and one of the things I've been thinking a lot more about is I consider how leaders and their teams can be more effective in leading sustainable improvement. It's not just the skills and techniques around strategy and implementation and monitoring and change that I so often focus it on, but also the key people leadership skills that are such powerful enablers for the rest of that work. It's been something I've been focusing more and more on in my work as I start to develop out the core modules of a program I've been developing called the People Leader Program, and work with some of our partner schools and systems in around not just what are they doing and how are they implementing, but how effective are we being in the interpersonal interactions that can either be real enablers and accelerators of this work or actually can really be damplers and inhibitors of the work. The reality is really cognitively smart and engaged leaders can sometimes overlook the power of a really simple set of techniques that they'll often know about, have even used in the past, but are not consistently using with their people, but are not consistently using with their people. So in the next couple of episodes I do want to explore some of these, and one of the things that we do teach in the People Leader Program is a specific technique called called Looping for Understanding.

Speaker 1:

Now, I came across Looping for Understanding when I engaged with the author, charles Duhigg's terrific book on super communicators, and there Charles unpacks some key work by Gary Friedman and Jack Hamilstein, the founders of the Center for Understanding and Conflict, and they developed this method as, in some ways, just a simple, structured approach that can really ensure that individuals feel genuinely heard and understood during conversations. Now, their work was particularly focused on conflict scenarios, but actually the core ideas around looping for understanding are unbelievably helpful for those of us working in schools because they really help us tune in to the importance of active listening and getting to mutual understanding, and I found just reminding myself of this simple technique can really enhance my capacity to influence in conversations and through teams. So at its core, it's really simple. Looping for understanding involves attentively listening, actively summarizing and then checking that we've correctly understood the message that we've heard, and so you can think about the work of looping for understanding, your job in a conversation around those three things that we're listening attentively. I know this seems obvious, but so many of us have got a thousand things running through our mind. We're still ruminating about something we've just been through, we're already planning something we need to write into an email or share in the next time. We're constantly trying to multitask and the first reminder for me is just to get into that listening attentively, focusing on the speaker's words, tone, body language and really trying to grasp the underlying message.

Speaker 1:

Now talk about a trust move. It's very rare in the busyness of schools for other adults to feel genuinely heard and understood, and it's an incredible gift to someone else just for that period of time to truly actively, attentively listen. There's small things I need to do here, like make sure my phone isn't pointing upwards so that if a notification or something comes that I uh, my eyes automatically divert to it. I know that feels small, but it's a trust breaker rather than a builder. Uh, perhaps just um, really just trying to set up to think I'm going to give this person, even if it's just a few minutes, that full and uninterrupted attention.

Speaker 1:

Well, the second job is to paraphrase and many of you are very good at this. You know about that active listening, where we're reflecting back what we've heard in our own words to confirm understanding, and just little summary sentences like what I'm hearing you say is I know this seems simple, we know it, but often we stop doing the things we know, particularly when we're working with people over a long period of time. So we actively paraphrase and then the last step, to be honest, is one that I really needed the reminder to keep doing, and that is to seek confirmation. Seeking confirmation is about actively asking the speaker if your interpretation is accurate and doing it in such a way that allows for corrections and clarifications. A simple phrase like have I captured that correctly? Have I understood that? Is there anything important I've missed? And creating a space for someone to be able to say oh well, actually, no, I didn't quite mean that, or I'm not quite sure you've heard this section, or maybe the way I explained it didn't really land what I really wanted you to get out of that.

Speaker 1:

Now, this simple technique is one of the most powerful trust building moves that we can try to use more effectively, and I want to say, particularly when we're working with people that we work with regularly, we'll often do this well in a high stakes discussion with a parent or a senior from a department or someone else where we prepare for it. But it's actually the day-to-day remembering to loop for understanding. One of the best things about looping for understanding, I find, is that there's so many conversations that leaders go into where they think, oh, I need to convince someone of something, I need to correct someone, I need to defend my position, I need to, whatever it is. But when I enter a conversation with the frame of looping for understanding, it's such a relief because at least in that conversation I've only got one job To actively ensure that I've understood the other person's perspective. What a relief. I don't have to sit there listening and then thinking about well, if that's their serve, what's my return? All I have to do is to sit there and think. My only job in this two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, is to show that I'm actively listening, to paraphrase, to seek confirmation, and at the end of this conversation, the only thing I need to have achieved is to be confident that I have accurately understood what the other person wanted me to understand. It's oxygen for them, it's psychological oxygen for them and it's a relief for us. Now I'm not saying that there's not going to be follow-up conversations. There may well be in the future something that you want to present an alternative position on, maybe correct or share some of your ideas, but when you're in that looping for understanding mode, it's wonderful just to say at this time in this conversation I've got one job to accurately understand the other person's perspective.

Speaker 1:

This type of looping helps in critical ways. One, it really does avoid misunderstandings. When we're working fast and jumping from one thing to another, we have a risk of picking up of, you know, certain assumptions we might have or misconceptions, and these can lead to further confusion and conflict down the track. We really want to make sure we reduce those misunderstandings that can compound, and looping for understanding is one of them. And particularly if you are a team leader, a school leader, a principal, a senior person within a department or a system, that creating a space where you actively check that you've understood it and truly invite corrections or clarifications is so important because otherwise people will go back and they'll debrief with their husband, their wife, their partner, a trusted friend, and they'll say, hey, did you tell them? Yeah, I told them, but I don't think they got it. I don't know. I kind of I just kind of said it all, but to actually be able to say I told them and they checked for their understanding and then I was able to kind of correct them and I really felt heard, wow, what a trust building move. Well, secondly, is that point? It's trust building, as leaders who are busy offer full attention, paraphrasing and checking, you will demonstrate genuine effort to understand someone else's viewpoint. This leaves an incredible relational residue. It fosters deep trust. It's worth the time and, of course, that'll lead to enhanced collaboration over time, greater levels of trust, mutual understanding and, preferably, moving towards greater levels of alignment and finding ways to move forward.

Speaker 1:

Colleagues, there's so many ways you can use looping for understanding. You can use it in your core team. You can use it when speaking with a parent. You can use it when speaking with a staff member. You can use it when you're getting some pushback about a change agenda or push towards evidence-informed practice. This is one application that I've been using a lot.

Speaker 1:

I'm doing large-scale work in multiple systems across Australia and beyond where we're asking often thousands of educators to get their head around evidence and to think about shifting their practice and aligning that practice around the best available evidence, and what I've learned is I have a tendency to want to use my knowledge and my arguments to try to help people sort of take on my perspective. But often what people want initially is just to be heard, for me to take time to actually understand. What do they understand about learning and why do they think the current set of practices they're using are the best ways to solve the problems that they face. And sometimes just listening, checking that I understand their perspective, asking them to clarify or correct as I've shared back have I captured this correctly creates the space that then I can fully understand their perspective. I can fully understand their perspective and also they know that I'm not just entering into this conversation to convince them, to outthink them, to out-research them or evidence them, that I just want to understand their perspective. And I'm sure you can think about a whole range of areas where looping for understanding can be a really powerful practice.

Speaker 1:

So I'm going to be exploring over the next little while some of what I call these essential people leadership skills. They're the sorts of things that I like to teach and give time to practice and unpack in programs and in work, and that's because all of us kind of know these. I know. You know this kind of thing, but we often don't use what we know and therefore we leave a lot of trust on the table. So have a think over the next little while where you could use looping for understanding. Could you use it with your own husband, wife or partner in the next two hours or 12 hours or whatever you're going to see them next and just notice the difference in what happens? Could you use it with one of your own children or family members? Could you use it with one team member? Could you use it with a parent, or even with a student.

Speaker 1:

Go in and say, for the next three to five minutes, I'm just going to loop for understanding. I'm not going to give my perspective. I'm not going to try to change their ideas. I'm just going to loop for understanding. I'm not going to give my perspective. I'm not going to try to change their ideas. I'm not going to try to defend. My one job is to actively listen and to make sure I walk away deeply understanding the other person's perspective. Looping for understanding it's an incredible technique that really can enhance our ability to lead the people we serve. Give it a try and let me know how you go. I genuinely appreciate it if you could subscribe, rate and review this show. It's the easiest way for us to get these ideas into the hands of even more educational leaders.