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I'm Dr. Moira. I'm a college professor, instructor, coach, and passionate mentor to health coaches around the world. But I haven't always been that confident and committed to my coaching career. I was hesitant to take the next step and wasn't sure what the best approach was to success and fulfillment. I decided to step into my passion and purpose of guiding health coaches on their journey from hesitant health coach to committed health coach,

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Welcome

Welcome back to our podcast series on communication. At long last, we are here at the end of the month. We have talked about everything from questions to affirmations. Last week, we talked about reflections and if you've been following along, you know, that we are working on our Motivational Interviewing OARS as a foundation for the conversation about communication that we've been having.

And so, we are now to the S of OARS, which is summaries.

Introduction

Summaries are a wonderful technique to use, but I think often forgotten in the rush of time. So last week we talked about reflections and the fact that reflections really honor our client's time, because what we're doing is showing that we are in the moment we are there with them. And by reflecting, we can highlight what the client is saying, show that we're listening and really help them to gain more, understanding more insights into what it is they're thinking and feeling and what they want to accomplish. So where do summaries fit into this pattern of communication?

Superstar Summaries

Summaries are a form of reflection. However, they are more like a paragraph. So, when you took writing back in grade school, middle school, high school, college, whenever you took writing classes, you were probably instructed on some kind of five paragraph essay where you had an introductory paragraph, you had three paragraphs of content, and then you had a closing paragraph. Okay.

The opening paragraph, in the five-paragraph essay format, was all about where are we headed. What do we already know? And what are we going to be doing? And this concept holds true in the coaching setting as well. What we learned in communicating in a writing format carries over into our coaching conversations in a really cool way, because with that opening summary, when you sit down with a client for a session, you welcome them. You offer that warm welcome, and as you sit down to talk an opening summary sets the stage. It will help the client to remember what you talked about in the previous session. And also, what to expect from this session. You can offer options. You can summarize what they've talked about in the past, and then really think about how that plays a role in where they want to use their time today. So that's that opening summary. It is truly about setting the stage, just like in that five-paragraph essay.

It's that first paragraph of that five-paragraph essay. Summaries, paragraph style, lots of reflections all in one place, they are affirming to the client, just like a regular reflection because it shows the client that you remembered what they said. You were able to think about that, you were able to integrate it into your understanding of the client, and they got the chance to hear their ideas back. And if you've highlighted it, it also gives them a little bit of confidence that what they're saying is meaningf