Focus Area 3: Communications
2. Communication Techniques

It’s good to have a few tried and true communication techniques in your tool box because they’re an easy way to get a conversation started when you’re not exactly sure how you want to start. They often provide a pretty simple and straightforward framework for getting from start to finish on a desired outcome with a young person.

The key is not to rely too heavily on techniques because they can sound phony or scripted if you haven’t put in some practice time. Ideally, practicing communication techniques will help you own them, that is, make them your own so they become second nature to you. And so they authentically sound like you!

Here are a few you can get started with:

RESPECT FOR AUTONOMY AND THE POWER OF AUTONOMY

Young people prefer to have a sense of autonomy. This includes being able to make their own decisions and having a reasonable sense of control in their lives. Of course, youth workers know that it’s not a good idea for youth to have unlimited autonomy.

You can, however, set up interactions to provide young people with a sense of reasonable autonomy. Here are two examples of how to show your respect for a young person’s autonomy:

1. Ask the youth’s permission if you want to give advice, share ideas, or provide perspective. You could say:

• Selena, would you like to hear some ideas I have for that situation?
• I have some advice about this if you’d like me to share it…
• Would you mind if I shared some perspective on this?

2. Give choices and options when possible. For example, you are working with a group of young people on cleaning up the grounds at the end of a camping weekend. They all must participate (non-participation is not an option). You could say:

• Do you want to clean the north end of the grounds first or the south end?
• How would you suggest we handle cleaning the grounds? 

WHEN TO “BUT” IN - GOOD BUT, BAD BUT!

What do you hear when someone says, “You have such a wonderful ability to socialize, but I’m concerned it’s getting in the way of your academic studies”?

If you’re the typical listener, whatever comes before the “but” tends to get cancelled out. That little three-letter word just magically erases the whole first part of the message, “You have such a wonderful ability to socialize...”

What do you hear when someone says, “You have such a wonderful ability to socialize and I’m concerned it’s getting in the way of your academic studies”?

Notice the impact of using “and” instead of “but.” The positive part of that message stayed connected to the whole thread just by the use of “and” which is a common connector in our language.

You can probably predict that there are good buts and bad buts. Whenever you want to intentionally erase or negate the first words in order to have your listener really key in on the follow up, that’s a good use of “but.”

Try it out – “Johnny, you really dropped the ball, BUT you’re making great progress!” This is an easy way to get out of a jam if you happen to have blurted out a negative you’d rather not have said. “But” will erase it and whatever you say after the but is like hitting the reset button.

Watch out for the synonyms of “but.” Sometimes, when you’re consciously working on not using “but,” you may unconsciously choose a word or phrase that has the exact same erasing effect, such as:

• however
• yet
• although
• though
• even still
• then again…

On the plus side, “and” also has other forms that work to keep a positive connection in communication:

• as
• so
• since
• while
• in addition… 

It’s a common habit to use the word “but” in the second part of sentences. So, before using ‘but,’ ask yourself, “Does it serve my desired outcome or objective here?”  When working with young people, you’ll find many opportunities to test this out.

When in doubt, just leave “but” out. You’ll get far less resistance to your messages when you can erase but from your thinking!

EXPERIMENTING WITH BEHAVIOR

As a youth worker, you often will be encouraging a young person to make a personal change. Change can be scary. Sometimes you can help make change less scary by suggesting the option of running an experiment.

The notion of experimenting can take some pressure off the young person. Experimenting seems more manageable because it is short-term and also injects a sense of curiosity or even playfulness to the process of changing behaviors.

Example: Jason is shy and doesn’t tend to speak up in class. He has much to offer and wants to speak up, but is nervous about speaking in class and similar situations. You could say, “Jason, would you be open to running an experiment where for one week you focus on raising your hand in class and then in the next week you don’t raise your hand? Then, we can talk about how both ways felt to you and see what you want to do after that, OK?”

DELIVERING FEEDBACK

You’ll sometimes need to deliver feedback to a young person that involves pointing out a weakness or an area that needs improvement. No one likes receiving this kind of feedback. How can you deliver such feedback so the other person might be able to hear it, take it in, and not get terribly defensive or hurt?

The sandwich technique can be useful here. Essentially, difficult feedback is “sandwiched” between two affirming statements. Start by focusing on a strength of the person. Then deliver the improvement feedback. Then finish with another strength.

When providing such feedback, it can also be helpful to:

• Provide some examples
• Express your concerns about consequences of continuing the behavior or pattern
• Ask the person if they have noticed the same thing
• Discuss how things might be better if the person found an alternative to the pattern
• Ask if the person would like to discuss ways to improve this pattern

A word of caution about the sandwich technique. As with any technique, it can be hit or miss. You want to use your own good judgment about when it is likely to work and often that is for young people who are not as comfortable hearing direct feedback.

For a young person who usually prefers direct communication, the sandwich technique may not be as effective, because it will certainly feel like a technique instead of straightforward communication.

Always be genuine in your communication, even when you may be relying on the help of a particular communication technique.

NOTICING UNPRODUCTIVE PATTERNS

If you work with young people long enough, you will notice some of them engaging in patterns that are unproductive for themselves or others. Perhaps someone is dominating and monopolizing group discussions or conveying negativity about most everything. Maybe someone is engaging in inappropriate physical contact with others.

The thing with most behavior patterns, even ones that have a destructive aspect, is that the individual is trying to bring about some kind of positive result. Sometimes it can be useful to ask the question, “How is that working for you?” This approach and question respects the young person’s autonomy. 

For example, the question can be delivered in the form of, “Brianna, I notice you focusing on the negative most of the time. I’m concerned how that is working for you…” When asking the question ‘how is that working for you,’ it is most important to have the person’s best interest in mind, be compassionate, and be ready to genuinely hear them out.

Caution: This question ‘How is that working for you?’ tends to backfire when expressed in a put-down or “gotcha” way, or when spoken in a sarcastic or judgmental tone.

However, when posed in a caring and sincere manner, this question can help a young person begin sorting out how a pattern is working and not working. 

STRENGTHS-BASED APPROACH

Some of the young people you work with have it pretty rough in life. A strengths-based approach doesn’t deny that or overlook the need to grow or solve problems. Rather, a strengths-based approach can foster resiliency in the face of challenges.

Supporting strengths:

• Look for opportunities to name their strengths. This includes internal and external resources (e.g., having a caring teacher).
• Help young people get into the habit of identifying internal and external strengths.
• Guide young people in using the strengths in their lives to work through or weather problems and challenges. 

A FORMULA TO HELP YOUNG PEOPLE FIND THEIR OWN ANSWERS

As a youth worker, you always want to give good guidance and help young people develop their ability to figure things out for themselves. Sometimes, rather than answering a difficult question directly, you can use a communication technique that will get them thinking deeper, to find their own answer.

Let’s use a hypothetical situation to show how this would work:

A young person asks you what you think about abortion.

You recognize that this is a question you could answer in a number of different ways. And you recall that you have an obligation to be mindful of your role here – to ensure that you are acting in the interests of the young person, not yourself.

You could easily respond from your own values, or you could certainly respond from your own personal experience. You just have to ask yourself honestly if that kind of response would help the young person.

You certainly don’t want to lie or offer a vague or misleading response because that would also not be helpful to the young questioner.

You’re a great youth worker so naturally, you want to support them in defining their own values and making choices that honor their own values. Your personal opinions may not be as respectful of them, their family, their values.

Here’s a useful technique that could help you frame a very thoughtful and thought-provoking response. The formula looks like this:

• For some people…
• For others…
• For you…

Putting it all together, your response to the hypothetical question might sound like this:

You know, Kelly, I don’t have all the answers but I can tell you that for some people, they see it as something that is wrong and they would never consider it as an option. For others, they may see it as a form of healthcare or a choice available to them if needed. For you, you’re going to have to figure out what feels right for you, and you can do that by talking to people in your family, people in your community, your health care provider, researching the internet, … a really cool thing is that we get to figure these things out for ourselves. You might find that you have the same values as people in your family and you might not. It takes work to figure these things out, but it’s worth it.

This is a very helpful framework for guiding young people to find their own answers, based on their own values, and needs. You’re showing them there’s a whole spectrum of opinions and positions and values. They get to take ownership for themselves. 

SUPPORTING CHANGE

The Motivational Interviewing model is an entire framework designed to support people through the process of change. It is beyond the scope of this module to delve deeply into the entire model but knowing the basics about the listening and interacting strategies it includes will be helpful to you in your work with young people.

O.A.R.S.¹ is an acronym that represents four interaction strategies useful for actively listening. As the saying goes, “People don’t care what you know unless they know you care.” O.A.R.S. will help you let young people know you care.

The O.A.R.S. strategies are:

O: Open-ended questions

A: Affirmations

R: Reflective listening

S: Summary

Open-ended questions

Without leading the other person in a specific direction, open-ended questions serve as an invitation for the young person to tell their stories in their own words.

To understand the power of open-ended questions, look at the following question that asks about parental relationships. One uses an open question format and the other uses a closed format:

As you read the open question, it’s not likely that you had any particular objection or reaction. Maybe you thought to yourself, “Good question. If I wanted to know about a young person’s relationship with their parents, I probably would have asked it that way.”

Now recall your own internal response when you read the closed question. Any difference? It’s likely that you sensed the young person might not respond so well. Maybe the question could come off as kind of judgmental. That wasn’t what the question was intended to do but closed questions often carry the risk of triggering a more closed down response.

If your intention was honestly just to learn as much as you could about this youth’s parental relationships, a wide-open question invites that sort of wide-open reply.

Closed questions do have a role. When you want to limit someone’s response to either a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option, or a choice between alternatives you lay out in the question, then closed is the way to go.

The downside is that a closed question doesn’t invite someone to tell their story.

Other examples of open questions include:

• How would you like things to be different?
• What do you see as good things about ___?
• When would you be most likely to___?
• What do you think you will lose if you give up ___?
• What have you tried before to make a change?
• What do you want to do next?

Open questions should be used frequently but not exclusively in your conversations with young people. Of course, when asking open questions, you must be willing to really listen to the youth’s response, without any preconceived judgments or expectations.

Affirmations

To support moving towards positive change, affirmations are statements and gestures that recognize a young person’s strengths, efforts, and intentions.

Affirmations are intentional statements that:

• Build hope and strengthen connection
• Identify a strength, value, goal, effort, or success
• Start with the word “you” rather than “I”
• Show recognition, support, appreciation, respect

Examples of affirmation statements are:

• You are very kind to help me set up the room today.
• You are clearly a very resourceful person.
• You handled yourself really well in that situation.
• That’s a good suggestion. 

Affirmations must be genuine and specific. They are most powerful when given in the moment, as you observe the young person doing the activity or behavior you want to affirm.

Express affirmations authentically; a young person will know if you’re not being honest, or if you’re trying to manipulate them with hollow praise.

Motivational Interviewing is often used to support positive behavior change and there are several techniques you can try. Miriam Itzkowitz is the Director of Trauma-Informed Care for the Institute to Transform Child Protection at Mitchell Hamline School of Law and has clinical experience counseling adults and adolescents. Miriam gives advice on using affirmations and open-ended questions when working with young people.