Communicate better with looping
Effective communication requires both sending and receiving skills. This communication tool will help you do both.
Excellent communication isn’t just about what we say and do, which are our “sending skills.” It’s also about developing good receiving skills and habits.
Sending skills are the “performance” aspects of good communication, such as maintaining attention, asking questions, and making eye contact.
Receiving skills are about gathering information and processing what we’ve heard.
Looping is both a sending and receiving tool. It’s often used by mediators, coaches, and therapists, but its use extends well beyond. It belongs at the kitchen table as much as it belongs at the conference table.
I first learned looping in grad school, though it didn’t have a snazzy name then. Gary Friedman and Jack Himmelstein of The Center for Understanding in Conflict later coined the term.
How looping helps improve communication
Looping is a tool for bridging divides because it facilitates listening to understand. Listening to understand has been shown to reduce defensiveness and polarization, and increase social comfort and connection1.
In addition to what it does for the conversation, looping does something for the people in the conversation. First, it helps us be our better selves:
It helps us learn to listen for what’s important to others, helping us not only to disagree better, but also to be the kind of human others are drawn to.
It gives us something to do instead of counter-argue. A good way to avoid a “behavior vacuum” is to replace an undesired behavior with a more effective one.
It helps us figure out what to listen for. I’m often asked in conflict resolution and mediation workshops, what am I supposed to be listening for, exactly? We’re listening for what matters. Looping helps us focus on that.
It helps us reduce misunderstanding because it exposes what we’ve misunderstood before we run amok with our assumptions.
It teaches us that making a mistake isn’t a conversation setback when the mistake is driven by a genuine desire to understand. To paraphrase Daniel Kahneman, no one likes being wrong, but it’s nice to no longer be wrong.
Looping also has benefits for our conversation partners:
It helps them see that we’re trying to understand. Looping takes a cognitive activity — trying to understand — and makes it a behavioral one as well.
By making it possible for them to observe our interest, looping builds connection and trust.
It also helps them think more deeply. When we loop, we invite the unearthing of things that bring more nuance and depth to the problem.
How to loop
Looping has 4-5 basic steps:
Listen for what seems important to them.
Express the essence of what you heard, in your own words.
Ask if you got it generally right.
Clarify and try again if needed.
Explore what else needs to be discussed about it.
Use looping liberally throughout the conversation. Don’t do it constantly or you’ll become distracting. Focus on looping parts of the conversation where you think something important needs to be heard and fully understood.
People don’t like to be “techniqued.” It feels fake, even manipulative. The idea here isn’t to deploy a sequence of steps by rote in order to demonstrate what a good communicator you are. Use your communication skills genuinely — be interested.
To tap into your natural curiosity and interest, practice getting into their movie in your head. This will make looping feel and be more natural.
Over to you
Here are some reflection / journaling / conversation / comment prompts to help you bridge the gap between reading and doing:
Have you ever experienced someone who listened carefully and worked to make sure they understood you fully? How did that feel?
Do you worry about getting it “wrong” when you try to say back what you heard was important to them? If so, what worries you about that?
Where can you give looping a try today or tonight?
Download the PDF
1 See, for example, Listening to understand: The role of high-quality listening on speakers’ attitude depolarization during disagreements.