I often suggest repeating back everything people say to you. This ensures you understand what they’re saying while showing your boss or client that you’re really internalizing what they’re saying.
But there’s a sister strategy that takes the above and gives it a superpower. Don’t just repeat what they say back to them, rephrase or reframe it completely.
Think of this scenario.
Your client: Do you think you can finish the project soon? We’re all waiting on it.
You: Yes, I’ll finish the project soon, since everyone is waiting on it.
Okay, so you’ve repeated what they said back to them. But the problem is you both may have wildly different definitions of “soon.” It may be tomorrow to your client but next week to you.
The way to solve this is to not just repeat it back, but purposefully use very different words to do so, or even better, to throw it back from another angle completely.
Compare the past scenario to this one,
Your client: Do you think you can finish the project soon? We’re all waiting on it.
You: Yes, I’m giving myself the internal deadline of Tuesday, but that’s a bit optimistic, so maybe Wednesday is more realistic. Does that work?
This response reframes using a particularly useful trick, which is taking the general and making it specific. That’s a very simple formula to make rephrasing and reframing really easy.
In fact, it’s so useful it may even be a good guide on its own. Be as specific as possible. Even when your client or boss says something general, take the general point and make it specific.
Note that in this specific example, I played another trick, other than making it specific. I gave myself multiple deadlines to give myself flexibility and I asked for confirmation to confirm that it’s okay. Both are useful strategies as well. If you’re going to give yourself a deadline, why not give yourself a more aggressive one so you can be optimistic and simultaneously a more conservative one in case things go bad? There’s a downside to that, which is other people need to plan around your deadlines. The solution to that is to assign probabilities to each scenario, but that’s not worth it for tiny little work, only for bigger initiatives, of course. If you tell your client, “Hey, I have a 56% chance of finishing this within 3 minutes, and a 44% chance of finishing it within 9 minutes” then he’ll wonder why you’re going through that effort rather than spending those same two minutes on the work itself and thus reducing the ETA from 3 minutes to 1 minute. Unless of course you and your client both have a sense of humor—in which case—go for it!
