TAZÍ

It was another beautiful day at the farm. The sun was shining brightly, and it was the week that people from Germany came over to complete their community service internship (something I actually think should be introduced in the Netherlands as well). Among them was a girl who needed a little extra help (she had an intellectual disability).

That day, it was my task to support her with the work—or in other words, she was supposed to help me. Unfortunately, she only spoke German and no English. And since my German back then (and still to this day) wasn’t very strong, that was quite a bottleneck. But anyway, I tried my best to speak what little German I knew, and she remained enthusiastic about the work, so that was great. Safe to say, I wasn’t really able to properly apply the LSD Method (which I will explain in a moment). Together we did the aviary, and later on, we cleared the manure from the sheep pen with a few other colleagues.

Once we returned to the stable, it turned out break time had already started, so we headed over to the canteen. Arriving there, I immediately noticed that my supervisor was quite busy; he had to answer phone call after phone call, meaning he had less time for the clients at that specific moment. However, one of the clients was really seeking attention, and since I had just read a few chapters in the book ‘Communication in the Social Care‘, I knew exactly what to do: I brought up the LSD method. That is to say, I started a conversation with him using the LSD Method. This stands for Luisteren (Listen), Samenvatten (Summarize), and Doorvragen (Dig deeper / Ask follow-up questions).

I adopted a good listening posture; meaning I faced my body towards him, sat leaning slightly inward, back straight, made eye contact, kept a smile on my face, asked an initial question, and then began to listen. He was talking about a restaurant he had been to—apparently, he really needed to get it off his chest. A sushi bar, and how he’d had a delicious meal there. I briefly summarized what he said, keeping a smile on my face, after which I asked a follow-up question—and just like that, a natural and fun conversation unfolded. To this day, I still have a great connection with this colleague.

This just goes to show that a good listening posture is very important, especially the LSD method. You don’t always apply this method in the exact same way. You mainly use it when someone has something on their mind. Sometimes, if the person has already clearly expressed what they meant, the middle step—summarizing—can be redundant. But since the person I was speaking with stuttered quite a bit and was sometimes difficult to understand because of it, I assumed this was the right approach—and that turned out to be correct!

That’s it for this time. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!

Yours,

Rein