Page 27 - Communication in Organizations Basic Skills and Conversation Models

Communication in organizations 16

Summarizing
The goal of summarizing is to give structure to the conversation by ordering the main
points. A distinction is made between the summarizing of contents and the summarizing
of emotions. With the first the accent lies on the contents (cognitive) aspects of the story,
whereas with the second it is more with the aspects of feeling. Usually summaries contain
both and the relationship between them is made. The basic difference between
summarizing contents and paraphrasing/reflection of feelings is that the summarizing
covers a longer time span in the conversation.
Your selectivity and your own ability to select play a larger part in this skill compared
to the previous skills described. Because of the large quantity of information that has to
be used for this, it is likely that you may forget certain aspects or not express them
correctly. That is why it is vital that the summary is made in a questioning tone. Your
voice should go up at the end, to indicate this correctly. In a statement your voice goes
down at the end. The questioning tone gives speakers the chance to say whether they
agree with the summary. To conclude, summarizing has the following functions:
• You can check whether you have understood the speaker correctly.
• You can order the different subthemes and vocalize them.