Communication Skills: The Advisory Process and Leary's Rose

Communication Skills: The Advisory Process and Leary's Rose

Giving advice is more than being right about the content. How you run the conversation and how you read and steer the interaction often decides whether your advice actually lands. This article covers two tools you need for that: a structured advisory process to guide the conversation from intake to follow-up, and Leary's Rose to understand and influence the interpersonal dynamics within it.

Starting Points

• A Step-by-Step Guide to the Consulting Process
• Rose of Leary model explained including a Test

Key Points

• You can describe the phases of the advisory process (intake, problem analysis, data gathering, diagnosis, advice, implementation, and evaluation) and explain what happens in each phase.
• You can prepare and structure an advice conversation using the phases of the advisory process.
• You can explain the two axes of Leary's Rose (dominant–submissive and cooperative–oppositional) and place observed behaviour in the model.
• You can explain the principle of complementarity: how your own communication style tends to provoke a specific reaction in the other person.
• You can consciously choose a communication style during an advice conversation to keep a stuck or difficult conversation constructive.
• You can reflect on your own communication style in an advice conversation using Leary's Rose and describe what you would do differently.