The Traffic Cop Strategy

A respectful way to stop clients talking too much.

If you are a practitioner, you may be familiar with this situation: a new client comes to their first session, and they start to talk … and talk … and talk … and talk.

It’s a river of words.

What are you going to do?

Some people really need to talk. The talkers in the world vastly outnumber the listeners in the world. People who haven’t been listened to much, jump on the chance to be listened to and are determined to tell you everything they think you need to know. If they have also been involved in the talking therapies before seeing you, they may think that they have to explain everything so you can help them.

A client like this can put a practitioner in a bind, on the one hand they don’t want to interrupt the client, on the other they are in danger of being overwhelmed by words. If you have a superhuman capacity to remember everything you have been told, I envy you. Unfortunately, I don’t have that ability, so I need to do something else.

So, how can you interrupt someone respectfully so that they feel heard, and you can find out what you need to know?

One way of doing that is to use the ‘Traffic Cop’ strategy as a way to simultaneously interrupt and acknowledge the client.

The strategy

Invite the client to tell you what they want to tell you.

When the client has spoken for a few minutes, and you would like to slow them down; raise your hand up, palm towards them, like a traffic policeman, saying “Just let me stop you for a moment, I just want to see if I properly understand what you are telling me”.

Reflect back to them as accurately as you can a summary of the important points of what they said, followed by: “Have I got that right?” (they will let you know if you have missed something).

Then say “Please continue”.

Allow them to talk for a little while longer, when you need to slow them down again, raise your hand up and say something like: “Can I just check to see if have got this right?”

Give them an accurate summary of the main points, then ask: “Have I got that right?”

Repeat this process as often as you need to. After a while, the sight of your hand coming into view will be enough to stop them.

How does this work?

Everyone understands the outstretched hand is a sign to stop, and responds to it instinctively by pausing for a moment or completely stopping to wait for whatever comes next.

By saying “I just want to understand” (and meaning it) you indicate your desire is to understand what they are telling you rather than interrupting them out of impatience. The tone of your voice is important, respectful curiosity usually works well.

Just about everybody wants to be understood. Demonstrating your understanding: deepens rapport, lets the client feel listened to and understood, even if you have just interrupted them.

The benefits

This is a useful pattern because:

• the client feels heard and understood.
• the practitioner has a chance to check what seems most important to the client.
• the practitioner is not overwhelmed by a flood of words.
• clients who would normally talk forever are ‘gently trained’ to leave gaps for the practitioner to intervene.
• once the client feels understood and the practitioner knows what is going on, you can make a start on doing the work.

Top tips

• If the client starts to over talk again, you can use the same process.
• If they don’t stop, raise your voice when you say, “Let me interrupt you for a moment”. If they don’t stop even after this, you might like to consider whether you want to keep them as a client, as a more traditional ’talking therapy’ may be a better fit for them.