The Sonya Looney Show

The most valuable skill I’ve ever learned isn’t about performance, mindset, or even resilience. It’s communication.In this solo episode, I’m teaching you one of the most powerful tools I use as a coach, mentor, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, keynote speaker, parent, and partner. It comes from motivational interviewing and it’s called OARS: Open-ended questions, Affirmations, Reflective listening, and Summarizing.These skills have completely changed how I show up in conversations. They’ve made me a better coach, teacher, partner, mom, and human.Motivational interviewing is a client-centered communication approach designed to guide people toward what matters most to them. Instead of telling someone what to do (which often undermines autonomy and competence), this framework helps people feel heard, understood, and empowered to make their own decisions.In this episode, I walk you through what active listening really means (and why most of us aren’t actually doing it) and how to ask open-ended questi