At various times, I’ve used and provided a sort of cognitive mirroring that I’d describe like you describe the techniques in this post, and it does seem to help clarify ideas. However, the technique as I’ve enjoyed it has an initial step that I’m not seeing spelled out in the post: agreeing on what the process is and when to engage in it. This can happen tacitly between people who know each other extremely well, but often needs to be explicitly negotiated to avoid one party feeling disappointed when the mirroring-without-adding-to-the-model wasn’t actually what they were looking for.
I think that negotiation step is why the named process of “rubber ducking” is so useful: using an agreed-upon name allows both halves of the conversation to know exactly what the expectations are. When someone asks me “hey, can I rubber duck at you about this for a minute?”, I know exactly what they expect of me and don’t have to worry about being inadequately able to contribute new directions toward a solution.
At various times, I’ve used and provided a sort of cognitive mirroring that I’d describe like you describe the techniques in this post, and it does seem to help clarify ideas. However, the technique as I’ve enjoyed it has an initial step that I’m not seeing spelled out in the post: agreeing on what the process is and when to engage in it. This can happen tacitly between people who know each other extremely well, but often needs to be explicitly negotiated to avoid one party feeling disappointed when the mirroring-without-adding-to-the-model wasn’t actually what they were looking for.
I think that negotiation step is why the named process of “rubber ducking” is so useful: using an agreed-upon name allows both halves of the conversation to know exactly what the expectations are. When someone asks me “hey, can I rubber duck at you about this for a minute?”, I know exactly what they expect of me and don’t have to worry about being inadequately able to contribute new directions toward a solution.