PUBLIC VICTORY

If you are interested in personal development I highly recommend you purchase Steven Covey's book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I read it for the first time in early 90s and I find myself going back to it as I learn more about myself and the others I interact with.

Here is a condensed summary of a chapter from the book:

Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

We often prescribe before making a proper diagnosis when communicating. We should first take the time to deeply understand the problems presented to us.

The real key to influence is example - your actual conduct. Your private performance must square with your public performance.

Unless people trust you and believe you understand them, they will be too angry, defensive, guilty or afraid to be influenced. Skills of empathic listening must be built on a character that inspires openness and trust and high emotional bank accounts.

Seek First to Understand

People tend to filter the information they receive through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people's lives, or projecting their own home movies onto other people's behavior.

When another person is speaking, we usually "listen" at one of four levels: ignoring, pretending, selective listening, or attentive listening. We should be using the fifth, highest form of listening - empathic listening.

Active or reflective listening is skill-based and often insults the speaker.

Empathic listening is listening with intent to understand the other person's frame of reference and feelings. You must listen with your ears, your eyes and your heart.

Empathic listening is a tremendous deposit into the emotional bank account. It's deeply therapeutic and healing because it gives a person "psychological air."

Empathic listening is risky. It takes a great deal of security to go into a deep listening experience because you open yourself up to being influenced. You become vulnerable. In order to have influence, you must be influenced.

You will never be able to truly step inside another person and see the world as he sees it until you develop the pure desire, the strength of personal character, and the positive emotional bank account as well as the empathic listening skills to do so.

By seeking first to understand, we can turn a transactional opportunity into a transformational opportunity. We can get on the same side of the table looking at the problem instead of staying on opposite sides staring at each other.

Sometimes talking isn't necessary to empathize; the words may get in the way.

Empathic listening takes time, but not as much time as backing up and correcting misunderstandings, including living with problems and the results of not giving the people you care about psychological air.

Then Seek to be Understood

Knowing how to be understood is as important as seeking to understand in reaching Win/Win solutions, and requires courage.

Describe the alternative they favor better than they can themselves. Then explain the logic behind your request.

When you can present your own ideas clearly, specifically, visually and most importantly contextually - in the context of a deep understanding of their paradigms and concerns - you significantly increase the creditability of your ideas.

Habit 5 is powerful because it focuses on your circle of influence. It's an inside out approach. You are focusing on building your understanding. You become influenceable, which is the key to influencing others. As you appreciate people more, they will appreciate you more.

Opportunities to practice this habit proactively occur every day with your co-workers, customers, friends, and family.

When we really deeply understand each other, we open the door to creative solutions and third alternatives. Our differences are no longer stumbling blocks to communication and progress. Instead they become the stepping stones to synergy.

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Last modified: March 9, 2004

Disclaimer: This website is the sole responsibility of Mike McMahon. It does not represent any official opinions, statement of facts or positions of the Alameda Unified School District. Its sole purpose is to disseminate information to interested individuals in the Alameda community.