Transcript Habit 5: Seek First to Understand and Then Be

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand and
Then Be Understood
People want to be understood. You want to be
understood, don’t you? You know how frustrating it can
be when people don’t understand you, no matter how
hard you try, over and over again.
Habit 5 is about this phenomenon: Seek
first to understand and then to be
understood. And as with all of the habits,
this one not about learning a new trick or a
set of techniques. The habits are about
changing paradigms, about changing the
beliefs you have about the topics of the
habits. This habit is about communication,
effective interaction between people.
What’s your intention?
Why do you listen to people? If you’re like
most people in most conversations, you
primarily listen to give a response! And
while your listening, you’re preparing for a
response already. Now how can you listen
effectively, when you’re thinking how to
formulate the sentence that’s about to
leave you lips? Covey sums up four typical
listening responses:
Ignoring: not listening at all
Pretending: not listening at all, but with
mindless responses (“Uh-hum”, “Yeah,
that’s really interesting”)
Selective listening: not listening to
everything, but hearing what you want to
hear
Attentive listening: really listening to the
words
Do any of the following sound familiar?
"Oh, I know just how you feel. I felt the
same way." "I had that same thing
happen to me." "Let me tell you what I
did in a similar situation."
Because you so often listen autobiographically, you tend
to respond in one of four ways:
Evaluating: You judge and then either agree or
disagree.
Probing: You ask questions from your own frame of
reference.
Advising:You give counsel, advice, and solutions to
problems.
Interpreting: You analyze others' motives and
behaviors based on your own experiences.
You might be saying, "Hey, now wait a minute. I'm just
trying to relate to the person by drawing on my own
experiences. Is that so bad?" In some situations,
autobiographical responses may be appropriate, such as
when another person specifically asks for help from
your point of view or when there is already a very high
level of trust in the relationship.
Effective listening is about really
wanting to listen, wanting to
understand the other. To achieve
this you have to go beyond the
words.
Full scale listening
To really understand people you have to use
empathic listening. It’s not just hearing
what they’re saying. Empathic listening is a
full body activity. In communication the
words are only a small part of the total
communication. It’s what we refer to as
verbal communication. But there’s also a
non-verbal part to communicating. It’s even
an
essential
part
for
effective
communication.
In real life people do this by expressing
emotion by gestures, frowns, smiles etc. On
the internet this wasn’t possible, so
emoticons were created to substitute for
the lack of non-verbal language. In real life
we also use the tone of our voice, the
loudness of it, the pitch etc. This is already
harder on the internet, but a lot of people
seem to know HOW TO SCREAM, don’t
they? Add some colors, and you get the
picture of the mood they’re in.
Empathic listening is about all these aspects
of communication at the same time. Does
the body language show the same thing as
the words that are being spoken, do they
express the same feeling? If not, what does
that mean, how can you respond?
Logic versus emotion
In conversation not all parts are filled with
emotions. There are two parts of a
conversation, the logical part and the
emotional part. Some parts of a
conversation are simply logical, and you can
respond to that part by asking questions
and giving advice and so on. However,
when the responses become emotional,
empathic listening is the better option.
The empathic listening responses are:
• mimic content - just repeat what was
just said
• rephrase content - repeat, but in your
own words
• reflect feeling - express what you think
the other feels
• rephrase content and reflect feeling combine the latter two
Most people listen with the intent to reply, not to
understand. You listen to yourself as you prepare in your
mind what you are going to say, the questions you are
going to ask, etc. You filter everything you hear through
your life experiences, your frame of reference. You
check what you hear against your autobiography and
see how it measures up. And consequently, you decide
prematurely what the other person means before
he/she finishes communicating.
Now to be understood…
That was a rather long part about how to
understand the other. How about being
understood? That’s important as well of
course. However, it’s the understanding
part where most people have to train their
skills.
Read the chapter for next day…