COMMUNICATION SPECIAL .....Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood

Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood

You’re talking to your friend in a cafe. They’re upset about something that happened to them that day. You watch their face as it contorts into different expressions as they dig through their memory, scraping out everything relevant to the story.

They flail their arms around, displaying their exasperation and frustration, and add flair to the story by mimicking the voices of their perpetrators in slightly exaggerated, high-pitched voices.

As you continue listening to the story unfold, your thoughts start roaming and your attention drifts somewhere else. Your eyes glaze over as you think about that thing your mom said a week ago, the homework you haven’t started, the tests you have to study for, the exotic places you want to visit on your next vacation…

You feel your friend focusing on your face for signs of sympathy, or anything that signals that you’re still listening and caring about their story. You forgot to keep nodding while you were zoning out, lost in your own thoughts.

You start thinking about what you’re going to say. You haven’t listened to half the story, but you got the gist of it. The bus driver didn’t let them on the bus when their Metrocard had no fare, their boss yelled at them for a mistake that wasn’t their fault, their dog ripped up some important documents and peed all over them…

You’ve heard it all before and you know exactly what to say to alleviate your friend’s anxieties. All you have to do is nod and react to the pivotal moments of their story, and sprinkle in a couple of comments to feel like you’re engaging with the story.

Their voices drone on and on, and you can’t help but start to wonder —

“When is it going to be my turn to speak?”

In Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen invites his readers to understand others before expecting to be understood.

While it may seem fairly obvious, how often are you approaching conversations as a “you speak, I speak” situation?

The next conversation you have with a friend, I suggest you try and keep track of how many times you use the word “I”, “me” or “my” — anything that refers to something related to you.

You should also keep track of how much you are talking during the conversation.

How much of the conversation do you find yourself hearing your own voice?

How much of the conversation do you spend listening and empathizing with the person in front of you?

How much of the conversation do you spend trying to step into their shoes, imagining the things they went through, to be the person they are today?

And how quick are you to judge them from your frame of reference, rather than from their frame of reference?

“If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

When we listen to another person’s story/problem, our first instinct isn’t to listen to it with an open heart, an open mind. We take upon ourselves the responsibilities of a therapist.

Of course, we approach it with good intention; wanting to help out our friends in need, hoping to provide a solution that would relieve the confusion or pain.

But one has to wonder: are we really trying to understand our friends to the best of our abilities, or are we perhaps trying to impress our friends with our wisdom and good judgment with our advice?

“We have such a tendency to rush in, to fix things up with good advice. But we often fail to take the time to diagnose, to really, deeply understand the problem first.”

I often find that whenever I am in a conversation and a friend brings up a problem or dilemma that they are dealing with, I immediately start brainstorming how I would approach finding a solution, how I would go about fixing things.

What I fail to take into account is that sometimes a friend just needs you to be there while they talk things out. They’re not telling you problems to listen to all your brilliant and well-thought out solutions — at least, not always. They just need someone to listen to them and to be able to think about the problem by talking about it.

They often arrive to the conclusion themselves, and usually the most helpful solution is to keep probing them and to steer them in the right direction when they teeter off into dangerous assumptions and conclusions.

To listen is to try and step out of yourself. The person who is across from you does not think like you, and will have different opinions and perspectives. You should not impose your perspective as the correct one, and should not assume that they see the world through your lens, through your lived experiences.

“Seek first to understand” involves a very deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They’re either speaking or preparing to speak. They’re filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.

“Oh I know exactly how you feel!”

“I went through the very same thing. Let me tell you about my experience.”

They’re constantly projecting their own home movies onto other people’s behavior. They prescribe their own glasses for everyone with whom they interact. If they have a problem with someone — a son, a daughter, a spouse, an employee — their attitude is, “That person just doesn’t understand.”

We like to think we know it all and we display this fact by approaching conversations with confidence. When someone tells us about their problems, we think we have the capabilities or the sufficient knowledge to provide an optimal solution for them.

We try digging into our brains to come up with advice we’ve heard from other people, things we’ve read, things we’ve seen and heard — anything that will make us seem smarter than we really are.

Stephen tells us we are often “listening” at one of four levels when someone speaks:

We may be ignoring another person, not really listening at all. We may practice pretending. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Right” We may practice selective listening, hearing only certain parts of the conversation. We often do this when we’re listening to the constant chatter of a preschool child. Or we may even practice attentive listening, paying attention and focusing energy on the words that are being said.

You might think attentive listening is the level that you may want to be when talking to another person. But Stephen points out that there is a fifth level, a level of listening that is hard to employ but is the most effective way of truly understanding someone in a conversation.

But very few of us ever practice the fifth level, the highest form of listening, empathic listening.

When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with intent to understand. I mean seeking first to understand, to really understand. It’s an entirely different paradigm.

Empathic listening gets inside another person’s frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel.

Empathic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives and interpretation, you’re dealing with the reality inside another person’s head and heart. You’re listening to understand. You’re focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul.

Instead of trying to tell the person what you would do, ask them questions about how they feel and what their thought process is. Instead of trying to craft the perfect solution from your perspective, try to step into their reality and understand what and how they think.

If you truly want to help the person solve the problem that is troubling them, be an empathic listener. Often times, the true problem does not show itself until the person is able to dig deeper.

People need to feel like they can trust you before opening up, and when the layers of protection slowly peel off, you will find out things that they weren’t telling you before — crucial information that needed to be discovered to find a solution.

A discerning empathic listener can read what’s happening down deep fast, and can show such acceptance, such understanding, that other people feel safe to open up layer after layer until they get to that soft inner core where the problem really lies.

If you give the person the time to organize their thoughts and patiently probe them in the right direction, they will be able to find in themselves where the thorn that is contributing to their pain is residing.

When you feel that you have to say something while the other person is talking, tell yourself to keep quiet. Listen and empathize with them. See where they’re coming from, what they’ve been through, why they think and feel the way they do.

The person in front of you desperately wants to be understood, and if you can give them that even for a few minutes or an hour, you will help them in more ways than you could have helped by sharing your thoughts.

William Cho

https://mystudentvoices.com/seek-first-to-understand-then-to-be-understood-50a93b80f5a8