Chapter 5

When people express themselves verbally, they want feedback that they’ve been heard, and they also want to be understood. This is true even when they don’t understand themselves, as is the case when people who are upset try to describe their feelings and thoughts. But when two or more people want to be heard and understood at the same time and no one is willing to listen and understand, an argument or exit is almost inevitable. For this reason, masterful communicators make it their goal to listen and understand first, before attempting to be heard and understood.

Here’s the bad news: our strategy for listening requires you to temporarily set aside your own need to be heard and understood, at a time when you least want to. Now the good news: by helping your problem people express themselves completely, you increase the likelihood of their being able and even willing to hear you in turn. In fact, there can be no doubt that when people have the experience that they’ve been listened to and understood, they let go of their preoccupation with their own thoughts and feelings. The door to their mind swings open, and that makes it much easier for them to hear you.

Understanding occurs on two levels: emotionally—people feel that you understand what they are feeling—and intellectually—people believe that you understand what they are saying. When people become difficult people (i.e., their positive intentions are threatened or thwarted), listening to understand their feelings and thoughts is a useful objective. A simple, yet effective, strategy for accomplishing this requires that you listen actively rather than passively. If you make a habit of listening in the manner we are about to describe, you will actually prevent some people from ever becoming people you can’t stand.

Step 1. Blend. How do people know that you are listening and understanding? In essence, it’s through the way you look and sound while they’re talking. While they vent their emotions, blow off steam, whine, complain, unload their problems, talk about things that are irrelevant or misleading, and provide you with detailed information that you have no known use for, your task is to give visual and auditory evidence that what they’re saying makes sense to you (even when it doesn’t!).

Rather than distracting your difficult people with puzzled looks, interruptions, or statements of disagreement, we suggest that you help them to completely express themselves. Simply put, you do this by nodding your head in agreement, while making occasional and appropriate sounds of understanding like “Uh-huh,” “Oh,” and “Hmm,” and then repeating back what they’ve said so they know they’ve been heard. Everything about you, from your body posture to your voice volume, must give the impression that you hear and understand.

At some point you will need to become more actively involved. You’ll know for certain that you have reached that point when your problem people begin to repeat what’s already been said. When this occurs, consider it a signal that the people need some feedback from you.

Step 2. Backtrack. One form of giving feedback is backtracking, or repeating back some of the actual words that other people are using. This sends a clear signal that you are listening and that you consider what the other people are saying to be important.

Backtracking is not the same as translating or rephrasing. Words are symbols for experience, and the word-symbols that people choose to express their experience have unique meanings to them. Changing their words into your words with well-intended statements like “In other words ...” or “So, what you’re really trying to say is ...” may prolong the communication process with difficult people. They might hear these different symbols as evidence that you don’t understand.

Nor does backtracking require you to become a parrot and repeat everything back to your problem people. How much backtracking you do is relative to the situation you’re in. When dealing with an attacking Tank, a minimal amount of backtracking is required because the Tank has a two-sentence attention span. When dealing with a Know-It-All, copious backtracking is required, or you’ll have to hear the lecture again. With wishy-washy Yes and Maybe people, it becomes more important to backtrack their feeling statements. You will find yourself using a version of this skill with all of the 10 (+ 3) people you can’t stand.

Backtracking is particularly important when dealing with problem people over the phone because the only visual information they have about you is what they extrapolate from the sound of your voice and the words that you use.

Step 3. Clarify. Having heard what they have to say, begin to gather information about the meaning of their communication. It’s alright to look confused at this point, as you become genuinely curious and ask some questions. Clarification questions are open-ended questions that ask for more than a grunt in response. They begin with words like what, who, where, when, and how. “Whom are you talking about? What are you referring to? Where did it happen? When did it happen? How did it happen?” After gathering this information, you may begin to explore why they are saying it and what criteria they are hoping to satisfy by their behavior.

It is essential that you develop your ability to switch into an information gathering mode rather than a reactionary one. When you deal with difficult people, being able to ask the right questions may turn out to be worth far more than having all the right answers. “All of us are smarter than any of us” is a useful principle. The people asking the questions stand to gain the most by putting this greater intelligence to work.

When dealing with people who are upset, however, putting the greater intelligence to work isn’t always possible. Emotions so cloud the reasoning capabilities of people that it seems as if their brains are no longer connected to their mouths. How many times can you recall when you were upset and said something you didn’t actually mean? And while it is virtually impossible to reason with emotional people, it is possible to look and sound like you understand, backtrack what you’ve heard, and then become curious enough to ask questions.

• You can gather higher-quality information than what is offered. Questions allow both of you to clarify the details and understand the specifics of a problem, rather than coping with, and reacting to, vague generalizations.

• You can help the other people become more rational in the process. Asking the right questions helps people who are upset to fill in the blanks in their thinking until they become reasonable again.

• You can patiently and supportively demonstrate that you care about what they are saying. In this way, problem people are more likely to become calm and cooperative people.

• Asking questions can slow a situation down long enough to see where it’s heading. This allows you to take corrective action sooner instead of later.

• You can surface hidden agendas and reveal lies without being adversarial. That’s what Peter Falk’s detective character did in the hit TV show Columbo.

As a general principle, it is probably better to do more clarifying than less, even when you think you do understand what people are saying. All too often, people think they understand what other people are saying when, in fact, they do not. Also, asking a specific question doesn’t mean you automatically get a specific answer. Both the Whiner and the No Person tend to speak in sweeping generalizations.

Step 4. Summarize What You’ve Heard. To make certain that both you and your problem people have the experience that you really do understand, summarize back to them what you’ve heard. “So then, if I understand you correctly, this is the problem, this is who it involved, and this is when it happened, where it happened, and how it happened?”

When you do this, at least two things happen: (1) If you’ve missed something, they can fill in the details. And (2), you’ve demonstrated, yet again, that you are making a serious effort to fully understand. This increases the likelihood of gaining their cooperation in changing direction down the line.

Step 5. Confirm. Having listened carefully, you’ve now arrived at a crucial juncture. Rather than assuming anything, be certain that the difficult people are satisfied that the problem has been fully voiced. Ask, “Do you feel understood? Is there anything else?”

When enough sincere questioning, listening, caring, and remembering are brought together, understanding is achieved, and difficult people become less difficult and more cooperative.

1. Blend visibly and audibly.

2. Backtrack some of the person’s own words.

3. Clarify the meaning, intent, and criteria.

4. Summarize what you’ve heard.

5. Confirm to find out if you got it right.