Habit 5 - Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Everyone has a natural tendency to rush in and try to give advice or try to fix things before taking the time to diagnose or try to understand why the other person feels the way they do. The trick, however, is to seek first to understand the other person, then to try and be understood yourself.

Most people have no training in how to listen effectively. By comparison, years are spent learning how to read and write effectively. If you really want to interact with another person, you need to take the time to listen to where they now are. Unless you have shown the person you acknowledge their uniqueness, they are not going to be open to any advice from you. This is not technique alone - you have to build skills on a foundation base of character and deposits to Emotional Bank Accounts.

Most people don’t listen with an intent to understand - they listen with the intent to reply. They are either speaking or preparing to speak. They see others through the lens of their own autobiographies. The key to understanding another person is empathetic listening – really trying to understand everything (including the nonverbal signals) the other person is communicating. You listen for feeling and for meaning, for behavior and other signals. You are totally focused on the other person’s point of view, not projecting your own life’s story into their words.

Remember, satisfied needs do not motivate a person to action. When they are fed, they no longer look around for food. Similarly, you cannot and should not move on to satisfying a person’s need to solve a problem before satisfying the need for them to feel like they have been understood by you. Diagnose before you prescribe. It actually requires a great deal of security on your own part, as you will also be opening up yourself to be influenced by that person.

This is actually the mark of all true professionals. The amateur salesman sells products, the professional salesman sells solutions to needs and problems. A lawyer first gathers the facts to understand the situation, including laws and precedents, before preparing a case. A good engineer will understand the forces and stresses at work within a design before drawing a bridge. The key to good judgment is understanding. If we judge first, we will never fully understand.

When people have a problem and you really listen to understand them, you’ll be surprised how quickly and how fully they will open up to you. Empathetic listening takes time, but not nearly as much time as it will take to back up and correct misunderstandings when you are much further down the road.

Once you understand, then you have got to try to be understood yourself. Maturity is defined as the balance between courage and consideration. Seeking to understand requires consideration, seeking to be understood takes courage. Win/Win requires a high degree of both.

The Greeks had a philosophy embodied in three words: ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is your personal credibility, integrity and competency. It is in effect the balance of your Emotional Bank Account. Pathos is the feeling. It means being in emotional alignment with the other person. Logos is the logic, the reasoning part of the presentation. Note the sequence: ethos, pathos, logos -your character, your relationship and your logic. Most people go straight to the logos without first taking ethos and pathos into consideration.

When you can present your own ideas clearly, specifically, visually and contextually (in the context of your listener’s concerns), you increase the credibility of your ideas. Habit 5 lifts you to greater accuracy, integrity and effectiveness in your presentations. And best of all, seeking first to understand is within your own control. It is something you can practice right now. You can put this principle into immediate action.

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.”

— Pascal