Habit 5 - Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

Seek First to Understand

Imagine going to get your eyes checked. The optometrist after briefly listening to you takes off his glasses and says, "Here try mine on. They have helped me." You try them on and they just make things worse. He says, "Well there is something wrong with you then because these glasses have helped me for years".

After this experience, you probably wouldn't go back to this optometrist. You wouldn't have much confidence in someone who prescribes before he diagnoses. But in communication, how often do we take time to diagnose before we prescribe?

The author begins this chapter by saying that the single most important principle he has learned in interpersonal relations is to seek first to understand, then to be understood. Typically, most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to respond. While the other person is talking, they are thinking about how they will respond even before the person is finished speaking.

The highest form of listening is called "empathic listening". This is listening with the intent to understand. With this form of listening, you seek to put yourself in the other person's shoes, so that you can understand why they are saying what they are saying. This does not mean that you have to agree with what they are saying. But you want to understand as best you can what they are saying.

Communications experts suggest that only 10% of communication is expressed in words. 30% is our sounds, or how we say it, and 60% is body language. With empathic listening, you listen not only with your ears, but also with your eyes.

Empathic listening is important because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own autobiography on the person, you are dealing with the reality of what is in that persons head.

Empathic listening is also risky. You need to be secure in yourself to listen well, because you open yourself up to be influenced. It is a paradox in a way, because in order to have influence, you have to be influenced.

Generally, when we listen, we tend to respond in one of 4 ways:

1. We evaluate - We either agree or disagree
2. We probe - we ask questions from our own frame of reference
3. We advise - we give council based on our own experience
4. We interpret - we try to figure people out, to explain their motives, their behavior, based on our own motives or behavior.

There are four developmental stages in empathic listening:

1. Mimick content:

Son: "Dad, I've had it, school is for the birds!"

Dad: "You've had it, school is for the birds"

2. Rephrase the content:

Son: "Dad, I've had it, school is for the birds!"

Dad: You don't want to go to school anymore"

3. Reflect Feeling:

Son: "Dad, I've had it, school is for the birds!"

Dad: "You're feeling very frustrated"

4. Rephrase the Content and Reflect Feeling:

Son: "Dad, I've had it, school is for the birds!"

Dad: You're feeling very frustrated about school.

When you do it this way, you show you are listening by repeating what the other person said, while allowing them to correct you if they feel you have not heard right. This may not even be your fault most of the time, but the speaker is just refining even what they are trying to say in order to communicate best what they are trying to get across.

Seek to be Understood

Now as you move to seeking to be understood, it is important to present your ideas clearly, specifically, and most important, contextually - in the context of a deep understanding or their paradigms and concerns. When you do this, you significantly increase the credibility of your ideas.

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This chapter has actually been the hardest to summarize. I have left out so much that helps round out all that I have already written. One of the biggest things I have left out is a huge part of the Son and Dad dialogue, which shows how we would usually respond, and the author critiques it as it goes on. It is really helpful to see how we usually respond in order to fully show how we should respond. When the dad responded with evaluate, probe, advise, interpret, the son shut down and didn't share what he really wanted to. But when the father responded by rephrasing the content and reflecting the feelings, the son eventually shared how his teacher told him that although he is in grade 10, he is reading at a grade 4 level. It really showed the difference using this principle could have if used. So in some ways you need to read the whole chapter to get the full effect, but in other ways, you could just look at the title, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood", and that tells you all you need to know.