Seek First to Understand - Habit #5 of Highly Effective People

Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood - Habit #5

As we continue this Summer Series on effectiveness, we are approaching one of the hardest to habits to incorporate - Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood - which is  Habit #5 from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

How good of a listener are you?  How often do you truly understand the other person's full issue, intent, and desires before offering your well-intentioned advice?  We can all improve in this area, so let's see how.

Tell Me Your Troubles

Listening to truly understand - called empathic listening - is more than just hearing what the other person is saying.  It is getting 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 involves more than just the words that are said.  Communications experts estimate that only 10% of our communication is represented through words we say.  Another 30% is represented by our sounds, and 60% by our body language. 

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 interpretations, you're dealing with the reality inside another person's head and heart.

And that makes all the difference.  How many times have you opened up to someone, to get cutoff as they exclaim "Oh I know exactly how you feel!", or "I went through the same thing, let me tell you about my experience"?

Although the intentions are good, the responding person doesn't help the situation.  You must first seek to understand (through empathic listening), and then seek to be understood.

Practicing this habit will improve your relationships personally and professionally, and help you influence others.  How you ask?

Because when someone feels heard and understood - truly understood - they open up even more.  The more deeply you understand them, the more you will appreciate them.  And the more you appreciate those around you, the more willing they are to 1) want to understand you and 2) want to help you.

We are all busy, and time is the scarcest resource for many of us.  In order to incorporate this habit, you have to spend more time listening and less time responding.  Which makes this habit difficult to incorporate at first.  But once you start seeing the benefits to your relationships, your career, and your ability to influence, the time spent will be well worth it.

As much as you think you know what your team member is dealing with, or your partner is thinking, or how your children are doing - you're just assuming.  You are wasting so much time creating misunderstandings, resentments, and passive aggressive behaviors from those who feel unheard, especially from those you have perceived power over (if you are a boss, parent, etc.)

This position of power may even make you think you should talk first, that others need to understand you first, and then they can talk.  This is just your ego, and it's wrong.

Get out of your ego and truly seek to understand first, then seek to be understood.

The benefits will be nothing short of amazing.  I have seen this in my coaching and with my children. 

Coaching is the practice of listening, asking questions for deeper awareness on the client's part, and then helping them take actions to get where they want to go.  In the beginning, my desire to help sometimes meant I'd offer premature advice or share my experiences.  It helped to an extent, but not in a transformative, "aha" moment type of way.

Now, through empathic listening and genuine curiosity, I am able to more deeply understand not just what my clients are saying, but how they are feeling, their fears, and the position they are coming from.  Only then, after I've given them the opportunity to unload all of the many things swirling around in their mind, can they be open to receive anything from me, whether that is a question or area of contemplation.

- The works stress was really the top layer of a deeper concern about the health of a family member
- The obsession over work results was a way of avoiding failures in their relationship at home
- The overachieving was an overcompensation for mistakes made decades earlier, in the beginning of their career
- The sense of responsibility for everyone around them was a coping mechanism to deal with their own low sense of self-worth
- The shortcomings they saw in their partner were a defense mechanism against letting anyone get too close to them, for fear of rejection

If I hadn't been willing to seek to understand first, then I wouldn't have been able to help these amazing humans move forward in a productive way.

If I don't keep this habit going, I will alienate my children who come home from school and want to tell me everything.  I can be so quick to hear a sentence or two and then "tell them how it really is" based on my experience of grade school OVER 30 YEARS AGO!!  lol - How could I imagine that I truly understand their world? 

Yet I do think I understand it and interject at times.  Because I'm human.  We are all human, and our default is to be understood FIRST.  Changing this habit takes a lot of intention.  

My tip?  Ask a minimum of three follow-up questions before offering anything else.  See what unfolds, watch their body language and mood, and see if you can step into their world to see the situation from their viewpoint.

And then watch the magic unfold.

Cheers to empathic listening,
Sharon

Stick with me for this series until we cover all 7 habits!
If you missed any of the previous habits, find the links below:
Habit #1 - Be Proactive
Habit #2 - Begin With The End In Mind
Habit #3 - Put First Things First
Habit #4 - Think Win/Win

**Note - some of this text is directly from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  I've added context where I saw fit and condensed in other sections.  His publisher's website is worth a read for more reference and if you can find the time, read the book.  Website HERE.**

Want to feel more understood?

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