Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey (35 page)

He's not thinking and feeling one thing and communicating another. He begins to trust you with his innermost tender feelings and thoughts.

"Boy, Dad, I've had it! School is for the birds!" (I want to talk with you to get your attention.)

"You're really frustrated about school." (That's right! That's how I feel.)

"I sure am. It's totally impractical. I'm not getting a thing out of it."

"You feel like school's not doing you any good." (Let me think -- is that what I mean?)

"Well, yeah. I'm just not learning anything that's going to help me. I mean, look at Joe. He's dropped out of school and he's working on cars. He's making money. Now that's practical."

"You feel that Joe really has the right idea." (Well...)

"Well, I guess he does in a way. He's really making money now. But in a few years I bet he'll probably be ticked off at himself."

"You think Joe's going to feel he made the wrong decision."

"He's got to. Just look at what he's giving up. I mean, if you don't have an education, you just can't make it in this world."

"Education is really important."

"Oh, yeah! I mean, if you don't have a diploma, if you can't get jobs or go to college, what are you going to do? You've just got to get an education."

"It's important to your future."

"It is. And, you know what? I'm really worried. Listen, you won't tell Mom, will you?"

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"You don't want your mother to find out."

"Well, not really. Oh, I guess you can tell her. She'll probably find out anyway. Look, I took this test today, this reading test. And, Dad, they said I'm reading on a fourth-grade level. Fourth grade!

And I'm in junior high school!"

What a difference real understanding can make! All the well-meaning advice in the world won't amount to a hill of beans if we're not even addressing the real problem. And we'll never get to the problem if we're so caught up in our own autobiography, our own paradigms, that we don't take off our glasses long enough to see the world from another point of view.

"I'm going to flunk, Dad. I guess I figure if I'm going to flunk, I might as well quit. But I don't want to quit."

"You feel torn. You're in the middle of a dilemma."

"What do you think I should do, Dad?"

By seeking first to understand, this father has just turned a transactional opportunity into a transformational opportunity. Instead of interacting on a surface, get-the-job-done level of communication, he has created a situation in which he can now have transforming impact, not only on his son but also on the relationship. By setting aside his own autobiography and really seeking to understand, he has made a tremendous deposit in the Emotional Bank Account and has empowered his son to open, layer upon layer, and to get to the real issue.

Now father and son are on the same side of the table looking at the problem, instead of on opposite sides looking across at each other. The son is opening his father's autobiography and asking for advice.

Even as the father begins to counsel, however, he needs to be sensitive to his son's communication.

As long as the response is logical, the father can effectively ask questions and give counsel. But the moment the response becomes emotional, he needs to go back to empathic listening.

"Well, I can see some things you might want to consider."

"Like what, Dad?"

"Like getting some special help with your reading. Maybe they have some kind of tutoring program over at the tech school."

"I've already checked into that. It takes two nights and all day Saturday. That would take so much time!"

Sensing emotion in that reply, the father moves back to empathy.

"That's too much of a price to pay."

"Besides, Dad, I told the sixth graders I'd be their coach."

"You don't want to let them down."

"But I'll tell you this, Dad. If I really thought that tutoring course would help, I'd be down there every night. I'd get someone else to coach those kids."

"You really want the help, but you doubt if the course will make a difference."

"Do you think it would, Dad?"

The son is once more open and logical. He's opening his father's autobiography again. Now the father has another opportunity to influence and transform.

There are times when transformation requires no outside counsel. Often when people are really given the chance to open up, they unravel their own problems and the solutions become clear to them in the process.

At other times, they really need additional perspective and help. The key is to genuinely seek the welfare of the individual, to listen with empathy, to let the person get to the problem and the solution at his own pace and time. Layer upon layer -- it's like peeling an onion until you get to the soft inner core.

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When people are really hurting and you really listen with a pure desire to understand, you'll be amazed how fast they will open up. They want to open up. Children desperately want to open up, even more to their parents than to their peers. And they will, if they feel their parents will love them unconditionally and will be faithful to them afterwards and not judge or ridicule them.

If you really seek to understand, without hypocrisy and without guile, there will be times when you will be literally stunned with the pure knowledge and understanding that will flow to you from another human being. It isn't even always necessary to talk in order to empathize. In fact, sometimes words may just get in your way. That's one very important reason why technique alone will not work. That kind of understanding transcends technique. Isolated technique only gets in the way.

I have gone through the skills of empathic listening because skill is an important part of any habit.

We need to have the skills. But let me reiterate that the skills will not be effective unless they come from a sincere desire to understand. People resent any attempt to manipulate them. In fact, if you're dealing with people you're close to, it's helpful to tell them what you're doing.

"I read this book about listening and empathy and I thought about my relationship with you. I realized I haven't listened to you like I should. But I want to. It's hard for me. I may blow it at times, but I'm going to work at it. I really care about you and I want to understand. I hope you'll help me."

Affirming your motive is a huge deposit.

But if you're not sincere, I wouldn't even try it. It may create an openness and a vulnerability that will later turn to your harm when a person discovers that you really didn't care, you really didn't want to listen, and he's left open, exposed, and hurt. The technique, the tip of the iceberg, has to come out of the massive base of character underneath.

Now there are people who protest that empathic listening takes too much time. It may take a little more time initially but it saves so much time downstream. The most efficient thing you can do if you're a doctor and want to prescribe a wise treatment is to make an accurate diagnosis. You can't say,

"I'm in too much of a hurry. I don't have time to make a diagnosis. Just take this treatment."

I remember writing one time in a room on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii. There was a soft breeze blowing, and so I had opened two windows -- one at the front and one at the side -- to keep the room cool. I had a number of papers laid out, chapter by chapter, on a large table.

Suddenly, the breeze started picking up and blowing my papers about. I remember the frantic sense of loss I felt because things were no longer in order, including unnumbered pages, and I began rushing around the room trying desperately to put them back. Finally, I realized it would be better to take 10 seconds and close one of the windows.

Empathic listening takes time, but it doesn't take anywhere near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you're already miles down the road, to redo, to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems, to deal with the results of not giving people psychological air.

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.

People want to be understood. And whatever investment of time it takes to do that will bring much greater returns of time as you work from an accurate understanding of the problems and issues and from the high Emotional Bank Account that results when a person feels deeply understood.

As you learn to listen deeply to other people, you will discover tremendous differences in perception. You will also begin to appreciate the impact that these differences can have as people try to work together in interdependent situations.

You see the young woman; I see the old lady. And both of us can be right.

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You may look at the world through spouse-centered glasses; I may see it through the money-centered lens of economic concern.

You may be scripted in the Abundance Mentality; I may be scripted in the Scarcity Mentality.

You may approach problems from a highly visual, intuitive, holistic right-brain paradigm; I may be very left brain, very sequential, analytical, and verbal in my approach.

Our perceptions can be vastly different. And yet we both have lived with our paradigms for years, thinking they are "facts," and questioning the character or the mental competence of anyone who can't

"see the facts."

Now, with all our differences, we're trying to work together -- in a marriage, in a job, in a community service project -- to manage resources and accomplish results. So how do we do it? How do we transcend the limits of our individual perceptions so that we can deeply communicate, so that we can cooperatively deal with the issues and come up with win-win solutions?

The answer is Habit 5. It's the first step in the process of win-win. Even if (and especially when) the other person is not coming from that paradigm, seek first to understand.

This principle worked powerfully for one executive who shared with me the following experience.

"I was working with a small company that was in the process of negotiating a contract with a large national banking institution. This institution flew in their lawyers from San Francisco, their negotiator from Ohio, and presidents of two of their large banks to create an eight-person negotiating team. The company I worked with had decided to go for Win-Win or No Deal. They wanted to significantly increase the level of service and the cost, but they had been almost overwhelmed with the demands of this large financial institution.

"The president of our company sat across the negotiating table and told them, 'We would like for you to write the contract the way you want it so that we can make sure we understand your needs and your concerns. We will respond to those needs and concerns. Then we can talk about pricing.'

"The members of the negotiating team were overwhelmed. They were astounded that they were going to have the opportunity to write the contract. They took three days to come up with the idea.

"When they presented it, the president said, 'Now let's make sure we understand what you want.'

And he went down the contract, rephrasing the content, reflecting the feeling, until he was sure and they were sure he understood what was important to them. 'Yes. That's right. No, that's not exactly what we meant here...yes, you've got it now.'

"When he thoroughly understood their perspective, he proceeded to explain some concerns from his perspective. . .and they listened. They were ready to listen. They weren't fighting for air. What had started out as a very formal, low-trust, almost hostile atmosphere had turned into a fertile environment for synergy.

"At the conclusion of the discussions, the members of the negotiating team basically said, 'We want to work with you. We want to do this deal. Just let us know what the price is and we'll sign.'"

Then Seek to Be Understood

Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Knowing how to be understood is the other half of Habit 5, and is equally critical in reaching win-win solutions.

Earlier we defined maturity 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. So it becomes important in interdependent situations for us to be understood.

The early Greeks had a magnificent philosophy which is embodied in three sequentially arranged words: ethos, pathos, and logos. I suggest these three words contain the essence of seeking first to understand and making effective presentations.

Ethos is your personal credibility, the faith people have in your integrity and competency. It's the trust that you inspire, your Emotional Bank Account. Pathos is the empathic side -- it's the feeling. It means that you are in alignment with the emotional trust of another person's communication. Logos is
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the logic, the reasoning part of the presentation.

Notice the sequence: ethos, pathos, logos -- your character, and your relationships, and then the logic of your presentation. This represents another major Paradigm Shift. Most people, in making presentations, go straight to the logos, the left-brain logic, of their ideas. They try to convince other people of the validity of that logic without first taking ethos and pathos into consideration.