In last week’s post, I referred to a simple comment from a client in a coaching session as we talked about the concept of “seeking to understand”—a term coined by Stephen Covey and a critical piece of our Leaning Into Healthy Conflict model.
The comment he made went along these lines: “I’m surprised you don’t talk about the desire to understand before getting into the actual practice of seeking to understand and the techniques used to do that.”
I instantly resonated with his insight, and it caused me to do a lot of processing over the next couple weeks. I love that this client chooses to have a desire to understand people who have a different belief or perspective than he does.
After processing this further I’ve come to a place where I see three levels of what it takes to have your best chance to really understand someone.
- The first and foundational level is this desire to understand them.
- The second level, built on top of the foundation, is the choice to actually seek to understand them.
- The third level, built on top of the second, includes the methods and tools that help you to understand them. Maybe the simplest of these is what I call “Q & L” (asking questions and doing lots of listening). Of course there are other methods and tools that can be used in order to seek to understand someone, but I’m not going to attempt to describe other of the various ways here.
This overall way of thinking about how to understand someone reminds me of a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery:
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
A rewritten version might be this:
If you want to have people understand others, don’t teach them how to listen, don’t teach them why they should listen, but rather teach them to long to understand the amazing and complicated human who is before them.
Okay, so this is why I’m seldom quoted, but hopefully you get the point.
Maybe some of you will be with family or friends over the coming days and one or more of them may have a very different view of one of the many issues that seem to divide us these days. Maybe you could choose to become really curious about how they have come to embrace their view. Might you choose to desire to deeply understand them, and then seek to understand them by asking questions and listening really well?
Almost all of the methods we teach in LEAD 365 are simple to explain but often hard to do, which is why they take practice. The holiday we are celebrating tomorrow could be an excellent time for you to practice this important attribute of a leader worth following. Imagine asking your cousin why she voted for Donald Trump, or your brother why he voted for Hillary Clinton. Then just be curious and spend several minutes just listening in order to understand them.
If you try it, plan to keep your thoughts to yourself. There is no need to share your thoughts if your desire is to understand the person in front of you. Sharing your thoughts is probably about trying to change the person in front of you instead of just understanding them.
I’m still working on this practice of desiring to understand others, and I have a ways to go. But every now and then I find a way to practice and I seem to be getting a little better.
If you do this and have an experience to share, I would love to hear from you.
Thanks for being a great leader!
Rodg
Image by David Rosen Photography. Used under CC By 2.0 license.
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