“To be understood, first seek to understand.”
A large portion of social communication involves understanding concepts brought up by others. However, there can be a tendency to want to have your own ideas understood first, which can be seen as pushy, and is not likely to occur when others get a feel for your motives. An optimal way to get others to understand what is on your mind is to work in reverse, by first focusing on understanding their position and views.
It Starts When The Conversation Starts
The idea behind this arises from the initial response. When someone tries to get you to understand their mindset, without consideration for your mindset, you feel that they are inconsiderate, or possibly view you as less relevant than them, and then ignore their communication on purpose. It is a natural evolutionary response, because those that don’t start to ignore these people can end up getting used repeatedly.
Fair Trade/Creation Of Value
It can be thought of like social monetary dealings. Smooth communication would be akin to each person starting with $10 of value before the communication, and ending with $11 of value. On the other hand, when one person tries to forcefully get their thoughts in first, it is like trying to get a $1 worth of information created from the other person, without showing any intent to provide a $1 of value in return.
Who Isn’t Listening To You?
A way to check if you have been taking more than you have been giving is to assess how your communications go with certain people. If you notice that there are people who are not initiating conversation with you like they were in the past, it is highly likely that you were not wanting to find out about what was going on in their minds, while concurrently you were releasing your thoughts to them as though your thoughts were more valuable than theirs. The only way to rekindle relations with these people is to present yourselves to them in a manner that seeks to understand them first. You can only belittle someone for so long.
“How Are You Doing?”
This is often true with people wanting to inform others about their day. They can overwhelm the other person with facts, without thinking about how the other person is seeing it. The other person might end up leaving soon after out of frustration. In this case, it is beneficial to stay within limits of discussion, as the other person will be wondering when they will have the opportunity to voice their views. Although a certain amount of people can be overpowered in most communications, it is not a sustainable process to do so, and you never know when a person who is important to you will give up communicating with you, due to your inconsiderateness for their time and attention. Similar to it being easier to prevent sickness than to treat it, it is harder to gain back their positive spirit after you have let them down, as opposed to maintaining balanced relations from the start.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Armen,
This quote is excellent, and your deeper look at it is right on the mark. I really like your look at both parties turning their $10 into $11. Everyone getting value… Very nicely said!
Lance: Thanks for that. I would say that that point relating it to monetary value has to be there, or else one of the people is actually coming out worse after the communication than before they started, and if that was the case, some people would end up cutting off communication in order to protect their feelings.
Hey Armen, I like your analogy with regards to exchange of money/value
It really brings the idea across clearly!
Celes: I sure was glad to give it value in that way, since people don’t end up with less after an interaction, but are expecting to get a little more.