What is seek to understand then to be understood?
Seek to understand, then to be understood. This is Habit 5 of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and it seems easy enough to do on the surface, but for many people, it can be a difficult habit to implement. In this article, we will explore how you can use it in your daily life to build rapport and develop deep relationships.
Why is it important to seek first to understand others?
Second, when people recognize that you’re genuinely trying to understand them, they’ll be more inclined to trust you and open up further, and your effort will make a big deposit in your Emotional Bank Account. In this way habit 5, seek first to understand, then to be understood, furthers your goals of connecting with others.
What is the key to truly understanding people?
The key to truly understanding people is empathic listening, which is listening with the intent to see their perspective. Empathetic listening is necessary to work on habit 5: seek first to understand, then to be understood.
What is the essence of seeking first to understand?
There are three words that contain the essence of seeking first to understand: Ethos - Your personal credibility, the trust you inspire. Pathos - Your empathetic side, showing you are in alignment with the emotional thrust of another person's communication.
What does "seek first to understand" mean?
Seek first to understand means to truly listen to people when you engage in conversation. It consists of listening with a totally open mind, as if you were listening to what is being said for the first time. So, listen. Stop talking. Silence your ego and agenda.
What Does it Mean to Seek to Understand?
The point is, we’re only really listening when we are listening attentively to that person, and we are responding to a frame of reference that the speaker has mentioned.
What is selective listening?
3 – Selective Listening – We pick out some of the conversation but not the whole thing, as we move from internal to a brief external focus, before returning to our own thoughts
What is the second step in empathic listening?
Empathising is the second step in empathic listening, and is the most important.
What is the 5th habit of Stephen Covey?
Seek to understand, then to be understood. This is Habit 5 of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and it seems easy enough to do on the surface, but for many people, it can be a difficult habit to implement. In this article, we will explore how you can use it in your daily life to build rapport and develop deep relationships.
How many thoughts do we have in a day?
In fact, we have approximately 6200 thoughts per day. For most of us, they don’t stop when a loved one, a friend, colleague or even an employee wants to stop and talk.
What is the mark of a true professional?
The mark of a true professional is understanding. Lawyers are excellent at innately using habit 5 seek first. They gather facts and prepare cases before presenting the final verdict to their clients – jumping to conclusions could be professional suicide.
Why do we assume that other people perceive the world the same way we do?
Because most of our thoughts are about ourselves and we spend every waking minute marinating in these literally self-centered thoughts, we have a tendency to assume that other people perceive and process the world the same way that we do. We typically don’t consciously realize this until we have a super salient epiphany moment that unveils the fact that someone else thinks in a fundamentally different way. Even once you’ve had such an experience, you still sometimes slip into assuming that other people’s minds are very much like your own. Epley calls this “the lens problem.”
When do you use the theory of mind?
You use your theory of mind when you make a sales pitch to a potential client. You watch how they react to certain talking points, and postulate as to what’s holding them back from pulling the trigger.
Why do we think people are different from us?
Why do we do this? Our brains are just wired to react this way when we think that someone seems different from us — either physically or psychologically. The part of our brain that lights up when we engage in theory of mind — called the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) — lights up particularly strongly when we’re “reading” the mind of someone close to us (again, either physically or psychologically). Conversely, the more literally or metaphorically distant someone seems, the less the MPFC engages, which results in us thinking that person is less than fully human. When a boss interacts with an employee or an employee interacts with a boss, they recognize a difference between themselves, so both will tend to dehumanize the other, ever so slightly.
What is Stephen Covey's public habit?
The gist of that habit is to seek to allow everyone involved in a conflict or negotiation to feel as if they’ve “won.” This requires balancing consideration for the needs of others, with the assertiveness to stand up for your own. For Covey, this combination of consideration and assertiveness is what gives rise to maturity.
What is the best way to build interpersonal cohesion?
The thing that really lights up our MPFC is when we’re in close physical proximity to others and interact with them in face-to-face conversations; doing a physical activity together helps build interpersonal cohesion as well.
How to overcome the tendency to be different from others?
Overcoming our natural tendency to “other” others is pretty straightforward. Instead of focusing on what makes you different from them, focus on what you have in common. As soon as you start seeing the similarities between you and another person, your MPFC will begin lighting up more, and you’ll find yourself increasingly understanding them as fellow human beings.
What to say when your wife says her day was fine?
You do so when you ask your wife how her day was and she exasperatedly says “Fine.” You guess that her day actually wasn’t fine, and so respond by saying: “It sounds like you had a rough day. Tell me what happened.”
Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
For the last four weeks, we’ve been discussing the habits of highly effective marketers based on the principles described by Stephen Covey in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The first four habits are:
Seek First to Understand
Most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. We’re all guilty of this. Most often we are too busy preparing our response for when it’s our turn to speak. Additionally, we tend to frame what others say based on our own perspective.
The Practice of Understanding
Listening attentively is a focus-based task. Below are some tips and suggestions that marketers can use as they seek to understand as well as to be understood.
The Bottom Line
The foundation for effective communication is listening. Listening, however, is not a passive activity. It requires focus, attention, empathy and the ability to translate what is being said (or isn’t being said) into what is really important.
Why do we listen to ourselves?
Because most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. You listen to yourself as you prepare in your mind what you are going to say, the questions you are going to ask, etc. You filter everything you hear through your life experiences, your frame of reference.
What is the most important skill in life?
Communicate effectively at all levels of the organization. Communication is the most important skill in life. You spend years learning how to read and write, and years learning how to speak.
