Communication & Listening

COMMUNICATION: SEEKING FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD

Suppose you’ve been having trouble with your eyes and you decide to go to an optometrist for help. After briefly listening to your complaint, he takes off his glasses and hand them to you. “Put these on, ‘he says. “I’ve worn this pair of glasses for ten years now and they’ve really helped me. I have an extra pair at home; you can wear these.”
So you put them on, but it only makes the problem worse. “This is terrible!” you exclaim. “I can’t see a thing!”
“Well, what’s wrong?” he asks. “They work great for me. Try harder.”
“I am trying,” you insist. “Everything is a blur.”
“Well, what’s the matter with you? Think positively.”
“Okay. I positively can’t see a thing.”
“Boy, are you ungrateful!” he chides. “And after all I’ve done to help you!”
What are your chances that you’d go back to that optometrist the next time you needed help? Not very good, I would imagine. You don’t have much confidence in someone who doesn’t diagnose before he or she prescribes.
But how often do we diagnose before we prescribe in communication?
Creating a fulfilling interpersonal relationship with someone you love, friends, family and colleagues this year; you need to master this most important principle of communication: seeking first to understand, then to be understood.
Most of us during communication have the intents of replying before understanding or listening to what the person has to say. They are either speaking or preparing to speak.
Why should we listen?
The most common form of listening is:
i. Ignoring another person, not really listening at all.
ii. Pretending to listen
iii. Selective listening
iv. Emphatic listening
Only a few of us practice the final form of listening, empathic listening; listening with the intent to understand. That is, seeking first to understand. You listen for feelings, for meaning, for behavior. To be understood is to be affirmed, validated and to be appreciated.
How would you feel if you were trying to explain something that has been hurting or bothering you to someone and you found out the person wasn’t listening at all or the response been given to you suggested the person was simple waiting for you to finish blabbing so that he or she would say what was in his mind? Pissed off! You will never engage such a person with such discussion again. That’s why it’s also imperative to carry out the most simple of all rules: do to others what you would do to your self.
Illustrations gotten from 7 habit of highly effective people: Steven covey