Seven habits of highly effective people - Stephen R. Covey [109]
"I just said to the man, 'Let me see if I really understand what your position is and what your concerns about my recommendations really are. When you feel I understand them, then we'll see whether my proposal has any relevance or not.'
"I really tried to put myself in his shoes. I tried to verbalize his needs and concerns, and he began to open up.
"The more I sensed and expressed the things he was worried about, the results he anticipated, the more he opened up.
"Finally, in the middle of our conversation, he stood up, walked over to the phone, and dialed his wife. Putting his hand over the mouthpiece, he said, 'You've got the deal.'
"I was totally dumbfounded," he told me. "I still am this morning. He had made a huge deposit in the Emotional Bank Account by giving the man psychological air. When it comes right down to it, other things being relatively equal, the human dynamic is more important than the technical dimensions of the deal.
Seeking first to understand, diagnosing before you prescribe, is hard. It's so much easier in the short run to hand someone a pair of glasses that have fit you so well these many years. But in the long run, it severely depletes both P and PC. You can't achieve maximum interdependent production from an inaccurate understanding of where other people are coming from. And you can't have interpersonal PC --high Emotional Bank Accounts --if the people you relate with don't really feel understood.
Empathic listening is also risky. It takes a great deal of security to go into a deep listening experience because you open yourself up to be influenced. You become vulnerable. It's a paradox, in a sense, because in order to have influence, you have to be influenced. That means you have to really understand.
That's why Habits 1, 2, and 3 are so foundational. They give you the changeless inner core, the principle center, from which you can handle the more outward vulnerability with peace and strength. Diagnose Before You Prescribe
Although it's risky and hard, seek first to understand, or diagnose before you prescribe, is a correct principle manifesting many areas of life. It's the mark of all true professionals. It's critical for the optometrist, it's critical for the physician. You wouldn't have any confidence in a doctor's prescription unless you had confidence in the diagnosis
When our daughter Jenny was only two months old, she was sick on Saturday, the day of a football game in our community that dominated the consciousness of almost everyone. It was an important game --some 60,000 people were there. Sandra and I would like to have gone, but we didn't want to leave little Jenny. Her vomiting and diarrhea had us concerned
The doctor was at that game. He wasn't our personal physician, but he was the one on call. When Jenny's situation got worse, we decided we needed some medical advice Sandra dialed the stadium and had him paged. It was right at a critical time in the game, and she could sense on officious tone in his voice. "Yes?" he said briskly. "What is it?"
"This is Mrs. Covey, Doctor, and we're concerned about our daughter, Jenny."
"What's the situation?" he asked.
Sandra described the symptoms and he said, "Okay. I'll call in a prescription. Which is your pharmacy?"
When she hung up, Sandra felt that in her rush she hadn't really given him full data, but that what she had told him was adequate.
"Do you think he realizes that Jenny is just a newborn?" I asked her
"I'm sure he does," Sandra replied.
"But he's not our doctor. He's never even treated her."
"Well, I'm pretty sure he knows."
"Are you willing to give her the medicine unless you're absolutely sure he knows?" Sandra was silent. "What are we going to do?" she finally said.
"Call him back," I said.
"You call him back," Sandra replied.
So I did. He was paged out of the game once again. "Doctor," I said, "when you called in that prescription, did your realize that Jenny is just two months old?"
"No!" he exclaimed. "I didn't realize that. It's good you called me back. I'll change the prescription