Seven habits of highly effective people - Stephen R. Covey [110]
If you don't have confidence in the diagnosis, you won't have confidence in the prescription. This principle is also true in sales. An effective salesperson first seeks to understand the needs, the concerns, the situation of the customer. The amateur salesman sells products; the professional sells solutions to needs and problems. It's a totally different approach. The professional learns how to diagnose, how to understand. He also learns how to relate people's needs to his products and services. And, he has to have the integrity to say, "My product or service will not meet that need" if it will not. Diagnosing before you prescribe is also fundamental to law. The professional lawyer first gathers the facts to understand the situation, to understand the laws and precedents, before preparing a case. A good lawyer almost writes the opposing attorney's case before he writes his own. It's also true in product design. Can you imagine someone in a company saying, "This consumer research stuff is for the birds. Let's design products." In other words, forget understanding the consumer's buying habits and motives --just design products. It would never work. A good engineer will understand the forces, the stresses at work, before designing the bridge. A good teacher will assess the class before teaching. A good student will understand before he applies. A good parent will understand before evaluation or judging. The key to good judgment is understanding. By judging first, a person will never fully understand. Seek first to understand is a correct principle evident in all areas of life. It's a generic, common-denominator principle, but it has its greatest power in the area of interpersonal relations. Four Autobiographical Responses
Because we listen autobiographically, we tend to respond in one of four ways. We evaluate --we either agree or disagree; we probe --we ask questions from our own frame of reference; we advise --we give counsel based on our own experience; or we interpret --we try to figure people out, to explain their motives, their behavior, based on our own motives and behavior.
These responses come naturally to us. We are deeply scripted in them; we live around models of them all the time. But how do they affect our ability to really understand?
If I'm trying to communicate with my son, can he feel free to open himself up to me when I evaluate everything he says before he really explains it? Am I giving him psychological air?
And how does he feel when I probe? Probing is playing 20 questions. It's autobiographical, it controls, and it invades. It's also logical, and the language of logic is different from the language of
sentiment and emotion. You can play 20 questions all day and not find out what's important to someone. Constant probing is one of the main reasons parents do not get close to their children.
"How's it going, son?"
"Fine."
"Well, what's been happening lately?"
"Nothing."
"So what's exciting at school?"
"Not much."
"And what are your plans for the weekend?"
"I don't know."
You can't get him off the phone talking with his friends, but all he gives you is one-and two-word answers. Your house is a motel where he eats and sleeps, but he never shares, never opens up. And when you think about it, honestly, why should he, if every time he does open up his soft underbelly, you elephant stomp it with autobiographical advice and "I told you so's." We are so deeply scripted in these responses that we don't even realize when we use them. I have taught this concept to thousands of people in seminars across the country, and it never fails to shock them deeply as we role-play empathic listening situations and they finally begin to listen to their own typical responses. But as they begin to see how they normally respond and learn how to listen with empathy, they can see the dramatic results in communication. To many, seek first to understand becomes the most exciting, the most immediately applicable, of all the Seven Habits. Let's take a look at what well might be a typical communication between