Covey - The 7 habits of highly effective people

Seek first to understand. Before the problems come up, before you try to evaluate and
prescribe, before you try to present your own ideas -- seek to understand. It's a powerful
habit of effective interdependence.
When we really, deeply understand each other, we open the door to creative solutions
and Third Alternatives. Our differences are no longer stumbling blocks to communication
and progress. Instead, they become the stepping stones to synergy.
Application Suggestions
1. Select a relationship in which you sense the Emotional Bank Account is in the red. Try
to understand and write down the situation from the other person's point of view. In
your next interaction, listen for understanding, comparing what you are hearing with
what you wrote down. How valid were your assumptions? Did you really understand
that individual's perspective.
2. Share the concept of empathy with someone close to you. Tell him or her you want to
work on really listening to others and ask for feedback in a week. How did you do? How
did it make that person feel.
3. The next time you have an opportunity to watch people communicate, cover your ears
for a few minutes and just watch. What emotions are being communicated that may not
come across in words alone.
4. Next time you catch yourself inappropriately using one of the autobiographical
responses -probing, evaluating, advising, or interpreting -- try to turn the situation into a
deposit by acknowledgment and apology. ("I'm sorry, I just realized I'm not really trying
to understand. Could we start again?")
5. Base your next presentation on empathy. Describe the other point of view as well as or
better than its proponents; then seek to have your point understood from their frame of
reference.
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