Seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen R. Covey

Author:Stephen R. Covey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Motivational & Inspirational, Success - Psychological aspects., Psychology, Success, Success - Psychological aspects, Personal Growth - Success, Occupational & industrial psychology, Character., Character, General, Self-realization, Self-help & personal development, Popular Psychology, Self-Help, Business studies, Personal Growth, Psychological aspects, Business & Economics, Personality
ISBN: 9780743269513
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2004-11-09T08:00:00+00:00

Comparatively few people have had any training in listening at all. And, for the most part, their training has been in the personality ethic of technique, truncated from the character base and the relationship base absolutely vital to authentic understanding of another person. If you want to interact effectively with me, to influence me --your spouse, your child, your neighbor, your boss, your coworker, your friend --you first need to understand me. And you can't do that with technique alone. If I sense you're using some technique, I sense duplicity, manipulation. I wonder why you're doing it, what your motives are. And I don't feel safe enough to open myself up to you. The real key to your influence with me is your example, your actual conduct. Your example flows naturally out of your character, of the kind of person you truly are --not what others say you are or what you may want me to think you are. It is evident in how I actually experience you. Your character is constantly radiating, communicating. From it, in the long run, I come to instinctively trust or distrust you and your efforts with me.

If your life runs hot and cold, if you're both caustic and kind, and, above all, if your private performance doesn't square with your public performance, it's very hard for me to open up with you. Then, as much as I may want and even need to receive your love and influence, I don't feel safe enough

to expose my opinions and experiences and my tender feelings. Who knows what will happen?

But unless I open up with you, unless you understand me and my unique situation and feelings, you won't know how to advise or counsel me. What you say is good and fine, but it doesn't quite pertain to me.

You may say you care about and appreciate me. I desperately want to believe that. But how can you appreciate me when you don't even understand me? All I have are your words, and I can't trust words.

I'm too angry and defensive --perhaps too guilty and afraid --to be influenced, even though inside I know I need what you could tell me.

Unless you're influenced by my uniqueness, I'm not going to be influenced by your advice. So if you want to be really effective in the habit of interpersonal communication, you cannot do it with technique alone. You have to build the skills of empathic listening on a base of character that inspires openness and trust. And you have to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that create a commerce between hearts.

Empathic Listening

"Seek first to understand" involves a very deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They're either speaking or preparing to speak. They're filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people's lives.

"Oh, I know exactly how you feel!"

"I went through the very same thing. Let me tell you about my experience.

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