I have written two blog posts (Book Brew 33 and Book Brew 66….too bad this one isn’t #99 for a cool pattern—though I suppose 76 is still a neat number... if you squint.) on the topic of empathic listening and effective communication, so you would think I have said all there is to say on the subject. Yet, as I finished Blue Ocean Strategy and read part of Habit 5 - Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I came across some additional insights that I felt needed to be added.
It turns out that we all have the need to be seen, heard, validated, understood, appreciated, valued.
Mauborgne and Kim write, “If individuals are not treated as though their knowledge is valued, they will feel intellectual indignation and will not share their ideas and expertise; rather, they will hoard their best thinking and creative ideas, preventing new insights from seeing the light of day.”
Covey explains that “satisfied needs do not motivate. It’s only the unsatisfied need that motivates. Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival - to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.”
As I point out in Book Brew 33, when we are engaged in conversation with another person about an issue they are having, we tend to want to jump in with our own advice before truly listening to them and understanding them. We don’t seek to understand first. Like a doctor prescribing treatment before even attempting to diagnose the ailment. Communicating like this is a good way to prevent the other person from opening up to and trusting you.
Covey describes listening with empathy as giving the other person psychological air. “And after that vital need is met, you can then focus on influencing or problem solving.” Basically, step into the other person’s world, see the situation through their eyes and experience, don’t project your own thoughts, feelings, emotions, or experiences onto them or their situation, and then, once you understand them, you can begin the process of offering up advice (that is if the person is seeking advice-sometimes we just need someone to listen).
In business, recognizing your staff and business partners’ knowledge, expertise, talents, and ideas helps them feel more secure and comfortable with being vulnerable by sharing those pieces of themselves with others in the business, ultimately leading to better service for your clients and more profitable business for you.
There have been a few places I have worked in the past where the staff’s knowledge/opinions/ideas/talents were not valued by “higher ups”, creating a lot of tension throughout the team and, in one case, led to over 80% of us resigning. Months before our mass exodus, the leadership would have significantly benefited from implementing some empathic communication
At one place, we went through round after round of layoffs where the leadership was very close-lipped with staff on what was happening. It created such an environment of distrust that no one felt they could trust anyone else.
My boss, who felt her position was in jeopardy, started throwing me and her other staff under the bus when things didn’t go as planned - the trust we all had in her before this behavior was never regained.
As Covey would say, she overdrew our Emotional Bank Accounts and could never redeposit enough afterward to make up for it.