I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships
It’s a short book, but it makes an important point. I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships echoes the guidance from several others and then adds something critical to the mix to make your results better when you’re communicating with others.
Understanding and Agreement
One of the key points made by many is that we need to start by focusing on our understanding and separating whether we agree or not. (See Effective Apology and Solve Employee Problems Before They Start for more.) Too often, we get wrapped up in the need to defend our position and perspective, and this hampers our ability to fully listen to the other person to try to understand their perspective and values in the situation. (See Who Am I? for basic motivators – or values.)
Acceptance
To be able to get to a place of just understanding, we need to focus on acceptance. That is, we need to accept that people can perceive things differently, and that those perceptions are valid – even if incorrect. By accepting the other person’s reality as their own, which may be more valid than our reality, can be difficult. (For more on acceptance, see How to Be an Adult in Relationships and Why Are We Yelling?)
John Gottman uses the word “attunement” in The Science of Trust to describe the degree to which one person is sensitive to another. We get to this attunement by first seeking to understand, and then ensuring that we actively accept the other person’s point of view – even if we don’t agree.
Disagree and Dialogue
Once there appears to be good understanding of the other person’s perspective, it’s time to consider whether you do or don’t agree with them – in whole or in part. Disagreement isn’t bad, it’s an opportunity to learn.
Collaborating with the Enemy encourages us to disagree and move towards dialogue. (See Dialogue for more.) Said differently, the encouragement is that you continue to learn and seek understanding even after the belief that you do understand – because you’ll never understand completely.
The key is creating the kind of psychological safety that Amy Edmondson calls for in The Fearless Organization. This safety allows for differences to be explored without premature judgement or defensiveness. One of the benefits of the Dialogue Mapping approach is the instant confirmation that someone is being heard and understood.
Active Listening
Many people think that any parrot can do active listening. All you need to do is repeat back what the person said. This is, obviously, something that some parrots can do. However, the truth about active listening comes in what Motivational Interviewing calls “reflection.” It’s more than just repeating back the words. It’s an effort to make sense of what you’re hearing and to share back the meaning you find in it. One way that I teach it is to speak about walking up Chris Argyris’ Ladder of Interference. (I cover this in more detail in my review of Choice Theory.)
Validation
The key word that Michael Sorensen uses is “validation.” It’s the statement that you understand and accept the person and their experience – still separate from your agreement. Validation is the thing that people experience when they feel the acceptance of someone trying to make sense of their perspective. Validated is what people get when you can reflect some portion of their experience. Validation, Sorensen asserts, is the best way to say, and really mean, I Hear You.