The Problem
What someone says is not what we hear. When someone talks to us, our sense-making is mostly about ourselves, polluted by our fears, thinking about what we will say next, not about what the other person just shared. This is a formula for communication failure.
If we’re only capable of hearing our own reaction to the world, how can we switch to what others are saying? To make matters worse, as we persist in this state, our fears have a way of reverberating outward and effecting those around us.
The problem starts with our instinctive brain function of flight or fight, invoked in the wrong situation, accentuated by our upbringing, experience, ancestry, beliefs, and so on. Our fears are supreme because it’s about survival.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone invented hearing aids that prevent us from filtering what people say?
The Solution
The solution starts with understanding a simple truth: most people struggle with being human. We can begin to feel better about ourselves knowing that innately invoking the flight or fight reaction in most situations is normal.
While partly innate, we’re also skilled in selfishness, but we can become proficient in selflessness. To begin our training, we need to overcome our inward perspective by thinking in terms of the other person. While we can assume the other person only hears themselves too, exercising our ability to understand their viewpoint informs us about their world, attitude, background, experience, and so on. Giving another person this opportunity to share their personal side reveals their vulnerabilities. It requires a safe and trusting environment. The moment we receive another person’s disclosures, and refrain from judgment, is the exact point in time when we foster the trust environment required for interpersonal connection and communication! We both feel heard, understood, trusted, and respected.
This new-found skill requires the fortitude to stop, listen, observe, think, and then act instead of succumbing to our fears and just reacting. Sounds simple? It’s not. It takes practice. It’s all about choices. We choose to judge another person, at the most basic brain function. It’s difficult to refrain from judging and to instead discern who a person is or what the situation involves. How do we cultivate an opportunity to give them the benefit of the doubt? It requires engaging in perspective taking by gathering information as a watcher and listener. Observe and ask questions. Focus on the individual and their situation. Genuinely engage and understand the other person, but only after gathering information in this way.
These new skills open us to a whole new world. The fulfillment we feel when two people access each other is unmatched. It’s like getting hearing aids after years of saying “I can’t hear you.”
Source
Coplan, Scott. The Integrator, A Change Management Framework for Achieving Agile IT Project Success. New York, NY: Productivity Press, 2022.
