The fifth habit is the idea of seeking to understand others first before we can try to be understood. This chapter centers on the understanding of the other person. What they want, need and aspire to as well as what their motivations and mindset are. Covey sets out in Habit 5 to change the way we interact with people by changing the way that we listen to them. We need need to be non-judgmental and not make.
Covey goes on to describe 5 different types of listening styles. Generally, we only use one of the first four, however the 5th is the one that we should be using: Ignoring, Pretending, Selective Hearing, Attentive, and Empathetic. Ignoring would be the blocking out of other people’s input into a conversation and being completely oblivious to their opinion. This would probably be the worst type of listening in my opinion because it solves nothing whatsoever. Pretending is when you act like you care about another person’s opinion on the topic at hand but in reality you don’t care at all. Selective Hearing is when you only hear things that will help support what your argument of opinion is in a conversation and completely leave out the other person’s idea. Attentive listening is when you are actually paying attention to what the other person is saying and relate to a similar experience that you have had, if you’ve had one. The most important, and healthiest in my opinion, style of listening is Empathetic listening. Empathetic listening isn’t about agreeing with the other person, it’s about understanding them emotionally, behaviorally, physically (or body language) and intellectually. Empathic listening gives the other person an emotional boost. They start feeling better about themselves so feel better about you and begin to open up more. As well of 5 ways of listening, there are 4 ways of responding to what we’ve heard: Evaluate, Probing, Advising, and Interpreting. Evaluating is when you decide whether or not you agree with the other person’s opinion in the conversation. Probing is responding by asking questions about the other person’s views. Advising is when you give advice on the topic based on personal experiences that you have had. Lastly, Interpreting is when you interpret your conversational counterpart based on your interpretations about the topic at hand and respond accordingly.
To go into more detail there are also four stages to Empathetic listening, each building on the one before it. So essentially you start at step one and as they open up more move to the next step: Mimic, Rephrase, Reflect, and Rephrase and Reflect. When you mimic the other person when listening Empathetic listening, you simply repeat what they have said to you. Reflecting is when you rephrase what they have said to you to prove that you have been listening. Reflecting is you translate their feelings into words for them. And the last step of Rephrase and Reflect is when you combine the previous steps to really drive home the fact that you were actually listening.
As well as understanding, we too need to be understood, which is the second half of Habit 5. You need to be able to get your points across in a way that is mutually beneficial to everyone who is involved in the conversation. The main thing to take note of here is that whatever you do, don’t push them and try to force them into opening up to you. At the same time, you also don’t have to wait for people to come to you with problems, or notice that they’re having an issue, you can be proactive and act before something comes up.
In this chapter, I learned that all listening is not created equal. I’ve also learned that just because we think we may have a solution to someone’s problem we shouldn’t verbalize this until we really understand where they’re coming from and what they want. Also, I need to work on presenting my opinions in a way that will have a positive impact on the conversation instead of trying to speak over others.