You may also find these guidelines helpful:
The higher the trust level, the more you can easily move in and out of empathic and autobiographical responses—particularly between reflecting and probing. Negative and positive energy is often, though not always, a key indicator of the level of trust.
If the trust is very high, you can be extremely candid and efficient with each other. But if you are attempting to rebuild trust or if it is somewhat shaky and the person won’t risk vulnerability, then you need to stay longer and with more patience in the empathic mode.
If you’re not sure that you understand or if you’re not sure the other feels understood, then say that and try again.
Just as you come from the depth of the iceberg under the water, learn to listen to the depth of the iceberg inside the other person. In other words, focus primarily on the underlying meaning, which is usually found more in feeling and emotion than in content or the words the person is using. Listen with the eyes and with the “third ear”—the heart.
The quality in a relationship is perhaps the factor that most determines what is appropriate. Remember that relationships in the family require constant attention because the expectation of being emotionally nurtured and supported is constant. This is where people get into trouble—when they take others, particularly their loved ones, for granted and treat a stranger at the door better than the dearest people in their lives. There must be constant effort in the family to apologize, to ask for forgiveness, to express love, appreciation, and the valuing of others.
Read the context, the environment, the culture so that the technique you use is not interpreted differently from what you intended. Sometimes you have to be very explicit by saying, “I’m going to try to understand what you mean. I am not going to evaluate, agree, or disagree at all. I am not going to try to ‘figure you out.’ I want to understand only what you want me to understand.” And that understanding often comes only when you also understand the “bigger picture.”
When you are truly empathizing, you are also understanding what’s going on in the relationship and in the nature of the communication taking place between you—not just in the words the other person is attempting to communicate. You are empathic about the whole context as well as the meaning that is being communicated. And then you act based on that larger empathic understanding.
For instance, if the entire history of the relationship is one of judging and evaluation, the very effort to empathize will probably be seen in that context. To change the relationship will probably require apologizing and deep interior work to make sure one’s attitude and behavior are congruent with that apology, and then being open and sensitive to opportunities to show understanding.
I remember one time when Sandra and I had been on our son’s case for several weeks regarding his schoolwork. One evening we asked him if he wanted to go to dinner with us as a kind of special date. He said he wanted to go and asked who else was going. We said, “No one else. This is just a special time with you.”
He then said that he didn’t want to go. We talked him into it, but there was very little openness in spite of our best efforts to show understanding. Near the end of the dinner we began talking about another issue that was indirectly related to schoolwork, and the emotional energy was such that it drove us into the sensitive subject and caused bad feelings and further defensiveness on everyone’s part. Later, when we apologized, this son told us, “This is why I didn’t want to go to dinner.” He knew it would be another judgment experience. It took us some time to make enough deposits so that he trusted the relationship and became open again.
One of the greatest things we’ve learned in this area is that mealtimes should always be happy, pleasant occasions for eating, sharing pleasant talk, and learning—sometimes even serious discussions about various intellectual or spiritual topics—but never a place for disciplining, correcting, or judging. When people are extremely busy, they may be with their family only at mealtimes, and they therefore try to take care of all important family matters then. But there are other, better times to handle these things. When mealtimes are pleasant and devoid of judgment or instruction, people look forward to them and to being together. It is well worth the careful planning and considerable discipline it takes to preserve the happiness and pleasantness of mealtimes and to make dinner a time when family members enjoy one another and feel relaxed and emotionally safe.
When relationships are good—and both parties are genuinely understanding—people can often rapidly communicate with unusual candor. Sometimes just a few nods or an “uh-huh” is sufficient. In these situations people can cover great territory rapidly with each other. An outsider, watching this without understanding the quality of the relationship and the larger context, might observe that there was no reflective listening or understanding or empathy taking place at all, when in fact it was deeply empathic and very efficient.
Sandra and I were able to achieve this level of communication in our own marriage on that sabbatical in Hawaii. Through the years, we have fallen back into old ways from time to time. But we find that by working at it, we are able to regain it fairly rapidly. So much depends on the amount of emotion being generated, the nature of the subject, the time of the day, the level of our personal fatigue, and the nature of our mental focus.
Many people struggle with this iceberg approach to empathy because it’s not as easy as skill development. It requires a great deal more internal work, and it takes more of an inside-out approach. With skill development you can get better just by practicing.
The Second Half of the Habit
“Seek first to understand” does not mean seek only to understand. It doesn’t mean that you bag your role to teach and influence others. It simply means that you listen and understand first. And as you can see in the examples given, this is actually the key to influencing others. When you are open to their influence, you’ll find you almost always have greater influence with them.
Now we come to the second half of the habit —“seek to be understood.” This has to do with sharing the way you see the world, with giving feedback, with teaching your children, with having the courage to confront with love. And when you attempt to do any of these things, you can readily see another very practical reason for seeking first to understand: When you really understand someone, it’s much easier to share, to teach, to confront with love. You know how to speak to others in the language they understand.
One woman shared this experience:
For a long time in our marriage, my husband and I did not see eye to eye on spending. He would want to buy things I felt were unnecessary and expensive. I couldn’t seem to explain to him the pain I felt as the debt kept mounting and we had to spend more and more of our income on interest and credit card bills.
Finally, I decided I needed to find a different way of expressing my point of view and to influence the situation. I tried to listen more, to understand how he was thinking. I came to realize that he was more of a “big picture” thinker, but sometimes he just didn’t see the connection between his spending decisions and the consequences they brought.
So when he would say, “You know, it would really be nice to have [something],” instead of arguing with him, I began to say, “You know, it really would. Let’s see what would happen if we bought that. Let’s look at the big picture.” And I would take out the budget and say, “Now, if we spend this here, we won’t have money to do that.” I found that when he saw the consequences of spending decisions, he often came to the conclusion himself that we were better off not buying the item in question.
In doing this I also discovered that with some of the purchases he wanted to make, the benefits actually outweighed the drawbacks. He wanted to buy a computer, for example. I was not in favor of this at first, but when I calculated the difference it would make in our earning capacity, I could see that my response came out of the baggage of the past instead of the logic of the present.
I also found that having a financial mission statement helped keep us both on track. When we had a shared purpose in front of us, it became much easier for us to work together to accomplish it.