Why your view of what's 'real' or 'truth' may be different.
People will tell us that perception equal reality. But how do you know what someone’s perception is? Find out here.
Many of us get frustrated when we say something, and the person we say it to doesn't understand what we said or, even worse, misunderstands what we said. The more we repeat what we say, the more we get annoyed and head towards a breakdown. It's simple, we think, why can't this 'bozo' understand what I am saying? Are they stupid or something?
One of the hardest lessons to learn in good communication is that when a message is not received, it's the fault of sending, not receiving. The fact that the person you were talking to did not understand you is your fault. While it was clear to you what you mean, assuming they were listening to you (and if they weren't, you should have checked before trying to send a message), what was received did not make sense because you had missed something in your communication. Or worse, you may have created all sorts of assumptions that were erroneous. You, it appears, perhaps are the 'bozo' in this story.
This gets us back to where we were in my last Substack called "Thinking does not cause action. Ever." and talking about how things occur to people. There was something about what you said that occurred differently to the person you were sending the message to. The end result was that they didn't understand or see what you said the same way you do. It can even explain, like the cartoon above, why you may be a different truth to the person you are talking to.
It is worth exploring why this is and what you can do about it.
How things occur to you
Different world events change the way that each generation sees the world. While, as Iman Ghosh points out in her article "Timeline: Key Events in U.S. History that Defined Generations," some events are so significant that multiple generations are affected, like 9/11, many do not overlap. These significant events often mold how we see the world. They change what seems important to us and help define what we believe. Baby Boomers (if you were born 1946-65) identified two assassinations on their list of notable events: John F. Kennedy's in 1963 and Martin Luther King's in 1968. Millennials (if you were born 1981-96), after 9/11, identified the Obama election and Iraq/Afghanistan wars as their number 2 or 3 most notable events. Neither JFK nor MLK cornerstone experiences for Baby Boomers even made the list for this latter group. It's not surprising that, for example, the Civil Rights Movement, might occur to each of these groups differently.
Beyond world events, other vital influences are our family, friends, school, or anything that affected our early lives. We learn from an early age what 'works' for us and what does not. We tend to repeat what makes us either successful or accepted as innovative survival strategies. If you think about the significant events of your childhood, you will start to see some of the reasons that things occur to you the way they do. It's not surprising that most stand-up comedians (but not all) were 'class clowns.'
Of course, two similar situations can have vastly different outcomes. A child who has a sibling with special needs may grow up and work as a caregiver or on the other end of the scale, may grow up to resent the focus their parents gave their sibling. We need to mix the experience with the context in which it happened to see how we see things and remember that it's unlikely that you and I would come out of the same experience viewing it the same way.
So, this prompts the next question; how do we work out how something occurs to someone else?
Two ears and one mouth
Epictetus, the Greek Philosopher, is quoted as saying, "we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." Not only is that good practice in a conversation or an interview, but it is also the only way you are going to learn about how something occurs to someone else.
Given that in a conversation, there is not much action, their words are the key. If you listen to understand and not to reply, you will hear what that they have to say. Of course, you may have to ask a few questions along the way to get at their core, so don't be afraid to use what Rudyard Kipling called Six Honest Serving Men.
In a p
oem, he wrote,
"I KEEP six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who."
Today we think of these as 'open' questions because they don't allow for Yes/No answers ('closed' questions). Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Industries Corporation, approached getting to the heart of any problem (what today, we might call a 'root cause') by asking 'Why?' five times. Even if you don't ask the question five times, if you ask 'Why?' at least three times, you will get close to what the person you are talking to thinks or how the world occurs to them.
The hardest part of this approach is not too quickly turning your listening into a conversation. Resist the temptation to explain how the world occurs to you. When you start down that path, you are listening to reply, and it will get in the way of how the world occurs to this person you listen to. Also, try to turn off the voice in the back of your head that is commentating on both what is being said and the person who is saying it. When you are listening to that voice you are not listening to the person.
How the world occurs to them will come out in the language they use (see Second Law of Performance). A simple example may be how they talk about a situation. Do they see it as ‘risky’, ‘challenging’ or ‘exciting’? These adjectives give you a good sense of how something occurs to someone. Remember to use Sakichi Toyoda’s trick of asking the “why?” What about the situation makes it ‘scary’ or ‘risky’? Remember, that for you, scary and risky maybe be synonyms, but to someone else, they may be completely different things. Always ask the next “why?”.
First Two Steps
The first two steps of this process are to accept that how things occur to people will change how they respond to them and that they occur in language. It takes practice and focus to not only learn these but to build them as a ‘muscle’ into your daily life. It’s not always easy but it makes a huge difference. As the philosopher, G. K. Chesterton noted, “there's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.”
The third step is asking how to change the ways something occurs to someone because that gives us access to changing the way they act or respond. That is a great question and one we will return to but first, we must learn to really listen.