7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens–Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
The fifth habit in 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens is Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
“Listen, or thy tongue will make thee deaf.”
Sometimes it’s our tendency to swoop in and try and solve other people’s problems before we even understand exactly what the problem is. Sometimes, we simply don’t listen. We don’t make an effort to see things from their perspective and we quickly try to solve their problems using our own life paradigms.
The fifth habit reminds us to listen first, talk second.
One of the deepest needs of the human heart is to be understood. Communicating correctly and seeking to understand others is crucial in getting those we love to trust us and open up. The problem is, most of us don’t know how to listen. We take classes in school on the other primary ways of communication–reading, writing, and speaking, but nothing on how to listen.
Covey says “When people talk we seldom listen because we’re usually too busy preparing a response, judging, or filtering their words through our own paradigms.” We often use poor listening styles by spacing out when we’re listening, pretending to listen while our mind wanders, selectively listening, only listening to the words they’re saying and not paying attention to how they’re saying it or their body language, and being self-centered when we listen.
If we want to truly understand others and actually listen to what they’re saying, we must listen with our eyes and heart as well as our ears. Listening with just our ears isn’t good enough, “because only 7 percent of communication is contained in the words we use. The rest comes from body language (53 percent) and how we say words, or the tone and feeling reflected in our voice (40 percent).” Only SEVEN percent of communication is through words. The rest is how people behave and the way they say things. There is so much more to listening than just hearing what someone is saying.
If we want others to trust us and truly communicate with us, we must show them we care by actually listening to what they’re saying. Seek first to understand.
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
