“In order to empathize with someone’s experience, you must be willing to believe them as they see it, and not how you imagine their experience to be”. Brene Brown
Diving a little deeper into my theme “Be impeccable with my speech”, there is the need to talk about having a conversation. If each person is a point of view, then if I want know them well, I have to ask them how they see things. What is their perception? And it doesn’t work to try to imagine what’s going on in their head. You have to ask them. Remember Don Miguel Ruiz’s Third Agreement is “Don’t Make Assumptions”, where the objective is to become aware that most assumptions are nothing more than stories, I tell myself when I don’t know the truth. If I want to have a conversation with a person then getting to know someone else is usually more about talking and then listening. Brene Brown, author, tells me “In order to empathize with someone’s experience, you must be willing to believe them as they see it, and not how you imagine their experience to be”.
David Brooks, an opinion writer for the New York Time in his book “How to Know A Person, does an excellent job of describing the process. Here is my take after I individualized his advice. A lot of people think a good conversationalist is someone who can offer piercing insights on a range of topics. That’s a lecture, but not a conversation between equals. A good conversation is fostering a two-way exchange. A good conversation is capable of leading people on a mutual expedition toward understanding. I want to be engaged in a mutual exploration. “Being curious about your friend’s experience is more important than being right.”
In this act of joint exploration, I may float a half-formed idea. The person I am talking to, after listening to me, then seizes on the nub of the idea, plays with it, offers her own perspective based on her own experiences, and floats it back so I or the other people can respond. A good conversation sparks me to have thoughts I never had before. A good conversation starts in one place and ends up in another. If you call me up or invite me for coffee and then talk “at me” with not even a single molecule’s worth of interest in what I might be thinking, we will not be enjoying each other’s company again. Also, “don’t be a topper”. If I want to build a shared connection, I try sitting with their experience before I start rolling out my own “better story”.
If I am here in this conversation, I am going to stop doing anything else and just pay attention. I turn the mobile phone ringer down and turn it face down. You’re going to apply what some experts call the SLANT method: sit up, lean forward, when appropriate ask questions, nod your head, track the speaker. Listen with your eyes. That’s paying attention 100 percent. In a good conversation, each party feels the other understands their perception. Remember Maya Angelou’s saga advice: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
