There’s a line in Crucial Conversations worth memorizing:
“Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do what this person is doing?”
Most of our behaviors aren’t irrational. Some of them are unconscious, but people rarely do things for “bad” reasons.
Everyone sees themselves as the “good guy” in the story. This means they must be doing this action for a rational reason. It’s solving a problem for them. It’s in service to something they value.
And it might be completely and totally awful to a great many other people. But the first step in fixing something is to understand it.
You might not know why right away, but it’s worth sitting with the question. It might help you find the solution to irrationality.
Hillel the Elder was once asked to explain the Bible’s teachings as succinctly as possible.
He stood on one foot and made the following statement:
“Love thy neighbor as thyself—all the rest is commentary.”
This statement keeps going through my mind as I read the news each day. As I see what certain people are doing to others, on camera, in broad daylight.
I just want them to answer a question like: “How would you feel if you were the one being wrongfully arrested by New York police officers while on vacation?”
We are losing our humanity. We are losing our ability to empathize.
I have no positive words of encouragement today—only a reminder to love thy neighbor.
Each of us has an internal narrative constantly chattering about who we are.
But what we don’t always realize is that internal narrative influences how we behave.
If you tell yourself the story that, “Overeating makes me feel happy,” that story might be a stand-in for the real story—“I’m unhappy with different aspects of my life and overeating gives me a small dose of pleasure.”
Until you realize this, you’ll continue to overeat and live on greasy fast food multiple times each week.
(I know this because it’s a story I’m trying to rewrite myself).
If you tell yourself a story that says, “I’m not skilled at sales or business,” you might never realize your unresolved dream of starting your own venture and working for yourself.
The first step to overcoming many of our chronic issues is to start telling ourselves a different story.
Changing what you do starts by changing your identity—who you believe yourself to be.
Have you ever looked at someone and said to yourself, “That’s not the right way to do that…”
Maybe you were watching someone do an exercise at the gym. And you just couldn’t figure out why their pushup form was so different from yours.
Your first thought probably goes to their ignorance: “They just don’t know the right way to do it. I could show them how…”
The thing is… You have your own lens through which you look at the world. You have your own experiences, education, and biases that dictate the “right” and “wrong” way for you.
And they have theirs too.
Even when it comes to something as simple as a pushup. And even when there might be an objectively “right” way to do something.
But there might be a specific reason they’re doing their pushups in that way.
Maybe they have an injury that prevents them from using “proper” form.
Or maybe they read a new study that taught a different way of doing it—one that helps them meet a different need.
Or maybe it really is simply ignorance of what’s right.
But the fact remains, you don’t know why they’re doing it.
Perhaps a better thing to do, instead of jumping to conclusions about right and wrong, would be to change the statement to a question.
“I wonder why they’re doing it that way?”
At that point, you have the basis for empathy and understanding.
And those qualities give you a much more stable platform to engage in dialogue… Or even enact change.
Sometimes we have a choice between what is correct and what is right.
What’s “correct” is often bureaucratic or compliant with rules and regulations. Often those same rules and regulations fly in the face of common sense, decency, and the dignity we owe others.
When a customer’s computer catches fire with no fault on their part, obviously due to a manufacturer’s defect, we have a choice. We can do the correct thing: quote the manual and say there’s nothing we can do. Or worse yet, we can say:
“You should have bought the warranty.”
Or we can do the right thing: acknowledge the problem and take responsibility. We can help the person who put her faith in us and our product or service.
Correct or right—it’s a choice.
We must improve our ability to make the proper choice when the time comes.
I’m a native of Mississippi, but I traveled to California numerous times as a teenager. Having been born and raised in the Deep South, I’d grown up saying “Yes, sir!” or “No, ma’am!” my entire life.
(For those of you not of the Deep South, “ma’am” is a contraction of the word “madam.” You know how us Southern folk like to throw a little twang into our speech).
In our culture, it is considered polite to use these phrases, and the epitome of rudeness should you not.
Then I traveled to California…
You’re Being Rude
On numerous occasions, people laughed at me for saying it. A friend of mine asked, “Is that something you just say in the South?”
I replied, “Yes, we use ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ whenever we speak to our elders. Or those we consider to be in positions of authority.”
“Well,” she replied, “when you say it, it sounds like you’re being sarcastic…like you’re mocking my parents.”
I was completely floored. It never occurred to me that I might be coming off as rude. On the contrary, I thought I was speaking with the utmost respect by using “sir” and “ma’am”.
Why Did I Tell You That Story?
It’s quite simple: different people see things differently.
If you travel to Spain, you are likely to be kissed on both cheeks as a form of greeting (at least before COVID-19). In the United States, our “bubbles” are too big for something like that. We’d consider that a severe violation of our personal space.
In some countries, it’s considered incredibly rude to “clean your plate.” Why? Because the cook will think you didn’t get enough to eat.
It seems bizarre, right? That’s because you see things differently.
Consider these differences when interacting with different people. Especially when traveling to different places. Or when in close contact with people of different cultures.
We All Have a Different Noise In Our Heads
Different people see things differently. Because of this, they interpret things differently. What may seem like an empathic gesture to one person might come across as uncaring by another.
An advertisement might be funny and persuasive to one prospect and bawdy and offensive to another.
You might create a work of art that one person ridicules unmercifully and another describes as “a masterpiece.”
When serving or communicating with different people, think whether or not your gesture will be well-received by the other person.
If not, change gestures or tactics.
You could easily write it off. “That person is just being difficult and unreasonable.” Occasionally, that might be so.
But you can’t do anything about that. All you can control is what you do.
And what you can do is treat different people differently.
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The 5th habit Dr. Covey writes about in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is all about empathic listening: “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Empathic listening is putting aside our own narratives, judgements, assumptions, and listening from the other person’s point of reference. When we do this, we become students learning something new from another point of view.
For some reason this morning, I was thinking about my time in college studying my favorite subjects in history, subjects I had been studying since I was a small child. Sad to say, I remember listening to lectures and discussions with my professors from my own frame of reference: “I already learned all about that. Let me tell you what I already know about this subject to impress you.”
I was the guy who would ask “deep, insightful questions,” when in reality, I was simply asking questions that showed my knowledge of the subject.
How vain, immature, and dumb I was! Had I only been listening––not from my own frame of reference, from the mindset of what I already knew––and instead adopted that wide-eyed curiosity of a child, I could have learned and retained so much more than I did. I would have been able to see the same ideas and subjects in a new light or with new perspectives.
Instead, I listened to validate what I already thought I knew.
Empathic listening doesn’t just apply to difficult or emotional conversations with relationships in your life. It also must be employed in any learning environment to get as much out of it as possible.
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