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.
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.
If you’re like most people in the United States, you’ve taken at least one personality assessment at some point in your life.
DiSC. Myers-Briggs. StrengthsFinder. Enneagram. There are too many to name, but I’ll bet you’ve taken at least one.
On the DiSC profile, I’m a CSI, with an extremely high C. That means I tend to be:
Analytical
Slow to make decisions
Precise & detail-oriented
A rigid rule-follower
And I can attest that all of those things are 100% true about me.
But because I’m so rigid, I tend to take everything that I learn as a rule that can’t be broken.
For example, when I get “career results” back about what I’m ideally suited for, I instantly assume those are the only jobs I can do. It’s how my personality works.
So when the field of marketing was nowhere to be seen in my “ideal” careers, I immediately wrote it off as something not worth looking into.
Even though I was fascinated by marketing…
Even though I wanted to learn how to do it ethically, with a service-oriented style…
Even though I could use it to help make the world a better place. To help other people start and grow successful businesses…
But I couldn’t! Because a personality test told me so.
Doesn’t that sound ridiculous?
Personality tests are great for:
Developing self-awareness
Understanding your natural tendencies
Learning about your strengths and weaknesses
Discovering how best to relate to other people
But they do not define who you are or what you can do.
If anything, they help you learn howyou would do certain things.
So now, years later, I’m involved in marketing—doing it and teaching it to others on a regular basis. And I do it in an analytical, detail-oriented, service-to-others way.
Remember that personality tests are tools, nothing more. One of my mentors, Ashley Logsdon, put it this way:
“Never make the profile bigger than the person.”
They aren’t supposed to define what you do, but HOW you do them.
This is just one of the many conversations going on in the 48 Days Eagles Entrepreneur group during our Monday Mentor Calls.
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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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You are having an argument with your spouse, and she doesn’t understand your point of view, no matter how much you push it.
Your children won’t do anything that you ask them to do. They won’t engage or communicate with you; they shut down every time you try to talk to them.
You are writing blogs and posts, but no one is reading or responding to them.
You’ve created a product that will change lives, but no one is buying it.
Naturally, you ask the question:
“Why is no one listening to me?”
You feel you are doing everything right. You have the right ideas or the right argument; you know more than your children; this product is truly amazing and has revolutionized the way you see and do things. And yet, no one is listening. No one is engaging. No one is buying.
Why?
Because you aren’t listening to them.
The only way to get others to listen to you, to engage with you, to buy from you, is to listen to them and understand their points of view, their wants, and their needs.
If you bludgeon people over the head with your arguments and ideas, they won’t accept them; they don’t have the same ideas, the same noise inside their heads. They are telling themselves different stories. The key to being listened to, to making an impact, is to understand those other stories.
You don’t have to agree with them, but you do have to listen to and understand them. When people feel understand, when they feel heard, when they know that you see them and their side of things, they feel more open to hearing what you have to say.
No one is listening to you because you aren’t listening to them.
Your spouse won’t listen to your side of the argument because all you are thinking of is your side of the argument.
Your children won’t listen to your advice and guidance – even though you probably do know more and understand more than they do – because they don’t feel like you understand them, how they feel, or the narrative in their heads.
No one is buying your stuff because as awesome as it is, they don’t get how it will benefit them or how it will make them feel once they use it. Why? Because you didn’t take the time to understand what they want or how they want to feel.
To influence someone, you must open yourself to the possibility of being influenced by the other person. This means creating a feeling of understanding in the other person. This is not meant to be manipulative: you must genuinely want to understand the other person. Also, people can tell if you are simply trying to manipulate them rather than understand them.
Listen to what your spouse wants; listen to how your children feel; listen to the needs and frustrations of your customers.
Understanding must always come first; otherwise you’ll fail.
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To change a situation, you must first change yourself.
Notice that it says “situation,” not “person.” You cannot change people.
You can influence people if they let you, but then they are changing themselves.
Influence comes from trust and understanding: to be influenced, they must trust you. To trust you, they must feel understood.
Only when there is understanding can there be trust, and only when there is trust can there be influence.
So you must first change yourself: you must become a person who seeks to understand another, a person who chooses to see the world from the other’s point of view. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant; it is the understanding that matters.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
–Aristotle
If you want to create change, change the one thing over which you already have influence: yourself.
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