Seek first to understand, then be understood

Happy 2016 everyone!

As we take this magical festive holidays to spend precious moments with our family and friends, I took the opportunity to read Stephen Covey's book titled "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", where Habit #5 - "Seek first to understand, then be understood" captured my attention where Covey teaches us to focus on empathetic listening to ensure feelings of others are being considered during a conversation. This encourages each individual to reciprocate their listening and adopt an open-minded approach reading via body language visual signals and subconsciously, creates an atmosphere of caring and positive problem solving. Interestingly, this fascinating discovery brought out my curiosity and subsequently lead me to explore and discover the Famous tree swing picture story below.

This analogy illustrates how well intended actions from each isolated stakeholder in any large organization, unfortunately creates unintended consequences mainly because they fail to listen carefully to customers and  misinterpret their customer's needs independently due to the lack of inter-departmental communication and cohesive collaboration across the business functions.

For those who have read or watched the famous William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar,  you would be able to relate to this famous opening speech by Mark Anthony telling his audience to

  "Lend Me Your Ears!"

I am sure this is probably the last thing we would want to hear from our clients when they are both willing and wanting to share their needs and concerns with you as their trusted advisor.

Fortunately from a professional perspective, I can truly relate closely to Habit #5, as my organization embraces the 4 Step Advisory pillar process holistically and wholeheartedly, where "Understand" phase is the first and foremost key pillar in perfecting our  Client Promise.

In summary, once you understand the true scope of how your client honest concerns are expressed that matters most to them, you  must determine where you can truly value add based on the boundaries within your control and these overlapping area should then form your action plan timeline and main focus. Remember - The concept of "Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast" are fundamental baby steps to gain critical persistence as everything that is important must be easily measurable.

Wishing you all a great start to year 2016 with one of Stephen Covey's famous quotes "Live, Love, Laugh, Leave a Legacy!" and a short video clip of Habit #5. Enjoy!