Seek to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Only some very close friends of mine knew that after a gap of several years, I decided to resume formal education and this time wanted to make it learn instead of reading and that too for what I thought I wanted not what I needed.

I don’t want to particularize the choice of the curriculum and why did I choose to pursue what I am studying, but wanted to share the experience that shook me, firstly because it’s been quite some time since I went back to an examination hall, secondly; I had limited interaction with the students and teachers at this level since I last left my college and mainly because I have been working with mostly the people from other nations and backgrounds, even my Pakistani coworkers were so adapted to the multinational culture of openness that I pretty much loss the sense of how things work at in the Government and the Government institutions in Pakistan.

I am not suggesting by any means that our system is inefficient or incapable to handle the young seekers of knowledge but there are certainly some very large gaps that we need to work very hard to fill to enable our new pass outs to stand out in the global perspective.

There are numerous fundamental details to this topic that needs a lot to be addressed and I am going to leave that for another day, but for now, I wanted to ponder light over the lack of effective communication in our day-to-day life.

People around us whom we regard as teachers and mentors both in personal and professional lives prescribe a solution before diagnosing the problem. They don't seek to deeply understand the problem first. Mostly we get prescribed a solution before the diagnosis of the problem.

This is as much a social issue as any other evil. We don't seek to deeply understand the problem first. Before we can offer advice, suggest solutions, or effectively interact with another person in any way, we must seek to deeply understand them and their perspective through empathic listening. To listen empathically requires a fundamental paradigm shift. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. At any given moment, they're either speaking or preparing to speak.

I feel lucky and honored to have studied and worked in places where a lot of emphases is given to effective communication and emotional intelligence which I consider a key to personal development, personality growth, and a persistent career blossoming in both the shorter as well as longer runs.

Well, today’s posts do not contain any mentions but I would request your feedback on how we can add try to understand more and communicate effectively than to only be heard and never understood; which eventually fails the purpose of communication.