Communication Skills

There Are Only Perspectives, No Truth. And Five Different Perspectives You Can Apply In Each Situation

Tom : “I am sorry I am a bit late to this meeting. My previous meeting ran over.”
Sara : “I am more worried about the missed deadline on the product your team is developing. Your team is slow.”
Tom : “It’s not my fault. Two members on my team reported sick last week and I can’t help it.”
Sara : “I don’t really care what happened. But I know I can’t count on your team. This makes me look bad.”
Tom : “You are not being fair, Sara. “
Sara (to herself) : “Tom’s lack of experience shows. He doesn’t hold his team accountable, and always has excuses for delays.”

How many times have we spoken or seen others speak such sentences? As we solve complex business problems, very often we “know” the truth (you are slow, this is not how things work here, etc) and base our actions on it. In this article, I want to stress that there are no truths in the workplace (and life). There are only perspectives, and there can be many different perspectives depending on how you look at the situation. Once we realize that our apparent “truth” is only a perspective, it allows us to view the same situation differently to help us make better decisions.

How We Form Our Truth?

The first thing we must do is to take a pause and ponder about how we form our truth in the first place. We (human beings) gather inputs from our five senses – smell, touch, sight, sound, and taste. Anything which is external reaches us via one of the senses. We touch something which is hot, and we “know” it is dangerous and not safe. We hear something from multiple people or from a reliable source, and are inclined to believe it as truth”.

The quality, source, and frequency of sensory information we gather have a big role in how we interpret it. For example – If you read an article with a lot of grammatical and spelling mistakes (quality), you are less likely to trust the content. Similarly, if you hear about the same thing from multiple people (frequency), you will be more inclined to trust it.

Once we collect the sensory information from the outside world, our brain makes sense of it. It decides which signals to pay more attention to and which to ignore. Our brains also apply the collective influence of our memories, beliefs, thoughts, and values to every new information, and derive meaning from it. I already wrote about Listening Filters and how they create the “truth“. For example – Growing up in a very hierarchical corporate culture (and society) in India, it still takes effort on my part to see and interact with people above me on the corporate ladder as peers in Amsterdam.

What If When You Die, They Ask “How Was Heaven?”

The Five Different Perspectives

The important thing to realize here is that the “truth” we form by the above process is only “our” truth and not the absolute truth. Realizing that different people can see and create their own truth in the same situation is the key to working together more productively. Seeing our own truth as a ‘perspective‘ instead of the truth leads to humility and a willingness to consider other perspectives.

Unless we step down from the high pedestal of truth we often end up placing ourselves on, we can’t see all the other perspectives out there. I believe there are (at least) five different perspectives that can offer tremendous insights to us. However, it is not always easy, nor are we often willing, to view a situation from these perspectives. They might lead to some uncomfortable moments, but the process can often result in new insights and learnings. These not only can lead to better results but also help us become more human in the process.

As I write down the different perspectives below, I will also specify a few questions we can ask to uncover each perspective :-

First Person (My) Perspective

The first person perspective is how I see and perceive things. The biggest clue about the first-person perspective is the usage of pronouns like We, Us, Our, I, Me, Mine in our thoughts, and language. This is the most natural perspective for all living creatures, and we listen and think in a first-person perspective by default. The first person perspective leaves you with ownership, authenticity, and often attachment to your point of view.

Questions to Uncover First Person Perspective

1. What conclusion am I arriving at?
2. Is it the truth or just my opinion?
3. What reasons/proof do I have in my opinion?
For Example – Sara’s (in the above conversation) first-person perspective could be – “Tom is a difficult person to deal with because of his immaturity. I can’t trust him or his team as he is not accountable.”

Second Person (Your) Perspective

The second person perspective is seeing things from another person’s point of view. Listening to someone and making efforts to understand her perspective shows respect. The second person perspective calls for seeing and feeling the world as another person does. It doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with it. The second person perspective has a lot to do with listening and it can have a massive impact. The second-person perspective leaves you with empathy and humility.

Questions to Uncover Second Person Perspective

1. How would this situation look and feel to him/her?
2. How would he/she interpret the situation? Can I step in his/her shoes?
3. Can I feel how he/she might be feeling (anger/joy/frustration) right now?
For Example – Sara’s second-person perspective could be – “Tom is new to this job and he must be finding it difficult to make demands from his people. He must be really stressed out and might need some help to manage his priorities better. I might only be making matters worse for him. Instead, can I help him somehow?”

“Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” – American Proverb

Third Person (His/Her) Perspective

Another perspective could of a related third party. If you are talking to your colleague, a third party perspective could be of your manager or another colleague. For example – In a workplace, a third-person perspective could be of a colleague whose work will/might be impacted by what you are talking about. Seeing through the third-person perspective leaves you with a big picture view, more options, and opens up blind spots.

Questions to Uncover Third Person Perspective

1. How would my boss think about this situation?
2. How would the sales head think about this conversation?
3. If I were him/her, how would I have described the situation?
For Example – Sara’s third-person perspective, from the point of view of another colleague, would be – “Tom is trying hard to keep everyone happy, and failing at it. And Sara is not making it any easier for him by making demands without understanding his situation. How will they make this project succeed? If they fail, it will hurt our team and we will miss our targets.”

Stranger (Witness) Perspective

The fourth perspective calls for viewing the situation from the point of view of a witness. A witness is someone who neither has any stake in what you are discussing nor does he knows either of you. The witness perspective is purely objective, and the witness observes the proceedings just like a camera would. Taking this perspective leaves you with detachment and objectivity. You see things as they are, without any judgment and attachment to either side or to a specific outcome.

Questions to Uncover Stranger Perspective

1. How would a stranger see and report my situation?
2. If this were a movie, how would I describe it?
For Example – Sara’s stranger perspective could be – “Tom is acting like a typical newbie, and is going to make the same mistakes everyone makes. People around him are too busy in their own lives to help or assist him grow through this phase in his career. Sara or Tom’s manager can step in to help, but do they even realize the need for it.”

God / Compassion Perspective

The fifth perspective calls for looking at the situation from a place of love, kindness, and compassion. With this perspective, we look at how we can make things better for every party involved, and worse for no-one. We attempt to listen to our inner voice (consciousness) from this perspective. How does it feel? Is there something which I know but am unwilling to acknowledge?

Questions to Uncover God Perspective

1. Would I want this conversation to be aired on TV, or reported in tomorrows’ newspapers?
2. Do I hear an inner voice saying “this doesn’t feel right” or anything else?
3. How would Jesus / Allah / Buddha / Krishna do in my situation?
Disclaimer – This perspective has nothing to do with religion or our religious views, but is rather an invitation to stand in a place where we want to see everyone happy. It is about feeling instead of thinking and using our heart for mutual well-being instead of our brain for personal gains and business results.
For Example – Sara’s fifth perspective could be “Tom must be going through a hard time, and might even be carrying his stress into his personal life. And I am not making it any easier for him. Can I help him manage his priorities better? Can he seek some training or help? The same holds true for me too. Going after business goals is fine, but it doesn’t have to be at the cost of stress and unhappiness.”

“There are no facts, only interpretations.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

To conclude, asking the above questions and viewing our situation from multiple perspectives can be tremendously liberating. It can provide us with options that weren’t visible to us before. Getting lost in what we believe to be the truth (first-person perspective) can bring us stressful days, broken relationships, and health problems.

All of this can often be avoided by taking a look at the above five perspectives. It can often ease up any emotional build up (stress, anger, over-excitement) and prevent us from doing something in haste and from our limited viewpoint. It might not solve every business problem we get stuck in, but we can surely finish with better results and make more informed choices after considering these five different perspectives.

Jun 23, 2017
How our Listening Filters Create our Reality and Limit Us

One of my most vivid memories from my childhood is when my grandmother mistook me for my father. I first thought she had gone crazy, but I was relieved when it was diagnosed as cataract in her eyes. Within a few days and after a small surgery, I was back to being her grandson. That was an easy fix — I thought at that time.

I had no idea that many years later, I was to discover a kind of cataract — in my vision and listening. The cataract which I am talking about are our listening filters. As I shared briefly in my article about Listening, these filters helps each one of us create our own perceived reality which helps us in making every decision — big or small — of our lives. However, unless we know the various listening filters at play, we don’t see our reality as a perception but as the absolute truth.

Whenever we see or hear something, we select what to pay attention to and what to ignore, often subconsciously, based on a certain set of filters. A simple example could be someone speaking our name. Even if we are in a crowded room, we will instantaneously pay attention if someone utters our name, even if they are behind or far away from us. Our filters make us give more attention to our name than any other word.

Similarly, other listening filters make us pay more attention to certain things and ignore others. They can make one of us cry and another laugh on hearing the same story. They allow us to make sense of the situation in front of us, which creates the foundation on which we base our decisions.

What are these Listening Filters?

1. Parents

Our parents are our first contact with humanity. As we grow up, our parents influence us the most. As we try to understand the world around us, our parents tell us stories to make it easier for us to navigate it. Everything that we consider as our most basic self – our religion, language, values, our political affiliations — are shaped by our parents more than anyone else

Subconsciously we learn to listen to the outside world through them. Depending on what our parents think, and how they act, we learn to make our own choices and judge other’s choices. We either end up see the world as they do or rebelling against them and view the world contrary to how they see it.

2. Values and Beliefs

We filter everything we see and listen through our values (how we define right & wrong), and political, religious and other strong beliefs. For example – If a person has suffered racial discrimination in the past, he is likely to filter all future interactions with suspicion and caution.

If we hear what is in tune with our values and beliefs, we feel relaxed, joyful, and get an ego boost which can easily be seen in our body language. When we hear or see something contrary to our beliefs, we are surprised and might even feel pain and shock. We feel our muscles tightening, which can develop into stress, frustration, and anger. Again, this is visible in our body language.

3. Culture – Language, Society, Religion

We behave in the world according to the religion we follow (or not), the languages we speak and are spoken around us, and the norms of the society we live in. Whether we are direct or vague in our communication, whether we are disciplined in our daily dealings or not, whether it is polite to accept a gift or not, and other subtle things in our daily life — are shaped by the culture of the land we live in.

4. Intentions, Expectations and Mood

We enter every conversation with an expectation of the outcome. For example – my expectations are very different when I talk to my colleague at work compared to when I run into him over the weekend. Similarly, my expectations differ when my wife calls me up at our usual time, and when she calls up unexpectedly during the middle of the day. What we listen to in these different circumstances is shaped by what we expect to happen.

Our listening is also shaped (or filtered) by our mood. At the end of a long day when we are tired, if we don’t get our expected response in a meeting, we might easily get frustrated and angry. But if we get the same response at the beginning of a day when we are fresh and energetic, we might respond in a totally different manner. The difference in both these cases is our mood impacting our listening.

5. Personal Prejudices

We all have certain personal prejudices, which can be racial, economical, or something even more subtle – like the way one dresses. We listen and treat people differently based on these prejudices, most often on a subconscious level. An example is considering one colleague more ambitious than another based on how they are dressed. Another example is how we listen when we are approached by a homeless person on a street. Do we trust them when they approach us for money or think about whether they are just going to use the money to get drunk?

We all have such personal prejudices formed over the years which live in our subconscious and give us a filtered view of the world around us. We are likely to ignore anything that opposes these prejudices, and very likely to agree and bond with anyone who shares the same prejudice as us. For instance, if we have a personal dislike for a person, we are likely to be dismissive about his ideas. On the contrary, when we interact with people we admire, we might behave over-optimistically in situations which warrant more caution.

Does everyone have the same filters?

Absolutely not. Just like our fingerprints, each one of us has unique listening filters. Based on our past, we all filter how we experience the present and make meaning of what we see and hear. Furthermore, our listening filters are changing (or evolving) daily based on new people we meet, successes and failures we have, and prejudices we form.

Our listening filters give each one of us a unique view of the world around us. These filters are almost like glasses through which we view the world. We put on our black glasses, and then complain the world around us is black. Not only that, we argue and fight with others wearing red glasses that the world is black and not red. Sounds silly, isn’t it! Yet we all do it.

What can we do about them?

Every decision we make, whether it is trivial or a life-changing one, depends on how we assess the situation. Our listening filters help us create this assessment, which in turn limits the options in front of us. If two people act differently in the same situation, the difference is in their assessment of it. Reality is the shaky foundation on which we all rest our decisions.

As you read this article and understand it through your own filters, don’t be led to believe that there is something wrong with having them. Instead, they are very useful in giving us a set of options in each situation that help us navigate through life. However, we are normally blind to the fact that these filters give us our perspective of life in each moment. If more aware, we are likely to understand how others see things differently.

Knowing that others may see the same situation differently can help us stay humble in challenging times. Being aware that our listening filters limit our available options can give us a big picture view and bring a smile on our face in stressful situations. In doing so, we don’t have to throw away our colored glasses through which we view the world, we just have to be aware of them. And perhaps, try different ones for a while.

Making an attempt to sincerely view a situation from the other person’s point of view is what Real Listening is all about. If we can do so, we will make our conversations a bit more constructive, our days a bit more fun, and our relationships a bit more meaningful.

Feb 6, 2017
How to Listen Well and the Massive Difference It Can Make

Listening is one of the most basic skills required in human communication. Then isn’t it strange that there is no formal training on how to listen in our school and professional system? The lack of emphasis on listening could be because we believe that listening comes naturally to us as human beings. But from what I have learned in life, listening is not a natural skill and it takes conscious effort to listen well. Below are my biggest learnings on how to listen well:-

1. Why Do We Listen?

The first and the most obvious, question to ask when we are listening is “Why?” Are we listening because then we get our chance to speak up? Are we listening because we have an agenda in the conversation and are thinking about how can we achieve that? Or are we listening because we just want to be polite, and otherwise we couldn’t care less about what the other person is saying?

More often than not, we listen because of one of the above reasons. And it is not because we are selfish or deliberately trying to be rude, but because this is our normal way of operating in most conversations in life. Speaking up and making others agree to what we have to say gives immense pleasure to all of us, and in most conversations, we unconsciously try to achieve that.

I claim that the only objective of listening, whether it is your spouse, friend or a business colleague at the other end, is to get what the other person is communicating. Not what the other person is ‘saying’ but what he is ‘communicating’. And this requires conscious effort and continuous training in the act of listening because it is very natural to fall back into the default mode of listening.

2. What Do You Listen For?

Listening effectively is much more than hearing the sound and words coming out of the other person’s mouth. True listening happens when you ‘get’ the other person’s world – i.e. when you empathically see and feel about the situation just as the other person does. It is about getting the emotions – of joy, anger, frustration, resentment, etc – which are often hidden beneath the words actually being said.

Can you feel the other person’s pain, fear, excitement, or happiness? True listening is about standing in the other person’s shoes and seeing the world from his point of view, and it takes a lot of effort to do this well. It is as much about hearing what is not being said as it is about what is being said. True listening requires patience to wait it out and the courage to go beyond our personal prejudices and see something from the other’s point of view.

3. How Do You Listen?

So the next question is – how do you do that? Based on my experience, here are some guidelines which can help anyone to listen well:-

Shut Up. Don’t interrupt the other person. Ever. Remember, you are supposed to be listening.

Be attentive, alert, and interested. Remove any distractions like mobile phones from the scene. Let the other person know that he has your full attention through nonverbal behavior.

Use filler words like “uhh”, “hmm” and body language to acknowledge what he is saying. Invite and encourage the other person to say more by saying “tell me more about it”, or “I am listening”.

Be ok with silence. This often gives the other person time to gather his thoughts and speak up again.

Listen for the emotions behind what is being said and sincerely attempt to step in the other person’s shoes and feel the same emotions yourself.

Hold any judgment or advice if it comes up in your head. Do not try to comfort the speaker by saying words like “It is not that bad” or “Give it some time”. Don’t get angry or respond in any way. Just listen. And feel.

“We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.”
― Susan Cain

4. Who Decides if You “Got it” or Not?

The above guidelines are not a guaranteed way to listen to someone and don’t assume you have listened well because you think so. The speaker is the only person who gets to decide whether you “got” it or not. After the speaker has finished saying whatever he had to say, sum up whatever was said and how he feels. You don’t have to agree or disagree with the speaker at this point, you only need to paraphrase what you have understood and ask the speaker for validation.

When the speaker says that you “got” it, make sure he is not just saying that to be nice or to avoid an uncomfortable environment. Only then can you be sure that you have listened to what was communicated. If the speaker says that you didn’t get it, ask him to explain more and repeat the process.

5. Listening Creates our Perceived Reality

When we listen to someone, we create our own perceived reality. This perception is unique to each person, and if 10 people were to listen to the same thing, you would agree that it is possible that they can create their own interpretations and perceive reality in 10 different ways. How we listen is determined by a certain set of filters like our culture, habits, values, beliefs, intentions, and expectations. Most often we unconsciously pay attention to certain things and omit certain others from our listening based on these filters. It is these filters, and the reality they create for us that help us make each and every decision in life.

Realize that each one of us has our own set of listening filters which creates our own reality which is neither any truer or falser than anyone else’s. This is a big first step to work with people who see the world differently from us. True listening often requires the patience and courage to see and acknowledge how the speaker has perceived his reality. It requires the compassion to understand another’s reality, especially when it is different from our own.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” — Stephen R. Covey

6. Listening Creates Connections

When done well, listening creates deep understanding which leads to trust and respect among both parties, even if you were to disagree with the subject at hand. It enables the speaker to release his emotions and feel at ease, often even helping him to crystallize his own thoughts in the process. It reduces stress and helps to ease the situation which creates a foundation – a safe environment in which there are opportunities for collaboration and problem-solving. True listening leaves both parties with a stronger bond than when they started.

Another way to look at listening is like an investment. If you spend 30 minutes truly listening to someone, it can create a connection that will make your relationship stronger. A strong bond with someone can help you avoid stressful situations and make decisions quickly in the future. Since this kind of listening is so rare in our ever distracted world of gadgets and notifications, it is all the more significant when it happens. To know that someone listened and understood what you said is a remarkable gift, and you should not miss a chance to gift it to others.

What I have described above is not easy, and it is very tempting to hit back with your own accusations when someone is angry or frustrated with us. But it (listening) is a skill which can be mastered over time. Most of our time spent in communication involves listening, and hence I can’t stress enough on its importance. I also believe that the ability to see a situation from another’s point of view and to shift perspective is one of our most important abilities as human beings and one which can help us solve many of the problems we face today.

Jan 11, 2017