Ever feel that people don’t listen? That they don’t want to hear what you have to say? Like they’re barely waiting for you to finish so they can start talking again?
Of course. It’s like we live in a world with kids like Mateo here making his case for cupcakes.
That’s hilarious. But exhausting to watch.
Now let’s turn the tables. We often see other people as Mateo, but is it possible that we’re all a bit like Mateo? If we’re honest, we’ll admit it: we don’t listen that much either. Most of our conversations are more about persuading than understanding.
Which is why we have the conversations we have in workplace debates, or in talks with our children and spouses, or in political debates on the streets and in social media and in newsrooms. On all sides of the discussion, most want their turn to talk, while few want their turn to listen. We’re all saying to each other, “Linda, honey, just listen.”
What are the roots of this tendency? How do we change it? I believe we can change in an instant, automatically, like flipping a power switch in the basement of the mind.
It starts by understanding the nature of perception itself, and looking at how we started perceiving the world from an early age. “Little kids have an egocentric perspective,” writes Dan Ariely in his latest book Payoff, “they believe that when they close their eyes and can’t see other people, other people can’t see them. As children grow older, they outgrow that kind of egocentric bias. But do we ever get rid of it completely? We don’t!”
Here are two perceptual myths that keep little Mateo living inside us:
- The Myth of the Full View. This myth says, “I see all there is to see.” We think we’re looking around and catching pretty much all there is. Since we see all, there’s no reason to listen. Listening is a waste of time when we already see everything fully and accurately. It’s just someone telling us what we already know. No one has time for that.
- The Myth of the One True View. “The way I see is the way everyone should see.” Since we believe we have a full view, we conclude that our view is the only view there can be. We think, Our view is right. Their view is wrong.
When we hold these perceptive myths, we get an attitude toward listening, and an attitude toward those who see things different than us. I don’t need to listen, we think. They need to listen. They’re the blind ones.
This creates a deep need to impose our view on others. When we believe our view is always complete and that our view is the only right view, people who see different are deeply wrong, and need to be helped to see right as soon as possible. We’re deeply motivated to persuade, and almost completely unmotivated to listen.
Before we get to a cure, let’s clarify. It is possible to have a true view and yet see different from someone else. For example, I have a view of Mount Rainier out my back yard, a look from a Northwest angle. I see a dark shadow of a mountain at sunrise and a pink glowing mountain at sunset. But if I lived in Yakima, which is east of Mount Rainier, I’d have a different view. The mountain would be pink at sunrise and dark shadow at sunset. So it’s possible for different people to have different yet accurate angles on reality. The problem crops up when people believe they see all the Mount Rainier there is to see, and that their view of Mount Rainier is the only true view of the mountain.
It’s also possible for people to see things the wrong way, and we often do. So we can see different because we’re seeing wrong. There’s a place for one side winning a debate. But that’s not all the time. Many times, people are arguing from different and equally valid perspectives, thinking that only one can be right.
When we buy into these two myths (the Full View myth and the One True View myth), we’re automatically ego-centric. We’re automatically arrogant, like in these examples:
- “I recall an autocratic company president,” writes my friend Robert Rosenthal, “who, when given details on a collaborative process that brought together the best thinking inside and outside his company, smirked and said he was the only one needing to be consulted.”
- My friend Jeremy Rubin told me yesterday about a company president who said to him, “I don’t let outsiders talk to my team. They can get everything they need from me as their leader.”
From Automatic Arrogance to Automatic Humility
When we identify the myths and fix them, we instantly and automatically change from “automatic arrogance” to “automatic humility.” I make a case for this new view of perception in my book, Automatic Influence, in the chapter titled, “Automatic Humility.” I encourage you to get the book and read it, because it makes a chapter-length case for just how selective and limited our perception is, and yet how we fail to see that. We’re blind to our blindness (which is why I show there how magicians and illusionists are so effective, by the way). When we realize that our view is extremely limited and selective, and keep that in mind, our attitudes and behaviors change automatically.
When we see ourselves as only partly seeing reality, what do we automatically want to do? Listen. I’m not seeing everything, and there’s important stuff out there. If I listen, I might discover that important stuff.
Then when we see how selective and partial our view of reality is, and that two people can have two different but equally valid views of the same reality (like two views of Mount Rainier), what does it automatically influence me to do? Listen to different points of view.
When I fix my perception, it instantly fixes my motivation. Where before I imagined listening to be a waste of time, now I’m eager to listen. There’s authentic and automatic motivation. And a lot more wisdom too.