Seek first to understand
WE all need a key that will help us get along better with people and also make more money. Surprisingly, there is one. Whether or not we identify as salespeople, the truth is that to function well in a family, community, school, place of worship, social club, company or business, we all need to influence, persuade and guide others to alter thoughts, actions and behaviour for their own good and for ours.
Parents, children, siblings, colleagues, friends and clients all need communication skills to function well in those roles. In Stephen Covey’s 30-year-old self-development book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he points out that much of life revolves around communication.
Right now you are reading my column, for which I am grateful, particularly in light of the thousands of other written messages that compete for your attention each day! So thank you for allowing me the privilege and honour of writing for you. As Covey points out:
“Reading and writing are both forms of communication. So are speaking and listening. In fact, those are the four basic types of communication .... The ability to do them well is absolutely critical to your effectiveness.”
Even within the narrow purview of financial planning, which is my wheelhouse or area of professional expertise, our abilities to read, write, speak and listen determine our long-term economic trajectory.
The better we are at each of those forms of communication, the more our employers or customers will pay us. Have you ever noticed how the multi-millionaires and, more so, the billionaires who appear as guests on programmes aired on business news channels like Bloomberg and CNBC are often adroit communicators and empathisers?
Toward that end, one of the seven habits Covey teaches in his most famous book is linked to transforming ourselves from mediocre communicators to exemplary ones. It is Covey’s Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.
This habit, which is centred upon our personal capacity to extend empathy to others, is our key to successful, genuine, non-manipulative communication. The habit, which we can only form through intentional repetition, is the core life skill of "selling" others on our point of view prior to any call to action. This generic form of "selling" may be as mundane as persuading your carnivorous son to eat his vegetables or your distracted spouse to buy the groceries; or as profitable as getting your stressed boss to promote you or your potential client to hire you or your existing customer to buy more goods or services from you.
You see, even though we’re all "in sales" none of us likes to "be sold"; yet we all crave to be understood. That’s as true for you as it is for me.
In building my small financial planning practice over the last 18 years, I’ve made many mistakes. But one thing I did get right was to never indulge in any form of hard selling because of the biblical Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I hate it when a salesperson acts unprofessionally and attempts to force an unwanted sale down my throat. The greyer I get, the less patient I am with that old — perhaps prehistoric — style of selling. That’s why when I interact with potential and existing clients, my focus is more on listening than on talking, and on process rather than on product.
Having said all that, the more successful I am at "selling", the more money flows into my bank account.
As that monthly cash inflow grows, I try to exercise delayed gratification so I underspend.
The mental trick I use is something I learnt from author and professional speaker Brian Tracy. It involves driving a virtual wedge between the quantum of my increased income so that there is a "spend portion" and a "save portion".
Bottom line: The goal is to always bump up my monthly expenses by LESS than my increase in after tax income. That way I will invariably be spending less than I make, and thus saving and investing the difference.
Every month any of us succeeds in accomplishing both goals, namely spending intelligently, and saving and investing wisely, our sense of well-being rises.
Now let’s loop back to the starting link in this chain of causation. A fundamental key to succeeding financially and in all human interactions is to take Covey’s Habit 5 to heart.
Sadly, it is easier said than done. We are all, to some extent, selfish and selfcentred. But, as human beings, one of our unique human endowments is being self-aware. To the best of our scientific knowledge no other species on Earth shares this unique endowment which, for instance, allows us to ruminate on a problem and at the same time detach ourselves from those thought processes to simultaneously observe ourselves thinking about that problem.
Trust me, that’s a big deal. We are blessed!
That capacity to detach ourselves means we can proactively CHOOSE to override our natural tendency toward self-absorption and opt to practice Covey’s fifth habit:
Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.
So, ramp up your skill level in this area to improve all your human interactions including those that bring in more money; then manage it well.