On Reversing Your Perspective and Listening Actively

As human beings our natural (and only) perspective is from the inside out — we perceive the world from our own point of view. This is the way things have always been, and it’s (most likely) never going to change. If we want to help others however — whether as advisors, leaders, parents or any other type of capacity in which we want to influence the behavior of other people, we have to start by perceiving the world from their perspective.

As long as we are locked in to our own world view, we won’t be able to take that different perspective. This might strike you as being basic empathy, and it’s a closely related cousin, but it’s also something other than that. More than anything it’s the willingness to openly explore what’s on the mind and in the heart of another person; what’s their goals, their concerns, their ideas, their considerations and their aspirations? There is a common misconception that leadership, influence, sales and persuasion (in any form) is about saying the right things. This couldn’t be further from the truth — more than anything it’s about asking the right questions.

There are a vast number of highly intelligent and highly capable people, to whom this concept is completely foreign, and who have an exceptionally hard time putting it into practice. My take is that there are two reasons for that — one is that it…