How to understand and be understood

imagine this

you are 13 years old you’re sitting in

your bedroom

doodling away on a sheet of paper and

suddenly

your father walks in he comes straight

towards you

looks you in the eye and says

who are you

you’re like what what kind of question

is that

well that happened to me and i was that

kid

at that moment all i wanted to do was

outsmart him so as a teenager what do i

do

i start listing everything i know i said

dad

i’m richie your daughter i’m a girl i’m

13 i’m in eighth grade i love dogs i

like playing badminton and so on

to which he replies richie

everything you’ve said to me is true

they are facts

but is that really who you are

that messed with my brain it took me

down this rabbit hole

where i have been ever since searching

for the answers

i spent 10 years studying psychology

that helped a bit

and another decade working within

universities

researching and teaching what it means

to relate to others

how do we negotiate an understanding in

relationships

as humans the one thing that fascinates

us all

well are other humans we have this need

to understand them

to be able to tell stories about who

they are and a need

to be understood you

and i have felt the pleasure of

understanding

and the pain of misunderstanding in

relationship with our parents

our friends our partners our children

even our colleagues

at work more so now when we live

in a polarized society misunderstandings

creep in rather quickly

when you’re discussing politics religion

identity

inequality environment and all the other

social issues

in fact we live in a world where under

misunderstanding is the misery we

inflict on others

humans are hard to read they are even

harder to understand you

have this unique access to your own mind

you know for the most part what you’re

feeling

what you’re thinking and what drives you

some of who you are is observable but

most of who you are

is invisible and yet we are baffled

in conversations and discussions and

negotiations

when others don’t see us or the world as

we see it

understanding and misunderstanding are

topics close to my heart

fifteen years ago when i was doing my

phd i looked at how taking perspective

and empathizing affects how we react to

betrayal

whether we choose to forgive and trust

again

or we take revenge for the last 11 years

i’ve studied

how we deal with conflicts and

disagreements at work whether we reflect

on them

how do we listen to others perspectives

ideas

how do we deliberate and use them in our

own decisions

from that body of work one thing an

important thing that i’ve learned

is we are very good at spotting

misunderstanding

while we suck at creating understanding

so at this point we should be asking

ourselves what does it mean

to understand where and when does it

happen

and let’s start by dissecting the very

word

understand the word under in understand

is actually derived from an old persian

possibly sanskrit

root called antar antar

means among and between things

and the word stand in understand is

actually derived from a german dutch

root

which means to be present and to exist

so to understand is to be present

and exist among and between things

not over not under but among

so the next question in your mind should

be where am i supposed to exist like

what is that space well if you ask the

philosophers and the psychologists

they’d argue

that you have to somehow exist

in the mind of the other that

understanding

is walking in a person’s shoes mentally

and simulating what they’re feeling and

what they’re thinking

i want to challenge that view i want to

show you that it’s problematic

to look at understanding as an

individual’s responsibility to replicate

another person’s inner world i want to

suggest to you that understanding

is not what a person does understanding

is not a thing

it’s not a noun it’s not an outcome or

an

endpoint that we have to somehow

permanently achieve

rather understanding is a verb

it’s a process where two parties come

into a shared space

where they co-create a frame where they

define

and interpret the meaning and

significance

of each other’s realities and truths

let’s take a detour for a moment and

let’s look

at the language we use to talk about

misunderstanding

we often say things like they distorted

what i said

or they misconstrued what i was saying

common in these expressions is the idea

that somehow the

other did not replicate

and mirror my inner world and my inner

thoughts

now it’s problematic to look at it

because

by that logic to understand you’d have

to be what

michelangelo and you know

someone who can carve from a block of

stone

a form that is so perfect that it

unquestionably represents its subject’s

truth

now you and i know we can’t all be as

skilled as michelangelo

so i want to suggest to you that if we

need to reimagine

how we look at understanding that we

need to see it

as a collaborative process of

molding with clay

if you see understanding as this

collaborative process

happening in a shared space where you’re

molding with clay

you realize that both parties have to

work on it together

that your actions to add layers

and subtract layers of knowledge and

clay are not in isolation

that they’re going to impact the moves

of the other

that both of you have to dynamically

adapt

to what’s happening on the other side

that you have to creatively coordinate

to form a shape and

talking is essential talking about

what’s happened

in the past what’s happening right now

and what

may be future goals that are worth

pursuing

when you see understanding as a

collaborative process of molding

you also realize that you have to

entertain multiple possibilities

and that sometimes those possibilities

are contradictory

that you have to remain present among

those possibilities

even when the clay collapses that you

have to rebuild

and that it is futile to try and achieve

a permanent or a perfect state of

understanding

that like molding all understanding

is fundamentally partial and incomplete

with scope for further improvement

i’ve been teaching negotiation skills

for over a decade

i have observed and analyzed thousands

of discussions and negotiations and i’ve

seen people

fail and some succeed in this

collaborative process of molding

so what aren’t we doing well and what

can you

do to get better at it what i found

is that those who fail at the process of

understanding

are the ones who see understanding as

knowing

they look at it as an act of uncovering

facts

you know they tend to present themselves

in terms of those facts and positions

a little bit like the 13 year old me did

to my dad’s question

and they tend to seek similar facts and

positions from others

knowing is like hearing

understanding is the process of

listening it’s about

seeing the connection between ideas and

far more importantly

the meaning and significance of those

positions ideas perspectives

for the other for yourself and in that

relationship

why they matter the other reason why i

have found

why people fail at understanding is

because they love

they absolutely love to conclude

and they do so based on unidentified and

unquestioned assumptions

assumptions are our beliefs about how

the world works

how things are connected what actions

lead to

outcomes and what goals are worth

pursuing in fact

assumptions are the springboard from

where logic

and reason flow so now

you know a fair bit you know a fair bit

about

what why we fail so what can we do

to get better at this process well the

first thing we can do

is we can start to identify and

articulate

our assumptions early in conversations

and invite the other to do the same

when you allow assumptions to exist in

that shared space

you are allowing for multiple

interpretations of reality

where you can experiment and look if

assumptions don’t match

or are they overlapping

the other thing you can do in that

process is start caring

about the semantics words don’t mean the

same thing for everyone

they don’t have objective truths we need

to clarify the meaning behind

our spoken word which means we need to

define

things early in conversations we need to

provide examples use more synonyms

in the way we speak so that the context

gets

more clarified we need to search

for the non-apparent meaning behind the

other people’s spoken words

you can do that by checking and

re-checking

the essence of what you’ve heard till

multiple ways of interpreting and saying

that idea

is acceptable to the other

to get better at identifying assumptions

and clarifying meaning

we need to start getting curious we need

to learn how to probe

and ask better questions especially the

what if questions

the what if questions are when you

present hypothetical scenarios during

discussions where for example you could

say

if x then what listen to the reaction of

the other

follow it up with why and why not

so you’ve been here for about 10 minutes

were you hearing or were you

understanding

do you now feel that you’re more aware

of what the process of understanding

entails

are you going to take this into your

life the next time you interact with

someone

the next time you sit down with your

child your parent partner

friend colleague at work where you want

to create understanding

you want to co-create that shared frame

are you going to remember to remain

present

entangled amongst ideas

so take the memory of the words you’ve

heard today

share it tonight with one other person

someone with whom you can debate the

assumptions behind the ideas you’ve

heard today

to clarify the meaning and the logic and

reason from where it flows

so you can collaboratively mold

your own deep understanding about

understanding

thank you

[Applause]