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]