Effective Leadership Through Effective Relationships
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OTHERS?
John Maxwell says “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Do you desire to be successful and to make a positive impact on your world? If your answer is yes then you need the ability to understand others. Why? Because understanding others gives you the potential to influence every area of life. For example, look at how understanding people helped this mother of a four-year-old. She said: Leaving my four-year-old son in the house, I ran out to throw out the garbage. When I tried to open the door to get back inside, it was locked. I knew that insisting that my son open the door would have resulted in an hour-long battle of the wills. So in a sad voice, I said, “Oh, too bad. You just locked yourself in the house.” The door opened at once. No doubt, understanding people certainly impacts your ability to communicate with others. David Burns, a medical doctor and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, observed, “The biggest mistake you can make in trying to talk convincingly is to put your highest priority on expressing your ideas and feelings. What most people really want is to be listened to, respected, and understood. The moment people see that they are being understood, they become more motivated to understand your point of view.” My friends if you can learn to understand people—how they think, what they feel, what inspires them, how they’re likely to act and react in a given situation—then you can motivate and influence them in a positive way.
Effective Leadership Through Effective Relationships
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OTHERS?
John Maxwell says “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Do you desire to be successful and to make a positive impact on your world? If your answer is yes then you need the ability to understand others. Why? Because understanding others gives you the potential to influence every area of life. For example, look at how understanding people helped this mother of a four-year-old. She said: Leaving my four-year-old son in the house, I ran out to throw out the garbage. When I tried to open the door to get back inside, it was locked. I knew that insisting that my son open the door would have resulted in an hour-long battle of the wills. So in a sad voice, I said, “Oh, too bad. You just locked yourself in the house.” The door opened at once. No doubt, understanding people certainly impacts your ability to communicate with others. David Burns, a medical doctor and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, observed, “The biggest mistake you can make in trying to talk convincingly is to put your highest priority on expressing your ideas and feelings. What most people really want is to be listened to, respected, and understood. The moment people see that they are being understood, they become more motivated to understand your point of view.” My friends if you can learn to understand people—how they think, what they feel, what inspires them, how they’re likely to act and react in a given situation—then you can motivate and influence them in a positive way.