How To Make Someone Truly Feel Heard

Be intentional about learning what the other person wants to communicate and respond to their feelings.

Listen to what they’re telling you and suppress the urge to fix the issue, problem solve, or change the way they are feeling about the situation.

Put your own feelings aside to create a space where another person can speak his or her mind—which requires staying calm.  

Suspending judgment and simply taking in what is being said can go a long way towards helping someone feel heard or diffusing an argument.

Show that you are actively listening and are truly understanding what the other person is saying by mirroring back what someone has said. Include phrases like ‘it sounds like’ or ‘it seems like.’

Take the time for silence in a discussion, showing that you’re processing what is being talked about and giving it the space that it needs to sink in properly. 

Edited from Jeremy Brown writing in Fatherly

The road to becoming more of a manager than a leader

If you catch yourself referring to people on your team by their job titles as often as by their names, beware—you're on the road to becoming more of a manager than a leader. A real leader thinks of people individually and holistically, and tries hard to understand strengths and weaknesses, goals and interests.  I saw this all too often in the military, for example, where great leaders grew to know their soldiers, and lesser leaders referred to them generically, either by their ranks or occupational specialties. 

Bill Murphy Jr. writing in the Understandably newsletter

Cruelty wears justice as a disguise

The “No one to blame but themselves” rule “implies that once someone breaks a rule, you can do whatever you want to them and you cannot be blamed. We need that one mortal sin which will let us revoke a person's status as a human worthy of dignity, respect, empathy or anything else.

I think the reason so many racists could pass an ‘Are you a racist?’ polygraph test is that they don't think minorities are inhuman due to their color, but rather their supposed criminality. The single hint of a single minor crime meant absolutely anything done in response is justified. They all think their daily cruelty is in response to some extreme provocation.

If cruelty wears justice as a disguise, then anyone who believes in justice is at risk.”

David Wong writing for Cracked

Get inside your box!

Do you know one of the "box people"? When they meet someone new, the “box people” immediately ask a question to identify which box the person belongs inside. "What do you do?" “Where are you from?” the “box people” want to stick a label on each person. Once they know the "box" (based on class, politics, religious affiliation, race, etc.), they can avoid the work of getting to know someone and treating them as an individual.

Meeting someone living outside the set of predetermined boxes is a challenge to the arrangement of tidy little containers. This affront will be met with increasing demands to "Get inside a box!” There’s a difference between asking honest questions to understand someone because you see them as an end in themselves, and asking questions as a result of treating people as means to an end.

Each of us has the same decision to make: Whether or not to treat others as unique individuals.

Stephen Goforth

Great Leaders vs Managers

Great leaders aren't always the most likable people. In the long run, great leaders recognize that their job is to get people to do things they might not want to do, in order to achieve goals they want to achieve.  Contrast that with "mere managers," who either want to be liked or try to convince themselves that they don't care. Great leaders know that cordiality is necessary, but also that they might sometimes have to sacrifice short-term likability in favor of long-term respect. 

Bill Murphy Jr. writing in the Understandably newsletter

Wanting a Woman

We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he “wants a woman.” Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes). Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but a particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.

CS Lewis, The Four Loves

The Steps to Influencing Behavior

There are five stages in what’s known as the “behavioural change stairway model” that take anyone from “listening to influencing behaviour”. The first stage is active listening – namely, being able to show the other person that you have taken in what they’ve said and, more importantly, have a sense of what it means to them.

Rather than focusing on what you want to say, listen to what the other person is telling you, then try to repeat it back to them. Start with, “It seems like what you’re saying is” or “Can I just check, it sounds like what you’re saying is”. If that feels too contrived, it often works simply to repeat the last sentence or thought someone has expressed (known in counselling practice as “reflecting”).

Try, “It seems like you’re feeling frustrated with this situation – is that right?” Always give the other person the opportunity to comment on or correct your assessment. 

Rosie Ifould writing in The Guardian

A Steadfast Man

When a man is faithful to one woman, he looks on other women in quite another way, a way unknown to the world of Eros; other women turn into persons instead of being reflections or means. This ‘spiritual exercise’ develops new powers of judgment, self-possession, and respect.* The opposite in this of an erotic man, a steadfast man no longer strives to see a woman as merely an attractive or desirable body... he feels, as soon as tempted, he has been desiring only an illusory or fleeting aspect of what is actually a complete life. Thus temptation recedes disconnected instead of making itself into an obsession; and fidelity is made secure by the clear-sightedness it induces.

(*‘Respect’, as I use the word here, means that we recognize in a being the fullness of a person. A person, according to Kant’s famous definition, is what cannot be used by man as an instrument or thing.)

Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World

Savage Love

It may be objected that marriage must then be simply ‘the grave of love’. It would be more accurate to echo Croce and say that ‘marriage is the grave of savage love’ and more often the grave of sentimentality.

Savage and natural love is manifested in rape. But rape, like polygamy, is also an indication that men are not yet in a stage to apprehend the presence of an actual person in a woman. This is as much as to say that they do not know how to love. Rape and polygamy deprive a woman of her equality by reducing her to sex. Savage love empties human relations of personality.

On the other hand, a man does not control himself owing to lack of ‘passion’ (meaning ‘power of the libido’), but precisely because he loves and, in virtue of his love, will not inflict himself. He refuses to commit an act of violence which would be in the denial and destruction of the person. He thus indicates that his dearest wish is for the other’s good. His egotism goes round via the other. This, it will be granted, is a notable revolution.

And we may now pass beyond that altogether negative and privative statement of Croce’s and at last define marriage as the institution in which passion is ‘contained’, not by morals, but by love.

Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World

The most important factor in a relationship

Communication, no matter how open, transparent and disciplined, will always break down at some point. Conflicts are ultimately unavoidable, and feelings will always be hurt.

And the only thing that can save you and your partner, that can cushion you both to the hard landing of human fallibility, is an unerring respect for one another, the fact that you hold each other in high esteem, believe in one another — often more than you each believe in yourselves — and trust that your partner is doing his/her best with what they’ve got.

Without that bedrock of respect underneath you, you will doubt each other’s intentions. You will judge their choices and encroach on their independence. You will feel the need to hide things from one another for fear of criticism. And this is when the cracks in the edifice begin to appear.

You must also respect yourself. Because without that self-respect, you will not feel worthy of the respect afforded by your partner. You will be unwilling to accept it and you will find ways to undermine it. You will constantly feel the need to compensate and prove yourself worthy of love, which will just backfire.

Respect for your partner and respect for yourself are intertwined. As a reader named Olov put it, “Respect yourself and your wife. Never talk badly to or about her. If you don’t respect your wife, you don’t respect yourself. You chose her – live up to that choice.”

Mark Manson writing in Business Insider 

The real way to build a social network

Picture the consummate networker: a high-energy fast talker who collects as many business cards as he can and attends mixers sporting slicked-back hair. Or the overambitious college kid who frantically e-mails alumni, schmoozes with the board of trustees, and adds anyone he's ever met as an online friend. Such people are drunk on networking Kool-Aid—and are looking at a potentially nasty hangover.

Luckily, building your network doesn't have to be like that. Old-school networkers are transactional. They pursue relationships thinking solely about what other people can do for them. Relationship builders, on the other hand, try to help others first. They don't keep score. And they prioritize high-quality relationships over a large number of connections.

Reid Hoffman, The Start-Up of You

why Facebook survived

While Facebook was just getting on its feet in 2004, a similar social network called Campus Network (or CU Community) was ahead and more advanced. Slate explains why only one survived.

Why did Facebook succeed where Campus Network failed? The simplest explanation is, well, its simplicity. Yes, Campus Network had advanced features that Facebook was missing. While Campus Network blitzed first-time users right away, Facebook updated its features incrementally. Facebook respected the Web's learning curve.

Campus Network did too much too soon. Neither site, of course, can claim to be the first social network—Friendster and MySpace already had large followings in 2003. But both Facebook and Campus Network had the crucial insight that overlaying a virtual community on top of an existing community—a college campus—would cement users' trust and loyalty. Campus Network figured it out first. Facebook just executed it better.

While people want to make their own choices, research shows too many options creates problems. We become overwhelmed. There is no substitute for simplicity and clarity. Whether on purpose or by accident, Facebook was built from the perspective of looking at what users would do with the site rather than building to show off what its creators could do. One approach shows respect for the audience.

Stephen Goforth

What we really believe

Every person expects to be treated as a person. The proof that he really believes there are some unconditional values is that he expects his freedom and dignity to be respected. In his actions, he may not always respect others, but in his reactions he proves that he always expects others to respect his freedom and dignity. Hence, human expectations are the key to what a man believes to be absolute.

Norman Geisler, Options in Contemporary Christian Ethics

the image

As Americans, we're obsessed with images. Who we are isn't as important as how we appear. In fact, we spend so much time and effort on appearances, we lose the ability to recognize the true identity of another person, or even ourselves. We've become more familiar with the image than we are with the real thing.

Dating relationships are especially vulnerable to this problem. A person isn't evaluated on character or individuality, but on how close he or she measures up to the other's image of the ideal mate. Real people take second chair to the ideal; they measure up to the image or they don't.

Have you ever noticed the excitement at the beginning of a romance that later faded with growing familiarity? In the early stages of any new friendship, we're usually seeing more of the image than we are of the real person. We've seen enough of the surface to see similarities between the object of our affections and the ideal we seek, but not enough to show us that our ideal and the new friend are not the same person. In essence, we're falling in love with the image, with the idea that this one person might be "it." Sooner or later the real person is going to start breaking through that image, and disillusionment will set in.

The success of a marriage comes not in finding the "right" person, but in the ability of both partners to adjust to the real person they inevitably realize they married. Some people never make this adjustment, becoming trapped in an endless search for an image that does not exist.

John Fischer, Real Christians Don’t Dance!