Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #18: Make People Feel Understood
Exercise 18 of Leadership Step By Step was to have another 10 conversations with a goal of making people feel understood. Again, a script was provided and the short version is:
- A: What is your passion?
- B: [Passion]
- A: [Begin Confirmation/Clarification Cycle: Ask confirmation/clarification questions and then let them correct you and/or elaborate, then ask confirmation/clarification questions again, until you get to “Yes! That’s it!” and you have defined some ‘Universal Emotions’ (see below)]
The idea with this script is that you ask someone about their passion, then give them the space to delve into their passion and really explore what it is about their passion that they love. The reasons, the emotions the activity brings, and how they got to doing it. In the book, Josh makes a specific point of caution: don’t insert your own opinions, similar experiences, or talk about yourself. The goal of this exercise is to delve into their passion until you can state their passion in your own words, such that they feel like you have really understood them and why they love their passion.
Similar to the last exercise, I felt like this was a really fun and engaging exercise that is an absolute joy to do with your friends, family, coworkers, or anyone else! Josh even recommended trying it with someone you don’t know, like a supermarket cashier, and as tempted as I was to do that this week, I never had an opportunity to. I ended up doing this exercise with a variety of friends, family, and coworkers, some explaining what I was doing, but most of the people I went through the exercise with, I did it completely impromptu.
The wonderful thing about this exercise is that it creates connection with people. Everyone I talked to seemed to be more than thrilled to be able to talk about their passion to someone who was really trying to listen and understand them. In a way, the people who didn’t know I was doing this as part of an exercise seemed even happier that I was delving into their passion.
Part of the exercise was to arrive at what Josh calls a “universal emotion”, that is an emotion or feeling that anyone could feel regardless of economic status, country of origin, or any other metric. A feeling that you can feel if you are human. This concept was really interesting to me and it made me think about conversations in a different way – it forced me to get really specific when I talked to people about their passions and really make them strip away generalities and vague phrases and get down to the core emotions that they feel when doing what they are passionate about. I think this made the people I talked to truly feel like they were being heard and understood.
For me also, despite this being an exercise to do as “homework”, I really feel like I connected with people in a new way. Conversations with friends that I usually just have typical, boring “what are you doing recently?” type conversations suddenly came alive and I saw/felt smiles and excitement that I haven’t heard in years, in some cases. It truly felt amazing, connected, and almost therapeutic to hear my friends and family confide their passions and their reasons for doing them, and they all seemed to feel similarly.
One of the more unexpected outcomes of the exercise was that when we turned the tables and others did the exercise on me, I found that I learned a lot about myself! I think it’s rare that we consciously think about the “why” of what we do – we feel good when we do certain things, and so we just do them more. Suddenly, when I was asked why I enjoy playing music or photography or skateboarding, I had to elaborate and think about “why DO I do this? What about this activity do I really love?” and I came out of every single conversation realizing new things about myself that I had never thought of; connections to childhood, the emotions behind my favorite activities, or the meaning I derive from them.
From time to time, I did find myself occasionally breaking Josh’s rule not to talk about myself. There were certain passions that were similar to one that I have, I just couldn’t help but share how we are alike and have a moment of connection over a shared passion that I never knew about. In the moment, I did feel a little guilty to take the spotlight for a moment, but I’m not sure that it necessarily hurt the conversation or the exercise. I understand that the point of the exercise is to make the person you’re talking to feel heard and understood, but in the handful of cases where I brought myself up, it wasn’t to brag or to try to “best” their passion, but an attempt to connect over similarities, so I don’t think harm was done.
Overall, this (and last week’s exercise) is an exercise I really enjoyed and fully plan on doing more in the future. It’s a fantastic way to have conversations that get away from your typical coffee room chat and engage someone in a way that makes you and them feel special. Without a doubt I will be having this conversation lots more. Maybe even the next time I have a moment with a grocery store clerk.
