I pointed out in the previous blog in reference to self-evaluation “Failure to understand people is the devastation of western management” according to the great management guru W. Edwards Deming. He made this statement a number of years ago and it is doubtful he believed the general inability to understand people in addition to ourselves would reach the endemic proportion it has today. The stakes in business and in one’s career are too high to fail in this undertaking. There are two recent contributors to this malaise re: the failure to understand others that I believe did not exist to anywhere the same degree as when Mr. Deming first made his pronouncement.

The Reasons Why We Fail to Understand People

Failure Number One

The first failure is the continued decline in people’s ability to listen. The following is a representative conversation I have heard countless times. Charles says to his three friends, “My wife and I are going to Europe for two weeks to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. It’s our first trip to Europe and I’m really excited.”

Friend number one: “Who are you going with?”

Friend number two: “How long are you going?”

Friend number one: “Have you been to Europe before?”

Friend number two: “Is the trip business?”

Friend number three: “Where are you going?”

After all of the above questions are properly answered, which means each answer is given more than once, it invariably results in a comment like “you must be excited”.

What is startling about the above is that all of the key information was missed and ignored by the three friends. It makes you wonder what they took away from the original two sentence statement. This same situation occurs frequently in business when the topic is business related. “Where are you going; how long will you be gone; why are you going’ etc” all emanate from an inability to carefully listen.

You can’t understand people if you don’t pay attention to them and what they say. Listening is a lost art. Listening is a valuable commodity in business.

Failure Number Two

The other change from Mr. Deming’s time is the desire of people to make a reply before the speaker is finished. The quick response protocol of social media has found its way into normal everyday conversation. The urge to reply overwhelms the desire to listen in full. I have been at numerous meetings where someone has started to speak and been interrupted prior to completing the thought. The rejoinder is often way off point and confuses the meeting.

An example of this dynamic:

Mr. Brown – “I think we need to increase the marketing budget…”
Mr. Blue – “We have to hit our sales objective this month.”

Mr. Blue has no idea what point Mr. Brown was about to make in reference to the marketing budget. It very well could have been “We need to increase our marketing budget this month in order to hit this month’s sales objective. We can pull money from next quarter and move it up to this month.”

Had Mr. Blue listened to Mr. Brown’s full statement his rejoinder would have been unnecessary. Two people in basic agreement are suddenly at odds because one person was not able to complete his point. The time spent in needlessly debating this difference in the meeting could be better spent in agreeing at the outset and working out the details. Plus, no egos are bruised which often occurs in situations like Messrs. Brown and Blue experienced.

The ability to understand people begins with actively listening to them and paying attention to them. It’s a process as well as a discipline to take in what someone says, and then accurately interpret the meaning.

In business if you want to understand people start with listening to them. It’s a great beginning and the return on your investment will be very profitable.