Part 26 (1/2)

I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to understand the other person. The way in which I have worded this statement may seem strange to you, Is it necessary to permit oneself to understand another? I think it is. Our first reaction to most of the statements (which we hear from other people) is an evaluation or judgment, rather than an understanding of it. When someone expresses some feeling, att.i.tude or belief, our tendency is almost immediately to feel ”that's right,” or ”that's stupid,” ”that's abnormal,”

”that's unreasonable,” ”that's incorrect,” ”that's not nice .” Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand understand precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other person.*

* Adapted from Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming Becoming a a Person Person (Boston: Houghton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), pp. 18ff.

I once employed an interior decorator to make some draperies for my home. When the bill arrived, I was dismayed.

A few days later, a friend dropped in and looked at the draperies. The price was mentioned, and she exclaimed with a note of triumph: ”What? That's awful. I am afraid he put one over on you.”

True? Yes, she had told the truth, but few people like to listen to truths that reflect on their judgment. So, being human, I tried to defend myself. I pointed out that the best is eventually the cheapest, that one can't expect to get quality and artistic taste at bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt prices, and so on and on.

The next day another friend dropped in, admired the draperies, bubbled over with enthusiasm, and expressed a wish that she could afford such exquisite creations for her home. My reaction was totally different. ”Well, to tell the truth,” I said, ”I can't afford them myself. I paid too much. I'm sorry I ordered them,”

When we are wrong, we may admit it to ourselves.

And if we are handled gently and tactfully, we may admit it to others and even take pride in our frankness and broad-mindedness. But not if someone else is trying to ram the unpalatable fact down our esophagus.

Horace Greeley, the most famous editor in America during the time of the Civil War, disagreed violently with Lincoln's policies. He believed that he could drive Lincoln into agreeing with him by a campaign of argument, ridicule and abuse. He waged this bitter campaign month after month, year after year. In fact, he wrote a brutal, bitter, sarcastic and personal attack on President Lincoln the night Booth shot him.

But did all this bitterness make Lincoln agree with Greeley? Not at all. Ridicule and abuse never do.

If you want some excellent suggestions about dealing with people and managing yourself and improving your personality, read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography - one of the most fascinating life stories ever written, one of the cla.s.sics of American literature. Ben Franklin tells how he conquered the iniquitous habit of argument and transformed himself into one of the most able, suave and diplomatic men in American history.

One day, when Ben Franklin was a blundering youth, an old Quaker friend took him aside and lashed him with a few stinging truths, something like this:

Ben, you are impossible. Your Your opinions have a slap in opinions have a slap in them for everyone who differs with you. They have become so offensive that n.o.body cares for them. Your Your friends find friends find they enjoy themselves better when you are not around. You know so much that no man can tell you anything. Indeed, no man is going to try, for the effort would lead only to discomfort and hard work. So you are not likely ever to know any more than you do now, which is very little.

One of the finest things I know about Ben Franklin is the way he accepted that smarting rebuke. He was big enough and wise enough to realize that it was true, to sense that he was headed for failure and social disaster.

So he made a right-about-face. He began immediately to change his insolent, opinionated ways.

”I made it a rule,” said Franklin, ”to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiment of others, and all positive a.s.sertion of my own, I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix'd opinion, such as 'certainly,' 'undoubtedly,' etc., and I adopted, instead of them, 'I conceive,' 'I apprehend, ' or 'I imagine' a thing to be so or so, or 'it so appears to me at present.' When another a.s.serted something that I thought an error, I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition: and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circ.u.mstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear'd or seem'd to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag'd in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos'd my opinions procur'd them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevaile'd with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

”And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. And to this habit (after my character of integrity) I think it princ.i.p.ally owing that I had earned so much weight with my fellow citizens when I proposed new inst.i.tutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points.”

How do Ben Franklin's methods work in business?

Let's take two examples.

Katherine A, Allred of Kings Mountain, North Carolina, is an industrial engineering supervisor for a yarn-processing plant. She told one of our cla.s.ses how she handled a sensitive problem before and after taking our training: