Seek First To Understand

One of the SevenHabitsOfHighlyEffectivePeople

The gist of Covey's idea here is that in an environment where ideas are pushed hard (sales, management, development), you can go a long way by investing as much as possible in understanding first, rather than pushing your ideas regardless of the situation or circumstance.

So the context is, "when you wish to be understood, SeekFirstToUnderstand".

Sometimes, a little humility can go a long way.

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Beyond the essential positive impact of humility, when you SeekFirstToUnderstand you gain a more complete understanding of the other person (or position, or problem, or situation), which allows you to make a more informed argument. You are better able to engage your listeners if you're responding to their issues and feelings. And, you're providing the other side with an opportunity to vent their frustrations, which is a kindness and makes them more receptive to your arguments.

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Do you really see any of this ever being employed on Wiki?

Yes

I would disagree.

Disagreement noted. I have seen it employed on this wiki. One of the participants in a discussion on a page having to do with agreement/diagreement - described his approach to authoring on the wiki - Before he authored a single page on this wiki, he browsed a considerable number of the 16000+ pages, in order to get a sense of what is going on here. This is a GoodThing

This would be a generalization of the LurkBeforeYouLeap pattern.

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 #include <stdio.h>

 int main(int argc, char * argv[])
 { FILE * f = fopen("file.wiki","r");
   long understand = ...;
   fseek(f, understand, SEEK_SET); /* seek first to "understand" */
   ...
 };

Put in a way a programmer can understand!

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This is true in a lot of situations, especially when you enter a company and find a surprising situation. If you don't SeekFirstToUnderstand, you may miss the whole point of a certain equilibrium, even if that equilibrium is often quite bad in a number of aspects. When you have management responsibilities and you come to transform things, it becomes mandatory to SeekFirstToUnderstand and that takes time. Perhaps the trend for outsourcing IT jobs is a easier way not to SeekFirstToUnderstand and apply standard trendy organizational patterns.

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CategoryCommunication