How to Coach Yourself and Others From Dependency to Inter Dependency | Page 19

To achieve this, you must listen with your ears, but also with your eyes and heart. You don’t project
your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives and interpretations, but you deal with
the reality inside another person’s head and heart.
Empathic listening is – in and on itself - tremendous deposit in the Emotional Bank Account because it
gives a person “psychological air”.
Remember: satisfied needs don’t motivate. Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human
being is psychological survival: to be understood, affirmed, validated and appreciated.
Never try to sell a product. Instead, sell solutions to needs and problems.
In order to have influence, you must first allow yourself to be influenced. You have to really
understand. Tell people: “Let me see if I really understand what your position is. When You feel I
understand them, then we can search for a solution together.” Then, don’t reflect their position, but try
to verbalize their needs and concerns.
When we listen autobiographically, what we do is:
1. Evaluate and judge: We either agree or disagree
2. Probe: We try to understand, asking questions from our own frame of reference.
(What’s the matter? What’s been happening lately? What are your plans? …)
3. Advise: We give counsel based on our own experience
(Have you tried X? Maybe if you give it some time? …)
4. Interpret: We try to figure people out to explain their motives and behaviour,
based on our own motives and behaviour.
Instead, what we should do first is:
1. Repeat back the content of what was said: This is the least effective sage of empathic listening, but
at least you have not evaluated, probed, advised or interpreted …
2. Rephrase the content: Put their meaning into your own words: A little bit more effective already,
because you show understanding.
3. Reflect their feeling
4. (= 2 + 3): Rephrase the content AND reflect the feeling: Repeat the idea, subject or conclusion and
confirm the feeling.

E.G.: You’re really frustrated about …. You feel like Y is not doing you any good
You think he really has the right idea
The key is to genuinely seek the welfare of the individual, to listen with empathy, to let the person get to
the problem and the solution at his own pace and time. Affirming your motive is a huge deposit. You
can say things like:

“I realize I haven’t listened to you like I should. But I want to. I really care about you and
I want to understand. I hope you’ll help me.”
But when you speak like this, you’d better be sincere. Otherwise your words are going to backfire.
Listen, Invest one-to-one time, Do things together, Build the Emotional Bank Account. Give Air.