How Much Can We Really Control Our Minds?

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People like to talk. And when they talk, they often muddy the water about what they really mean because people tend to speak through an autobiographical lens, i.e., "this is my truth because it is from my perspective". Todd Davis, the Chief People Officer at Franklin Covey, has spent much of his career looking for the meaning in what people are saying, and has developed a way to better understand what people are really talking about. That technique is a small adaption to a basic skill that many people forget to do when they talk: listening, and then asking questions based on finding the truth in their perspective. Just doing that (Todd explains the practice in the video much better than I do here - Ed.) can make a world of difference in interpersonal interaction. Todd's latest book is Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work.

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TODD DAVIS

Todd Davis is the Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer of FranklinCovey, the organizational learning company best known for its popular 7 Habits of Highly Effective People book series. Davis is the author of FranklinCovey’s Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work. He is also a co-author of Talent Unleashed: 3 Leadership Conversations to Ignite the Unlimited Potential in People.

As the former director of FranklinCovey’s Innovations Group, Todd led the development of many of FranklinCovey’s core offerings containing the company’s world-renowned content, and he continues to contribute to the development of new offerings. Davis has also served as FranklinCovey’s director of recruitment and led a team responsible for attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent for the company, which included over 3,500 employees.

For over 25 years, Davis has delivered numerous keynote addresses and speeches at top industry conferences, associations, corporate events, and for FranklinCovey clients, many of which are Fortune® 100 and 500 companies. His topics include leadership, personal and interpersonal effectiveness, employee engagement, talent management, change management, and building winning cultures.

Davis has served on the Board of Directors for HR.com and is a member of the Association for Talent Development (ATD) and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

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TRANSCRIPT:

Todd Davis: Many of my discussions are centered around someone who has a real issue or bone to pick with someone else. And I’ll listen and I’ll listen and I’ll listen because a lot of times people just want to feel understood. But then when they’re finished feeling understood they feel like they’ve had a shoulder to cry on. I will always ask the question, “I wonder why Jim would have said that? Or I wonder why Gail feels that way?” And the person will usually say something like, “Well I have no idea, I’m not Jim.” And I’ll say, “Well no, I understand that. But if I think about Jim I wonder what motivates him?”

And if I can start a discussion like that more often than not people will say “Well, you know, he was pretty depressed over that issue last year or she got passed over for that promotion so maybe she’s still feeling defensive about that.” And it’s my way of not manipulation at all but helping someone gently but directly start to see things from another’s perspective. And that leads into helping them try to understand what someone’s intent is. And when we can get that type of a conversation going... it’s not always easy... but it becomes easier to start to assume maybe that everyone doesn’t have it out for you or bad intent. But in general people have good intent.

When people have emotions that are high – whether they’re high because they’re frustrated or whether they’re high because they’re happy – first and foremost they just want to be understood. And we listen, through what the late Dr. Stephen R. Covey used to say, we listen through this autobiographical lens. And then we have this autobiographical response. So we listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. But the most effective people and therefore the most successful influential people they listen with the intent to understand.

So reflective listening, and this is nothing new but boy it’s new to practice it because everybody reads about it, hears about it and yet I see them not model it. And I’ll tell you modeling it is magic. When someone says to m...

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