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The power of feeling understood

Lari Hatley
Apr 10, 2017
2 min read

As a Director of Development, I quickly learned that I wasn't asking people for money. I was giving good folks a chance to be part of something that mattered to them. It changed the conversation.

When I met with new prospects, we would have a friendly chat. I shared a little bit about myself and the mission of the organization I represented, but mostly I listened. What did this person care about? What mattered to them? If our mission mattered to them, then I knew that they might enjoy knowing more about what we did and about how they might help. If our mission didn't share any touch points with what mattered to them, I might still know of ways to "do good' that might interest them. I could share those.

Just as important, as learning where the person before me might connect with the organization, was learning who they were as a person. Did the love to travel, hate mushrooms, adore their cat, worry about their oldest child, hold deep religious convictions - or not. All these things would help me show that I cared about them as a person - not just as a pocketbook.

One thing we all have in common, whether we live paycheck to paycheck, have a huge trust fund, or hope a nonprofit can help us find a place to sleep tonight, is that we want to feel valued and understood. We all want to be recognized for who we are - not just because we are pretty or rich or in a wheel chair or struggling to feed our kids. Valued. Understood. Noticed. Heard.

Listening. It's an art.

Erich Fromm, noted social psychologist, share six steps to mastering this skill in his book, "The Art of Listening."

The basic rule for practicing this art is the complete concentration of the listener.
Nothing of importance must be on his mind, he must be optimally free from anxiety as well as from greed.
He must possess a freely-working imagination which is sufficiently concrete to be expressed in words.
He must be endowed with a capacity for empathy with another person and strong enough to feel the experience of the other as if it were his own.
The condition for such empathy is a crucial facet of the capacity for love.
To understand another means to love him — not in the erotic sense but in the sense of reaching out to him and of overcoming the fear of losing oneself.