In our latest VeloCITI program group discussion session we had this week we spoke about Understanding, or more specifically the principle from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that to be understood you first need to understand. What is the correlation between this and psychological air you might ask? Or better yet what is psychological air?

Let me explain the latter first.

We all pay attention most to what we most urgently need. Let’s say, for example, the air was to be sucked out of the room you were in at the moment. Very soon you won’t be thinking of anything else but getting air, you’re not going to be listening to anything I say, your only thought would be to get air.

Now the same thing is true for feeling understood. We all have the need for people to listen to us, to understand us. Not necessarily so that they can give advice or help us, but sometimes just so that we don’t feel alone, we have someone to understands and is with us, on our side.

If you want to people to listen to you, to understand you, you first need to understand them. Give them the psychological air they need, and they will be free and open to listen to what you have to say and in turn understand you.