Learning Perspective-Taking in Conversation

How can we become better at perspective taking?

Hello and welcome to Communication Psychology and HR.

My name is Gihard Orbent.

I'm a psychologist from Hamburg, Germany here in the Republic of Moldova,

specialized in international intercultural and multi-language contexts.

We hear all those trendy words like empathy or active listening or emotional intelligence.

However, without the capacity to take the position or perspective of our interlocutor of the other one,

it's quite difficult to achieve any of those.

Now, the problem is we tend to live in information with bubbles,

we consume information we like, and we tend to gather with people that share our values and opinions.

However, many of our customers, clients and colleagues share different opinions on politics,

the economy, society, religion.

So, I highly recommend doing the following.

Consume media from media outlets that are opposite to your personal convictions.

Also, consume media that represents the current opposition.

So, during the tenure of Joe Biden, I consume more Fox and the New York Post.

Now, with Donald Trump, more CNN and the New York Times.

During that, you will understand what your colleagues, clients and customers,

preoccupations are, their fears, expectations,

and showing that you care for their perspective makes already a big, big way towards a better relationship.

I need to stress, it doesn't mean you need to agree with those views and opinions.

The same you can do professionally because often we have problems in communication

between departments, between professions, everybody speaks in his or her jargon.

So, do the same because I, as psychologists, tend to consume psychological information

by books on psychology or research articles.

And not all psychology, so I focus on social psychology or work in organization psychology,

but I don't consume much about clinical or abnormal psychology or developmental or lifespan psychology.

So, you could do the same, you make a list of what departments or professions you have to interact,

both colleagues and customers and clients.

It could be IT, marketing, sales, human resources, engineering, quality management, and many others.

And your approaches, as you approach learning a new language, so you understand,

I need new words vocabulary, and every day you write one to five words down.

Ideally, you introduce them into an app like Anky, Flashcards or Quizlet,

so then later you can rehearse those words and their definitions.

Doing that will establish a better rapport with your interlocutor,

because they will see, oh, you are speaking our language, you use our phrases vocabulary,

especially in advertising, this is crucial, and it has been understood for at least 100 years

that you need to study the way our customers speak if you want to sell them something.

But the same is valid, of course, also for communication, for conversations.

So, what do you think about this?

Please write me your comments, questions.

If you want me to make a short master class for your organization team,

it's online if you're not in Moldova, of course.

Every week I do one such master class, you don't even need to buy me a coffee,

but what I expect is critical questions, comments that help me develop my theory and my practice better.

All the best and see you next week, bye-bye.