Can you hear me?
If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Similar question: if no one can truly hear what we say, do we exist? Do we matter?
Fundamental to our identity and sense of purpose in the world is to be counted as a participant in the conversation that is society or, at least, that is our tribe. Who are we? What is our role in the world? How do we view reality? And, perhaps most importantly, does anyone else understand who we are and why we’re here?
If no one does, we can feel alienated, isolated, nearly non-existent. But if someone does hear us, truly reflects back to us that they acknowledge and get what we think and feel, we consider ourselves validated, meaningful, and, perhaps, important. We matter.
Signal from the Noise
In classic communication, we imagine that our goal is to get an idea that exists in our head into the head of another, just like it looks and sounds in our head. That is, we send a signal — in the form of a sentence, a look, a motion of some kind — that we believe communicates that idea clearly.
On the way from our head to the head of the person we’re trying to connect with, our signal encounters noise in the form of conflicting cultural assumptions, lack of familiar meaning for the other person, bias, judgement, emotion, distraction. Lots of things.
Good communication occurs when the signal arrives in as pure a form as possible, having avoided or cut through the noise. Both the sender and receiver of the signal play a role in making this happen.
Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers (1902-1987) was a psychologist known best for advancing client or person-centered psychotherapy (Right? Is there another kind?) and as the founder of Humanistic Psychology. He considered the client the expert on their own condition and his job was to help them discover their own expertise, surface it, and use it. Prior to this approach, it was primarily the analyst who positioned themselves as the expert. (Think Sigmund Freud.)
Rogers used a technique later to be called “reflexive listening” to help ensure that he understood what his client was expressing, to the client’s satisfaction. This helped the client feel “heard.”
More than that, though, the purpose of Rogerian-style listening was for the client to hear themselves. Rogers would focus on exploring with the client how what they were describing may make them feel. Also, by accurately mirroring what the client was saying, Rogers gave the client the chance to process their own thoughts and emotions as the “expert.”
A corollary to reflexive listening is the Rogerian method of ensuring good communication between two individuals; in conversation exercises with two people who may be trying to communicate clearly with one another, he insisted that person two could not say what they wanted to say until they repeated back what person one was trying to say, and may be feeling, to person one’s satisfaction.
Rogers’ core principles, including the central role of outwardly expressed empathy, underpin many of the advanced approaches used in psychotherapy settings today.
Our Guiding Narrative®
We’ve discussed often that our Guiding Narrative® is the inner story we tell ourselves about how the world works and our role in the world. It’s perhaps our most personal and self-affirming feature as humans. In a sense, our Guiding Narrative® is what we’re saying to ourselves constantly about our existence; that is, it’s our expression of what we think reality is, what we should be doing, and why we may matter. Notably, this inner dialog takes place primarily in our subconscious, so we may struggle to hear it clearly and/or articulate it to others. It typically needs a facilitator or collaborator (i.e., the researcher) to be fully discovered and surfaced.
If our Guiding Narrative® is never acknowledged by others — never demonstrated that it is heard — we tend to feel less like we’re connected to the people around us. If it is however, reflected back to us accurately, we feel validated and supported, and the things that our Guiding Narrative® tells us to value feels supported as well.
If in your language or behavior you reflect a person’s Guiding Narrative® — whether as a friend, marketer, politician, teacher, mentor — you have cut through the noise and sent a strong signal to that person. You have, in Rogerian terms, supported the individual’s expertise and enabled them to feel themselves and their role in the world more keenly.
This is precisely why at The Good People Research Company, we believe that the primary way to understand both individual and group motivation and behavior is through the Guiding Narrative® as a unit of analysis.
We work with organizations or brands trying to build mutually valuable and sustainable relationships with customers, constituents, employees, and other stakeholders. We segment the organization’s audience based on variances in their audience’s Guiding Narratives® and use as the narratives themselves as a framework for evaluating and understanding all the rest of the data (qualitative and quantitative) that we may have about the audience.
In other words, we are letting the audience (e.g., customers, stakeholders) be the “experts” by using the characteristics and boundaries of their imagination to guide understanding of their behavior rather than the naturally limited perspective of the researcher, marketer, analyst, and/or organizational leader.
Just as Rogers initiated a shift away from the analyst to the client as the expert in discovering and communicating the meaning of the client’s behavior, we at The Good People Research Company have shifted the audience discovery and communication process from the researcher to the customers or stakeholders themselves. The Guiding Narrative®, properly understood and articulated, becomes a framework that gives proper meaning and context to data because it uses the meaning making model the customer or stakeholder uses to navigate their lived experience as well as every symbol and phenomenon it.
Make them feel heard.
When interpreting the motivation and behavior of others, and/or communicating with them to create value, as an organizational leader you engender credibility and trust when you focus on their Guiding Narratives® and demonstrate an understanding of them. People want to be heard. Truly heard.
When this happens, they feel like they matter and you, as a result, will matter to them.
