If You're Listening WIth Purpose, Believe Them The First Time

From Ron Sukenick


Poet Maya Angelou said, "If someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time". People show us who they are all the time, I've come to realize, even when they don't know they're doing it! But, as I said in More Interactions To Start Relationships, it's still up to us to notice and to give importance to the precious things we're seeing and hearing from other human beings.

When Oprah Winfrey quoted Maya Angelou in the graduation address she gave at Wellesley College, she used Maya's words to warn young women to stay away from "men situations" in which they are mistreated or lied to, rather than hanging on to a belief those men would change and come to treat them better in the future.

From my vantage point as a business coach, that line of poetry by Angelou has a broader and more positive meaning. When we meet a new business contact, and we are "in the moment" with that person, asking open-ended questions and saying "Tell me more!" , then listening purposefully to truly understand that person's perspective, that someone will, in fact, "show us who they are". Because we've gone beyond traditional networking towards NetBeing, we will have created the beginnings of a relationship.

In my Relationship Strategies Institute I teach how, using the DISC behavior model, we can notice four basic behavior patterns people tend to use. We each tend to use one style as our "fall-back", a way of behaving that feels most comfortable. This is what I meant when I said that people show us who they are even when they don't know they're doing it. As you become familiar with different behavior styles, you can use the model as a tool for communicating with other people in language that makes them most comfortable and most open to developing a relationship with you.

I've learned people want to be known and valued for who they really are. That's exactly why, after teaching effective networking for so many years, I've come to see that nowadays, real, profit-generating networking requires going beyond that. We need more strategy, more connectedness, and more trust. I think that's what Maya Angelou was really talking about - being open to really "seeing" and accepting others. If we listen with purpose and with true interest to people we meet, they will show us who they are. We'll be able to believe them the first time, and they, in turn, will be able to believe us!