As a person with giraffe consciousness I can hear people in giraffe, no matter how they express themselves – ideally. Some expressions may be harder to hear in giraffe, others easier. In a life situation, when I am an observer, it can be challenging or – honestly – even impossible to connect to the needs behind expressions of speakers.
In this exercise I propose to look at verbal exchanges, taking my time to look more deeply at the words each party expresses, attempting to hear the most important meaning in those words. Is this about the needs of the speaker or about the needs of the listener – ie myself in this case? If I cannot hear the meaning of another, maybe I need more understanding for myself first? So I need to do that and then come back to trying to get to the meaning of the words of the speaker.
Whatever and however a person expresses their truth in any given moment, be it in jackal as it usually is, or more in giraffe, as we also see sometimes – we first get clarity:
Whose needs are on the table?
Then we look at the reply and repeat the exact same thing.
Usually we witness dialogues of misunderstanding, each party puts their needs on the table – each party is misunderstood, as we see our needs in their words – and not their needs.
So these dialogues lack the understanding component and that is why they look like fights rather than communication.
In a second step I will attempt to insert giraffe understanding and show how the dialogue can evolve with these added moments of understanding.
Post-Hearsal
The principle of this exercise is “Every mess is a chance to practice.” Whenever we become aware of a moment of communication in our life, where we could have done better perhaps, we take time and see how we could have expressed ourselves differently – post-hearsal. And we can ask ourselves what would help us to do differently if a situation like this comes up again or, maybe, we want to talk to the same person and express ourselves differently.
Let’s try.
Historic Ambush in the White House (Transcript)
I will streamline the words of each party a bit, reducing them to the main points they may want to make, to have enough clarity.
| Words | Needs of Speaker | Needs of Listener |