Stephen R. Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Eff People pdf

Application Suggestions
1. Select a relationship in which you sense the Emotional Bank Account is in the red. Try 
to understand and write down the situation from the other person's point of view. In 
your next interaction, listen for understanding, comparing what you are hearing with 
what you wrote down. How valid were your assumptions? Did you really understand 
that individual's perspective.
2. Share the concept of empathy with someone close to you. Tell him or her you want to 
work on really listening to others and ask for feedback in a week. How did you do? How 
did it make that person feel.
3. The next time you have an opportunity to watch people communicate, cover your ears 
for a few minutes and just watch. What emotions are being communicated that may not 
come across in words alone.
4. Next time you catch yourself inappropriately using one of the autobiographical 
responses -probing, evaluating, advising, or interpreting -- try to turn the situation into a 
deposit by acknowledgment and apology. ("I'm sorry, I just realized I'm not really trying 
to understand. Could we start again?")
5. Base your next presentation on empathy. Describe the other point of view as well as or 
better than its proponents; then seek to have your point understood from their frame of 
reference.
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