This approach connects to the quality of attunementāin particular, the finding that lowering your status can enhance your powers of perspective-taking. And it demonstrates that as with servant leadership, the wisest and most ethical way to move others is to proceed with humility and gratitude.
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Perspective-taking is at the heart of our first essential quality in moving others today. Attunement is the ability to bring oneās actions and outlook into harmony with other people and with the context youāre in.
The research shows that effective perspective-taking, attuning yourself with others, hinges on three principles.
1. Increase your power by reducing itā¦
As the researchers conclude, āpower leads individuals to anchor too heavily on their own vantage point, insufficiently adjusting to othersā perspective.ā
The results of these studies, part of a larger body of research, point to a single conclusion: an inverse relationship between power and perspective-taking. Power can move you off the proper position on the dial and scramble the signals you receive, distorting clear messages and obscuring more subtle onesā¦
2. Use your head as much as your heartā¦
Perspective-taking is a cognitive capacity; itās mostly about thinking. Empathy is an emotional response; itās mostly about feeling. Both are crucialā¦
This second principle of attunement also means recognizing that individuals donāt exist as atomistic units, disconnected from groups, situations, and contexts. And that requires training oneās perspective-taking powers not only on people themselves but also on their relationships and connections to othersā¦
3. Mimic strategicallyā¦
People therefore looked to cues in the environment to determine whom they could trust. āOne of those cues is the unconscious awareness of whether we are in synch with other people, and a way to do that is to match their behavioral patterns with our own.ā Synching our mannerisms and vocal patterns to someone else so that we both understand and can be understood is fundamental to attunementā¦
The key is to be strategic and humanāto be strategic by being human.
The first principle of improvisationāhearing offersāhinges on attunement, leaving our own perspective to inhabit the perspective of another.
In most circumstances that involve moving others, we have several ways to accomplish a task, most of which can make our partners look good in the process.
Every circumstance in which we try to move others by definition involves another human being. Yet in the name of professionalism, we often neglect the human element and adopt a stance thatās abstract and distant. Instead, we should recalibrate our approach so that itās concrete and personalāand not for softhearted reasons but for hardheaded ones.