Accurately grasping another's position first raises the chance of changing it, and doing so is rarer than it appears.
Covey's habit inverts the usual order, in which each party prepares its reply during the other's turn. The stricter form of the same discipline is the requirement to state the opponent's case well enough that they endorse the statement, which most people who believe they understand a position cannot do.
In practice
- A negotiator who can state the other side's constraint in their own words finds the trade that was available.
- A rebuttal that the other party does not recognise as their position has refuted something else.
- Standing
- Consistent with work on the illusion of explanatory depth and on perspective-taking; also compare the ideological Turing test, which supplies a stricter version of the same test.
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Rules for speaking, writing and disagreeing