Monday’s Mantra

Happy Monday and thanks so much for stopping by for Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power and Monday’s Mantra at Trench Classes United. Grab your iced coffee and come on in.

Seek to understand, not be understood…

The other day, I was at a videoconference video-taped deposition, the first one I’ve ever done in 27+ years of court reporting. I had to swear in the witness and the interpreter and the witness via the videoconference and the witness’ attorney was over there as well. I never saw him, just heard him. It was surreal, and to think this is the direction we’re headed. Oops, sorry, I won’t go down that detour.

Anyway, we finally get going, got all the kinks worked out and within the first few minutes the interpreter is very assertively telling counsel, who was at the conference table with me and the videographer, to repeat his question; he couldn’t hear it. Counsel repeated his question and I settled in my seat, going between my little machine, my computer and my phone. Yes, I was definitely multi-tasking; when there’s an interpreter, it always takes a bit longer, but it can also be confusing when the interpreter begins to repeat the question spoken in English to Spanish. It gives me an opportunity to check my messagesJ

But that was not to be the case this day because every couple of questions, an irritated interpreter would practically shout, “Counsel, counsel, I can’t hear you; interpreter asks for a repeat,” or “Counsel, stop; I didn’t get that, please repeat your question,” and so on.

After three hours of this, I could literally touch my frustration, and that of counsel sitting across the table from me. It was incomprehensible to me that we could hear everyone just fine, including the witness trying to speak in English, and the interpreter could not hear the questions posed by counsel who was enunciating very well, speaking slowly and clearly.  I was trying desperately not to show my frustration, especially when I looked at how few pages we had accumulated after several hours (we get paid by the page so as a reporter, the more pages the better) only 62 pages after four hours! The average is 50 pages an hour so by rights, we should have been turning the corner towards 200 pages.

As the minutes crept into hours, and the interpreter became even more frustratingly assertive, I had a thought: Why don’t I try and come at this from his point of view? Surely he’s not being this way for no reason! Maybe he really can’t hear and as a reporter, I certainly can empathize with that type of frustration because we have a job to do. Maybe I should seek to understand him versus making it all about me and trying to be understood.

Now, this principle truly applies in so many areas of our lives all having to do with the gift of relationships…seeking to understand versus trying to be understood wins every time! Coffee Hour Friend, who needs your understanding? Whom can you practice this principle with today?

By the way, I finished the day after six hours with just under 200 pages…and I’m grateful for the reminder and not just the pages!

Learning and unlearning

Evinda