David Brook’s book, How to know a person, is a deep dive into the art of “seeing” people. According to him, being an adult is not just having information but also having a compassionate understanding of people’s feelings and their lives and giving them recognition. “Seeing others” is giving them this recognition. It is understanding people’s innate desires, fears, motivators, perspectives and respecting their feelings. It is a powerful phenomenon that can often bring up people’s capabilities and make them feel valued. This is not just important in personal relationships like between parents and children and spouses but also in corporate setups between managers and employees. The worst thing you can do to a person is not acknowledge them and make them feel like they don’t matter. In this post, I try to summarise my key takeaways from the book.
Diminisher vs Illuminator
Diminishers are so self involved that they ignore people and make them feel unimportant. They see people as things to be used and not befriended and understood. They do not recognise others’ perspectives and how they feel. Diminisher proclivities are listed in the next section. These are the reasons why people have trouble seeing others.
An illuminator actually “sees” people and makes attempts to understand them, often taking the time to listen to their childhood stories and what motivates them. An illuminator is curious about others and often sees the potential people themselves don’t notice in themselves. Illuminators follow certain common patterns that allows them to see people. This is again discussed at length in the sections that follow. It must be said that being an illuminator is an ideal and not an end goal. We all don’t end up becoming illuminators, it’s a journey and we can all take steps to be better at illuminating others.
Why people have trouble seeing others
Most of us are not illuminators and have trouble seeing others. This is because of the following reasons:
- Sizing people up - We make generalisations about them by making snap opinions based on how they look or what they wear or talk about
- Egotism - We are simply not curious about the actions of others and are very swift to pass judgements and make assumptions
- Anxiety - We’re generally so self involved and have so much noise in our own heads because of our own anxieties. It prevents us from listening intently to people
- Naive realism - We think the way the world appears to us is the objective truth and so everyone must see the world the same way
- Objectivism - We think collecting data or information about people’s actions gives us an understanding about them, but in reality, collective data is linked to groups and not individuals. Individual actions are often driven by complex subjective factors
- Static mindset - We beleive people don’t change with time and maturity and so we don’t change our own models about how we think of them. Everyone changes with time and so we must remain open to changing our opinions about them
How to see people
Some qualities that illuminators possess that lets them see other people are as follows:
- Tenderness - They have a Ted Lasso type attitude (in case you haven’t seen this show, I highly recommend it). It is about having a deep emotional concern about others and being open to finding similarities with them.
- Receptivity - They overcome their own insecurities and self preoccupation and are open to adopting new views by being attentive to other people’s outlooks
- Active curiosity - They are genuinely curious about other cultures, beliefs, customs, norms, etc, and wonder what it would be like to be the other person
- Knowing - In many cultures in the world the idea of knowing is not just intellectual or informational but is a whole body experience. The best illuminators “know” a lot of things by experiencing them
- Generosity - They are of a generous spirit that helps them understand a persons perspectives and relate to them
- Holistic attitude - They strive to see the whole person and resist the urge to simplify the person and rob them of their contradictions
In case you’re wondering, we must care about seeing others, as how we see others, defines our actions and that way of acting, becomes our life.
“Every epistemology becomes an ethic, The shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living; the relation of the knower to the known becomes the relation of the living self to the larger world.” - Parker J. Palmer
Accompaniment
One of the ways, the author, believes, we can see others is through accompaniment. This is not a forced physical accompaniment but just being conscious of others close to us as we go about our daily life. 95% of what we do everyday is just going about our business while being in the company of so many other people. This makes for opportunities to “accompany” them. Accompaniment can help us get to know other people slowly and without effort (often called ‘negative effort’). It’s like parents spending time with an infant who gets to know them but without the use of words and just through play.
Aldous Huxley said “Experience is not what happens to you, its what you do with what happens to you”. Being in the presence of others helps us gain perspective on how experiences shape mindsets. This is also linked to the philosophical idea of “constructionism”, which says people don’t passively absorb reality, they actively create their own based on their experiences.
Great conversations
This is such a deeper and important point that it warrants its own post but I will briefly touch upon it here. There is a design concept called “affordances” which is about how the design of an object suggests its use. For example, a door handle suggests that you should pull it. Similarly, people also have affordances or a range of actions we can perform in any given situation. When we enter a group or a conversation, we seek out ways to fit in and act and be of value. We perceive the world not as is but as it is for us. When we are able to fit in, we feel satisfied, when we don’t, we act out. An import aspect of having great conversations is to resist the urge to think of someone as being irrational. People are irrational about things they hold sacred. That’s where people get angry and defensive and lash out. It also causes ”conceptual blindness” when people don’t see their outdated models of looking at the world. The best way to have a great conversation is to be open to the idea that you don’t have all the information.
Wisdom
I really liked how Brooks ended the book by defining “wisdom”. Wisdom is about knowing people and actually seeing them. It is not about offering a crisp solution or mantras but truly recognising the struggles of people. It is believing that people are truly on a path and their current state is but a position. Wise people are not philosophers but coaches, who accept other people’s stories and help them clarify what it is they really want.
I run a startup called Harmonize. We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, I tweet about startup life and practical wisdom in books.