“How many of you think you listen well, or at least moderately well?” I asked the audience of 500 real estate agents and brokers attending an annual national meeting.

Everyone raised a hand. I responded with, “How many of you would agree with me if I told you that none of you listen, ever?”

I paused and looked out at the audience. “Really? That’s interesting. Not a single person raised a hand.”

As a psychiatrist speaking to a group of hard-driving, cut-to-the-chase salespeople, I already had two strikes against me. First, I’m not a salesperson. Second, I’m a psychiatrist, and psychologist types and salespeople tend to raise each other’s hackles. At that moment, with my audience probably thinking, “What an arrogant jerk,” I was on the verge of a third strike.

I continued, “If I could prove that none of you listen, ever—and then show you how to correct this problem to make you more effective—how many of you would be interested in hearing more?”

Some of the audience raised their hands, but the look on peoples’ faces communicated a clear message: “Okay, but you’ve got one shot and then you’re toast.”

Taking that shot, I said, “I’d like you to imagine an office assistant who doesn’t get work done on time and often turns in work products with significant typos and other errors. Now, envision this person becoming defensive or angry or starting to cry if you try to address these failings.”

I asked, “How many of you can think of someone who fits that description?” Nearly the entire room erupted with raised hands. (“Hey, looks like I got them back again,” I thought.)

“Now without pulling your punches, what are the adjectives you would give such a person?” I asked. “I’ll start the ball rolling with, ‘sloppy.’”

“Lazy,” “Undisciplined,” “Lousy work ethic,” “Typical millennial attitude” (that one got a confirmatory laugh), “Flake,” members of the audience offered.

“Now,” I said, “Imagine that it’s Monday morning, and you ask, ‘Did you get the papers ready for the messenger to take to the escrow company on Wednesday?’ and the person says, ‘No.’ How many of you would again think something along the lines of ‘loser’?” Hands went up all over the room.

“And what would you do next? Upshift emotionally, and start yelling or making demands? Complain to another agent or broker? Tell someone in your office you want the person off all your deals? Or just walk away in disgust, angry about the lousy quality of people in your company?” I asked.

I saw from their faces that I’d scored a hit. Clearly, many of these agents and brokers felt this frustration daily. And because I was mirroring them accurately, they were buying in to what I was saying … so far.

“Now,” I said, “consider this. Suppose you say calmly, ‘Why didn’t you get them done?’ and the person tears up and says:

‘I actually did a lot of work on them over the weekend. I was all set to have them to you by this morning—and I will have them finished by the close of work today—but my grandfather, who has Alzheimer’s, called me last night crying. He said my grandma had a major stroke and was being taken to the hospital by ambulance. My parents are both dead, and I’m the only person who can take care of my grandparents. So I dropped everything to take care of things, and I haven’t slept the entire night. I know this isn’t the first time I’ve screwed up—but it’s been really tough taking care of both of them, and sometimes I get overwhelmed.’

“Would that change how you’d think about the person, and even how you’d respond?” I asked.

I heard murmur, murmur, murmur—the sound of shifting minds. “Of course,” a number of the people replied.

“Well then I rest my case,” I said. “You didn’t listen. What you did is what we all do. You gathered some data from your early interactions with that person, jumped to conclusions, and formed perceptions that became hard-wired with words such as: ‘lazy,’ ‘sloppy,’ ‘lousy work ethic,’ and ‘loser.’ Those words became a filter through which you heard without listening.”

The solution, I explained: Get rid of the filter. The stuff you think you already know about someone—“lazy,” “loser,” “whiny,” “hostile,” “impossible”—is, in reality, blocking out what you need to know. Remove that mental block, and you’re ready to start reaching people you thought were unreachable.

“BUT I DO LISTEN! … DON’T I?”

Right now you may be saying, “Mark, all I do is listen. I listen in meetings. I listen to my coworkers. I listen to my spouse. I listen to my kids. Nobody ever shuts up.”

And all that’s true. But the problem is that while you’re hearing, you’re not listening, no matter how good your intentions and how hard you try. The reason: Your brain won’t let you.

Remember the three-brain model I talked about earlier—mammal brain on top of reptile brain and human brain on top of mammal brain, with each one building on the one that came earlier in evolution? The instant judgments we make about people are similar, because they too build on the past. That doesn’t mean they’re entirely wrong. (In fact, an initial “gut instinct” is often spot-on.) But it means they’re not entirely right, either.

Our agents and brokers, for instance, immediately formed the opinion that their office assistant was a flake. It never even occurred to them—any of them—that the person’s behavior had a different explanation. Why? Because all their lives, they’ve heard people who don’t do a job well described as “lazy” or “slackers” or “flakes.” Their colleague fit the pattern, so they applied the same labels—and those labels stuck.

Our perceptions get hard-wired in this rigid way for a simple reason: new knowledge builds on prior knowledge. We walk after we learn to crawl. We run after we learn to walk. We type effortlessly with our thumbs on a smartphone now because earlier we fumbled over that little keyboard for months. We can drive on autopilot because our brain remembers how we did it before.

Similarly, we size up a person instantly today because we’re relying on everything we’ve heard or known about people in the past. Then we stick with that perception forever, and view every interaction with that person through its filter, because (again) it’s what we’ve learned to do.

The problem is that while we think our first impressions of people are grounded solely in logic, they’re not. In reality, they’re a jumbled mix of conscious and unconscious truth, fiction, and prejudice. Thus, from the very start, we’re dealing with a fictitious creation—not a real person. Yet that first impression will color our feelings about another person for months or years to come. It’ll also affect how we listen to that person, because we’ll distort everything the person says to fit our preconceived notions.

HOW MANY FILTERS DO YOU HAVE?

My friend Rick Middleton, founder of the Los Angeles–based communication company Executive Expression, uses the GGNEE model to describe how we put people in mental boxes before we even know them. Rick says that without realizing it, we categorize people instantly in the following sequence:

Gender

Generation (age)

Nationality (or ethnicity)

Education Level

Emotion

The sequence goes in this order because we see a person’s gender, generation, and nationality first, hear the person’s education level second, and feel the person’s level of emotionality third. Keep the GGNEE model in mind, and it’ll help you to spot subconscious filters that keep you from listening to—and reaching—other people.

Why do our minds work in this seemingly illogical way? Because much of the time, forming rigid opinions about people actually works. For instance, picture yourself boarding a crowded subway train. Your first impressions will tell you to stay away from the unwashed guy with a weird look in his eye, to sit by the old lady with the knitting basket, and to avoid eye contact with a hostile-looking teen in Goth makeup. Individually, each of these conclusions may be wrong—the Goth teen may very well be a brilliant and sensitive kid who needs a smile, the weirdo might be a harmless eccentric, and Grandma might be working for Al Qaeda—but you don’t have time to analyze every person you meet. Instead, your brain builds on past experience and innate instinct to make quick decisions that may save your life.

So being a quick study isn’t a bad thing. It only becomes bad if your quick study is inaccurate and leads you to the wrong conclusions. Unfortunately that happens to us every single day, because our brains are far better at leaping to conclusions than at stepping back to analyze them.

The solution? Think about what you’re thinking. When you consciously analyze the ideas you’ve formed about a person and weigh these perceptions against reality, you can rewire your brain and build new, more accurate perceptions. Then you’ll be communicating with the person who’s really in front of you—not the fictitious character conjured up by your false perceptions.

To see this process in action, let’s go back to the agents and brokers and their frustration over their “flaky” office assistant. Initially, most of these high achievers looked at such people rigidly: Shoddy work + excuses/defensiveness/blaming = flake = why bother even putting the time or effort into dealing with this person? But when I asked them to imagine that a “loser” might have a real reason for underperforming, it forced them to undo their hard-wired preconceptions. This act, in turn, forced them to create a new and more accurate understanding of the person they’d previously written off.

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THE PEOPLE YOU KNOW?

“Mark,” you may say, “That’s all well and good. But how about the people I’ve known for years? I don’t have false ideas about these people. In fact, I know them as well as I know myself.”

My answer is: “No—you don’t.” Every week I deal with people who’ve lived together or worked together for decades. Often, these people don’t have a clue about what makes each other tick. As a result, they mistake insecurity for arrogance, fear for stubbornness, and legitimate anger for “he’s just a jerk.” And they talk over, around, above, and against each other, without ever talking to each other—when all they need is to see what’s really right in front of them.

Mr. and Mrs. Jackson were a good example. The two had been married to each other for 55 years, and they came to see me at Mrs. Jackson’s insistence when their bickering reached such intensity that Mr. Jackson said coldly, “So, why don’t you just leave?”

He’d said that many times before, but for some reason this time Mrs. Jackson became hurt and angry, packed his bags, and told him to get out. And this time she didn’t back down. Mr. Jackson became a little panicky, because at age 82 he was very dependent on her. She said she’d only reconsider if they spoke to a counselor.

As I listened to them, it became clear that they actually still loved and were devoted to each other—but they’d stopped liking each other. After 20 minutes, I’d heard enough and said, “Stop!” to both of them.

Taken aback, they both fell silent. I said to Mrs. Jackson, “Do you know that your husband thinks marrying you was the best thing he ever did?”

Mrs. Jackson, caught surprised, said, “What?”

Without missing a beat, Mr. Jackson replied, “He is absolutely right. I supplied a house, but she gave me a home. Without her I wouldn’t belong anywhere, and without her I wouldn’t have any relationship with our kids because as an engineer, I am not the best communicator.”

Mrs. Jackson looked dumbfounded. I turned my attention to Mr. Jackson and said, “And as for you, do you know that Mrs. Jackson thinks you’re the best man she’s ever known?”

I thought his jaw was going to fall off. “You’ve got to be kidding; she’s always picking on me about something and telling me what to do and what not to do,” he replied, flabbergasted.

“One hundred percent correct,” Mrs. Jackson chimed in. “He is the best man I have ever known. True, he’s not much of a communicator. But he never drank or fooled around with other women. And he worked hard at a job he didn’t like to support me and the kids.”

“But what about all that nitpicking?”

Mr. Jackson interjected. Mrs. Jackson replied, “I nitpick everyone. I’m a nitpicker. It drives our kids crazy too, but like I say, he is also probably the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Talk about a couple who’d heard but not listened for decades! Sadly, they each felt merely tolerated when in fact they were each treasured. And look what happened when they finally did listen. They’d arrived so angry they could barely look at each other, but they left looking like two people who’d just fallen in love all over again. And all it took was a few minutes of real listening—something they hadn’t done for over five decades.

After more than half a century of living together, the Jacksons knew thousands of things about each other. He knew what kind of ketchup she liked. She knew his childhood dog’s name. They knew each other’s health problems, bathroom habits, and favorite TV shows. And yet, when it came to the big stuff, they were complete strangers.

What does that tell you? That you probably know a lot less than you think you do about the people you want to reach, whether they’re new in your life or people you’ve known forever. That what you think you know may be very wrong. And that reaching these people doesn’t just mean opening their minds to you. It also means rewiring yourself so you can see these people as they really are.

So when you encounter problem people, realize that there’s a reason they’re behaving the way they do. It may be a new problem: a health scare, money problems, or job pressures. It may be a long-term problem: anxiety about not being good enough for a job, anger at not being respected, fear that you don’t find them attractive or intelligent. And, yes: It may be that they’re actually just jerks (but they’re usually not). Open your own mind and look for the reasons behind the behavior, and you’ll take the first step toward breaking down barriers and communicating with an “impossible” person.

  Usable Insight

If you want to open the lines of communication, open your own mind first.

  Action Step

Think of a “problem person” you don’t know very well—someone who misses deadlines, blows up for no apparent reason, acts hostile, is oversensitive to criticism, or otherwise drives you nuts. Make a mental list of the words you’d use to describe the person: lazy, slacker, rude, jerk, etc.

Now, think of five secrets that could underlie the person’s behavior (for example, “he’s scared about a medical condition,” “she’s afraid that we don’t respect her because of her age,” “he’s a recovering alcoholic and has some bad days,” “she has post-traumatic stress disorder,” “he got burned by a previous business partner and now he doesn’t trust people”). Picture how your feelings about the person would change in each scenario you imagine.

Once you’ve used this exercise to open your mind, schedule a meeting or a lunch with the person—and see if you can find out the real reason for the problem behaviors you see.