Dr. Eric Frazer, PSY.D.

Chapter 32: Perspective Taking

My belief is that perspective taking can only be developed if one has sufficient selfawareness. So, perhaps, revisit the self-awareness chapter for an updated selfappraisal. Have you ever been in a room and there’s certain people who instantly inform you “it’s all about them.” Diminished perspective taking. Alternatively, healthy perspective taking is born out of knowing one’s strengths, weaknesses, preferences, avoidances, and the capacity to hold multiple points of view in one’s mind without clinging to any of them. Here’s some ways to approach this skill by practicing questions like these:

Why is it a good idea to help develop this person?

Why is it a bad idea to help develop this person?

How can I better understand this person’s point of view?

What is this person really trying to communicate to me: What’s behind the anger/ frustration/disappointment?

Is this person capable of having genuine feedback?

I was coaching an executive at the request of an organization’s leadership team to help him develop perspective taking, which had become visibly noticeable in a series of poor hires, poor delegation, and resistance to feedback from people in the C-suite. I realized in the very first encounter that his defensiveness (extremely disproportionate) was going to be a huge obstacle, even with compassionate leadership coaching coming from yours truly. It remained as such and ultimately, he was fired. The problem was not perspective taking at the core; it was self-awareness. He had extraordinary technical skills, but a few ‘people skills’ that were deficient. For his role and responsibility the absence of those skills was unsustainable.

Another specialty pharmaceutical company I consulted to last year was growing at light speed, but struggling with simply having enough workers. Burnout was at a critical high and I had never seen such a high level of cross-functional anger. The CEO lost perspective taking and was looking too far ahead instead of looking at the dismay of the employees. A lot of people planned on quitting and probably did.

The Exercise:

This begins with one of self-awareness. Think of the person who you know best—literally everything about that person’s preferences. Next, think about the actions you undertook to have that degree of perspective-taking for that person—or stated otherwise the ability to appreciate their point of view in a non-judgmental way. You have the capacity to apply those same skills in professional relationships. One place to start is active-listening. (Go back to this skill).