Decision Making (#1 of a short series)

I’ve spent the last few years writing this newsletter about communication. I started doing that because I saw (as many of us see) that we and our co-workers often make decisions that turn out badly, and those disappointing results can usually be traced back to two elements: lack of necessary information and a lack of objective understanding of the facts. Because these are the biggest shortcomings in our decision making, I write and speak about them the most (how do we get better information and develop a better understanding). However,  they aren’t the ONLY problems with our decision making so today I will start a multi-article series about how to improve our decision making with ideas NOT centered on face-to-face communication.

When we talk about “problems with decision quality” we have to start with a definition of a good decision as our reference. If I ask 10 people “how can you tell if a business decision was a good one?”, I will almost always hear “I don’t know”, which is a little troubling. After some discussion I will generally hear “you can say that a business decision is good if you got a good result”. That is, if we:

·         wanted to enter a new market

·         decided that certain design changes would be important to that market

·         made the design changes

·         began competing in that market

then our decisions were good, because we got a good result.

Really? So you can’t tell if a decision is good until you get a result? Decision experts tell us that that is a bad way to look at things BECAUSE it gives us an excuse to relax the rigor of our decision making and rush through the process of making them. I mean, if you can’t tell if the decision is good until you get a result, then you don’t need to bother with being rigorous; you need to get the result and then adjust.

This lack of understanding regarding decision making cripples countless business efforts and reduces our willingness to hold accountable our decision making process. Of course we want our decisions to yield good results, and by identifying and considering the important factors involved and methods used in making decisions, we can improve our decisions markedly. Let’s start with a new definition for a good decision:

A good business decision is one that has been made in a way that assures:

·         that rigor has been applied in the objective identification and consideration of the expected impact of the outcome terms of:

o   benefit and consequence

o   permanence

o   strength to bind the stakeholders to the outcome

·         that rigor has been applied in the objective identification and analysis of the information upon which the decision will be based

·         that the rigor applied is proportional to the impact of the decision, and therefore efficient in the use of the resources required to make it

Over the next few weeks I will describe how such a decision making method is implemented and how all of the elements of a good decision are defined and determined. 

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Listening (part 5 of 5)

Happy August, everyone! I had to excuse myself from the Pathfinder Newsletter in order to take care of a few situations that required my immediate and full time attention, but now am back and am closing on the article about listening.

In this installment on the subject, I will cover the four things that a skilled communicator needs to know in order to keep a difficult conversation on track. They are:

1) Reduce the likelihood of our counterpart “shifting away” from constructive to defensive conversation.

2) Remedy things if they DO shift away.

3) Reduce the likelihood of shifting away from our counterpart ourselves.

4) Re-center ourselves if we have inadvertently shifted away from our counterpart.

Your counterpart can shift into a defensive mindset for a lot of reasons, and there are some over which you have influence. By using the skills described in THE SCORE, you will be able to exert the most influence in keeping them engaged in a constructive conversation. More on this subject is here.

 In order to keep our counterpart from shifting into a defensive mode, we use the knowledge that the feeling we experience are not so much about what we see or hear, but what we tell ourselves about what we see or hear. In some of my presentations, I tell a story that leads the listeners into reacting based on a generalization (sharks are dangerous, for instance) and then reveal some specifics that, had they known them, their reaction would have been different and more rational.

 Applying this well-known mechanism to an exchange with a counterpart requires us to detect their defensiveness. Defensiveness is not always expressed with anger or silence. Sometimes it is expressed with:

·         Sarcasm (“oh, that’s a GREAT idea” doesn’t always mean that your counterpart thinks you are a genius!)

·         Control (“were you going to wear THAT tonight?”)

·         Withdrawal for the conversation (“whatever”, silence)

 and other responses that aren’t clear communications – they are ways people indicate what they would LIKE to say, but won’t say because they don’t feel safe in saying it. Your primary job as a communicator is to ensure that the other person feels safe in talking to you. The techniques we cover in these newsletters are used by professionals like hostage negotiators and crisis managers for that very reason – to make people feel comfortable to talk even in highly charged situations. More information is available here.

 When we find ourselves shifting into a defensive mode, the first opportunity is when we feel as if the other party has made an attack on our dignity or that we are not being heard. This usually happens when our counterpart says something to us and we feel angry about it. Do you recognize this as just a case of us telling ourselves a story about what the other person meant and being angry over our story? If so, you are well on your way to understanding how to correct the situation. A good method for this is to first recognize that you are responsible for your stories and its best to get clarification by asking your counterpart “ what do you mean by that” or “that’s interesting – tell me more about that” or “can you say that a different way? I need to understand just what you mean”. The purpose of this is to give yoru counterpart the benefit of the doubt and ask for more words so that you can come to understand what was meant.

Next time, we’re going to talk about the elements that go into making good decisions.


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Evidence

Last time, we covered how to analyze the two main things we talk about at work (the way things are, and the way they should be) and I gave the methods for analyzing those questions that were written down by Aristotle 2500 years ago. I promised that this time we would talk about how to resolve the two “subtype” claims – those of quality and those of definition. Let’s do it.

Claims of quality (also called claims of value) are, not surprisingly, claims that attempt to attribute a quality or a value to something. When we refer to things as being “good”, “best”, “healthy”, “kinky”, “large”, “difficult”, “worst”, “regrettable”, and so on,  we are attributing a quality that has either a) a non-specific or relative meaning, or b) a meaning that is not easily definable on its own. When we refer to a car as “large”, for instance, what do we mean? How big is a large car? A test that I use for this kind of thing is a test of universality. That is, if I hear a claim and think that in the context it was made that anybody would get more or less the same picture in their mind, then I don’t make much of an analysis. On the other hand, if the claim is subjective and I think it is important for all the parties to have a clear understanding of exactly what is meant, I begin to ask clarifying questions.

The first question is – “Which value should be used to evaluate the subject?”

A claim of value might state that “Quality is more important than on-time delivery”. The phrase “more important” is the “value” phrase here. It could be “more difficult” or “more profitable”. The point is that it is a phrase that has a clear meaning to me, but maybe not the SAME meaning to everyone. So we need to question what is meant by “more important”. Is it more important to the customer? To us? And HOW is it more important - in what way? To the customer’s desire to do business with us? To their ability to be profitable? To our need to meet certain contract requirements? We would hopefully be able to come up with a statement like “Quality is critical to our customer because they don’t have equipment to do rework. It would be better to be late and of good quality than on-time and need to be returned"

This statement still has a problem; it says “it would be better…” which is another claim of value. We would like to have a standard to which we can measure that value. Therefore…

The second question is – “What standards are used to measure competing values?” Are we comparing this to customer needs? Industry norms? Military Standards? Our own business restrictions?

We may ask the customer for a guideline in our case statement. Let’s say that we tell them that we need a guideline to help us with these decisions if we are faced with a minor quality discrepancy, how much time would you be willing to risk? Let’s say they answer “Five days. It would be better for a shipment to be five or fewer days late and be of good quality than for us to have to find a local supplier to do the rework for us”. Now we have a customer supplied guideline. We could revise the statement to say “Quality is critical to our customer because they don’t have equipment to do rework. We may ship up to five days late if it means they receive quality goods”.

After the second question, we have transformed our claim of value into a claim of fact. We can therefore test it the same way – now that we have a standard, we ask if that standard was met. Therefore…

The third question is – “Have those standards been met?” Whatever standards we settled on at the second question must be measurable to the degree that we can settle the question. In our test case, we ask if we meet the five day window or not.  

A claim of definition is one in which a word is associated to a definition. You think this is not complex, but it is at the center of argumentation. Developing definitions is CENTRAL to controlling the flow of a discussion and much time is spent in developing evidence to support them.

To resolve a claim of definition, we follow the same strategy (convert it to a claim of fact) but with different questions.

The first question we ask about a claim of definition is “Is it relevant if the term is defined?” If it doesn’t matter, then let it pass. If we need to know what it means, then this is a CRITICALLY important question. If we say “Capital Punishment is murder”, then we are saying that capital punishments is illegal (‘murder’ indicates a life taken unlawfully). If we say “Capital Punishment is killing, and killing is wrong”, then we are offering a moral rather than legal definition but we have to then support attacks on our position like “is it wrong for a soldier to kill? Or in self defense? Because if it is alright to kill in those cases, then not ALL killing is wrong. And isn’t capital punishment more like societal self-defense?” as I said, definition (and learning how to RE-define things in an argument) are critical when it comes to persuasion.

The second question we ask is “Is the definition fair?” That is, does it represent a biased point of view or not? Sometimes we might not like the definition, but if it is unbiased we need to consider it. For instance, in the case of “the product is ready to launch”, we may be listening to an engineer who means that “the design is complete” or a marketing manager describing that “the campaign is designed”. Both of these could be true, but the bias may lead us to believe that more has been done than truly has been.

The third question we ask is “How do we choose between competing definitions?” You say the product is ready to launch, and I say it’s not. How do we choose? We may suggest that we defer to an authoritative source like a Systems Engineering definition, or a Project Management definition, or just a dictionary if it applies. We may agree that we need some criteria that define what “product launch” means to us. We may defer to the definition that the company president uses. Maybe we’ll ask our customers what would constitute readiness, like “is the training ready yet?” Whatever method we use to make the choice, the choice needs to be made.

Again, we are converting the claim of definition to a claim of fact by asking these questions, and testing it by asking for evidence.

Oh, yeah – evidence. This week, all I want you to ponder about evidence is that there are only kinds of evidence. Ever.

1 – Credibility: The person making the statement is credible, and because they are, we accept what they tell us.

2 – Objective Evidence: This is something we can examine or review like something tangible or testimony.

3 – Social Consensus – This is something we all agree to. If we don’t agree to it, then we have to find one of the other two kinds of evidence to support it. Think about a statement like “Democracy is better than Tyranny”. We accept it at face value because we all agree with it.

Since there are just three kinds of evidence, I will get through them all next time AND be able to describe how you rate the strength of a specific piece of evidence.

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Listen (4 of 5)

We’ve been talking about the fine art of listening for the last few newsletters because of its critical importance to being a good communicator, and we have progressed to talking about how to sense problems in our communication. It is important to be keenly aware of when a problem in a given communication starts, because they seldom get better with more talking. In fact,they can often escalate very quickly.

As you talk to your counterpart, you pretty much stay on the subject. If, for instance, you are talking about a project at work, then the discussion stays on a factual exchange about things related to the project – due date, deliverables, requirements, budget, resources – things like that. That is the kind of discussion we are hoping for, and many times we get it. But sometimes we hear things that don’t fit exactly when, say, we are proposing an idea ….like these:

1.       Our counterpart responds sarcastically, saying “Oh SURE, why don’t I just do that TOO?”

2.       Our counterpart starts avoiding giving direct responses, instead favoring language that doesn’t help us make decisions. They are RESPONDING, but not ANSWERING.

3.       Our counterpart starts “building suggestions” into questions, like saying “Well, you aren’t going to let them get away with that, are you?” In other words, telling you but NOT telling you.

4.       Our counterpart makes a statement and we become annoyed or uncomfortable and no longer feel safe to answer as we would like, so we stay silent.

As I teach in my classes, these changes are due to the meaning that the LISTENER attaches to whatever the SPEAKER has said. The LISTENER interprets the SPEAKER’S words and reacts. The LISTENER, then, has the power to determine if they will continue to move towards the desired outcome, or divert the conversation.  In the first three examples above, our counterpart is reacting to us in an unexpected way and we can see that they have “shifted away” the mutually beneficial, fact-based discussion we had been enjoying and towards a more guarded or cautious mode. In the fourth example, WE are the ones doing the shifting.

It is important to be observant for these kinds of shifts as we talk. In the next newsletter, we will talk about THE SCORE, which is a method to reduce the likelihood of our counterpart shifting away from us. When we see our counterpart shifting away from “responsible adult communication” it is important to try to remedy the situation. We will learn to re-engage them by asking some specific questions about their reaction. This is an activity called “Name the Game” and we will talk about it in the next newsletter. It is easy, non-confrontational, and has a good success rate for putting things back on course.

When we feel ourselves shifting, however, it is critical that we address ourselves right away. Our counterpart is not skilled in trying to prevent our shifting, and may unwittingly press our hot buttons. When they hit one and feel ourselves moving out of the “safe zone” and into either fear or anger, we need to be able to re-center ourselves quickly. So we have certain stories we will tell ourselves about what the counterpart just said in order to allow us to change the way we feel about it.

Next time will talk about the following four things to close on the topic of listening for now:

1)      How to reduce the likelihood of our counterpart “shifting away” by knowing THE SCORE.

2)      How to remedy things if they DO shift away.

3)      How to reduce the likelihood of shifting away from our counterpart by using active inquiry.

4)      How to re-center ourselves after we have inadvertently shifted away from our counterpart.

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Listening (3 of 5)

Think of a time when you were exchanging perspectives with someone, and it was important to you to be “right” (that is, for your counterpart to accept your perspective as the better perspective). If you are like most of us, you were only thinking about what YOU had to SAY. You may have told yourself you were “listening”, but you were likely only listening selectively, waiting for them to say something you could attack. As soon as they said it, you either interrupted them, or began formulating what you were going to say as soon as they stopped talking.

This is the way MOST of us get through these discussions because we are not trained in how to conduct them and, because MOST of us do it that way, we think it is alright. It isn’t, and if you have been reading my articles, attending my presentations, taking my classes, or talking to me you already KNOW it isn’t alright. It is actually one of the big reasons your conversations fail to get the results you want.

You aren’t listening, your counterpart KNOWS it, and it justifies them not listening to you – so they don’t.  The conversation is hardly a conversation at all – it is like two televisions facing each other…two talking heads and NO communication. Since YOU are the one that wants to get the good result, YOU need to be the one to break the “not listening” cycle.

 When the other side is talking, clear your mind regarding what your perspective is (you already KNOW what you think, and you will get time to share it). Listen to THEIR side. If they are saying something you don’t understand (never mind about agreeing or disagreeing… only if you don’t understand), ask them what they mean.

 “When you say ‘the best way for us to control our expenses is by simplifying our needs’, what do you mean by that?”

No preconceived notions, no accusation, no predicting their answer, no judgments, and most of all NO COMPARISON to your position – just a simple question to help YOU understand where they are coming from. Your listening to them does NOT mean you are agreeing with them, it JUST means you want to know what they have to say. You’d be surprised at the number of people that say they NEED to interrupt their counterpart because listening to them after they say something you disagree with ‘feels’ like you are indicating agreement by being silent. The truth is that you are permitted (and responsible) to LISTEN to the other person fully before deciding if you agree, disagree, partially agree….whatever. IF you choose to interrupt, however, you are telling the person that their continuing to speak is unnecessary and unwanted. And that’s how they will feel and act. And we're back to two televisions.

Watch your counterpart’s eyes, hands, and mouth as you speak. They may begin to speak and then stop themselves – obviously they want to interrupt. They may “goldfish” (open and close their mouth without making a sound) – again, they want to interrupt. Usually a hand that touches the mouth (or look like they are going to touch their mouth) is a body language cue that indicates they want to interrupt but are stopping themselves. Their looking away as you speak may mean the same thing – or they may be giving you a cue to stop talking.

The best way to prevent them from being distracted while you talk is to give them your full attention while THEY talk. Likely, if they are a new acquaintance or you have not worked through a disagreement with them before, they may not initially recognize the need to reciprocate your good listening skills. I recommend that you take the initiative and tell them that “I think this exchange will get the best result if we treat it like that – like an exchange in which I listen to YOUR side and you listen to MINE….fully. Then once we feel we understand both sides, we can talk about the differences, OK?”

They likely feel (like most people do) that continuing to listen after you say something with which they disagree is like agreeing. If they behave that way, tell them that you recognize that this a disagreement; that is you both have different opinions on the topic and that in order to resolve it you both need to understand what the differences are.

There is some old advice that says “Don’t ever argue with a fanatic” and I have come to believe that in most cases that is a good policy. My test for a fanatic is to ask “is there ANYTHING I could say, or is there ANY information that you could hear from ANY source, that would tell you that there is a possibility that a perspective exists on this subject besides yours that might be valid?” If the person says no, then I usually choose to end the discussion. In many cases, I find that my time is best spent discussing the situation with people that CAN accept alternate perspectives on the subject AND that have influence on my counterpart. Usually, once they see a couple of people whom they consider respectable or powerful adopt a new perspective, they either “see the light” or figure “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Listening (2 of 5)

As we start off our second article about the most important communication skill (listening), I want to share how the articles on this topic are going to tie together.

1)      Last time, we gave an overview of the role of listening in persuasion and influence (what some might call the “end game” of communication) and then gave more detailed information on the BASICS of listening.

2)      This time we will talk about the perspective a good listener takes in a conversation in order to send the right message and maximize natural collaboration in a discussion occurring in which the relationships are good and both parties want to collaborate. In other words, under the best circumstances.

3)      The next article will give information to help you determine if the flow of conversation with the other party is open and progressing productively or not. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether your counterpart is having difficulty in sharing their best and truest thoughts with you, or if you just THINK they are. We will talk about how to improve the circumstances and quality of collaboration “on the fly”

4)      The next article will be about what to do when the circumstances aren’t the best. For instance, when your listening skills tell you that the other party is not being forthcoming (getting answers is like pulling teeth) or that there are forces at work (ego, competition, or politics) that keep “natural” collaboration from being the first concern.

 Because you are now concentrating on developing the listening skill we talked about last time, let’s start by talking about the “good listener’s perspective”. This is the perspective we take because we want to create a feeling of safety in the conversation. If people don’t feel safe, they won’t share thoughts that may contradict yours or those of people they feel may react badly because they don’t want to expose themselves to potential backlash – they want to avoid repercussions.  So creating a safe conversation environment is your first objective. And remember – it is YOU they have to trust, and so YOU must alter YOUR perspective in order to authentically create the environment, It is NOT up to them.

 When I say a “safe” environment, I mean one that reduces defensiveness to a minimum. Remember that the first thing you are doing is listening. That means you are paying attention to them and NOT thinking about other things, not even about the way YOU feel about the topic. YOU are simply trying to understand their perspective. You are NOT trying to change it, or come to agree with it. you only want to understand how they think and feel and their reasoning. Here are some tips:

·         Be empathetic (don’t condemn, argue, or patronize)

·         Be involved and engaged (don’t be intense)

·         Allow your body language to facilitate the free flow of information (don’t over react physically)

·         Disclose information about yourself, a little at a time (not too much, and not too soon – as long as you are the listener, you are not the star)

·         Respect the context of the speaker’s remarks

·         Examine the speaker’s  body language for demeanor as well as listening to words

·         Try not to think about what you're going to say next. Simply focus on what the other person says

·         Paraphrasing what you heard demonstrates to the other person that you're listening

·         Asking questions demonstrates curiosity. Asking GOOD questions allows your counterpart to go deeper into what they care about and demonstrates a rare interest that deepens relationships.

 Each individual I listen to has a slightly different quality and capability. I try to match their use of the language (vocabulary, grammar) as best I can. I would try not to show-off or confuse a counterpart with words they don’t know or a style of delivery that would likely make them feel inferior. It makes them feel defensive, and shuts down the communication. The reason I know this is because I have been shut down in this same way, and did it many times myself before I learned that the purpose of communication is to KEEP the good information flowing, not to stop it.

There are some natural obstacles that cause difficulty in listening that I address in the table below. In future lessons, we will cover more items like this and I will show you not only what YOU should do ( as I do in the last to columns in the table) but I will show you how to lead your counterpart into exhibiting behavior that facilitates better communication as well.

The next article will give information to help you determine if the flow of conversation with the other party is open and progressing productively or not.
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Listening critically to what is being said

Listening is key in sorting through your counterpart's perspective in a discussion. It is hard for me to overemphasize the importance of developing good listening skills. Being a good listener not only helps you as far developing an accurate understanding of the subject at hand, it helps you develop a profoundly persuasive position with the participants in your conversation(s). Over several articles, you will learn what it takes to go from being an average listener, to actually being able cause your counterpart to tell you things that they may not have ever even fully admitted to themselves because they are feeling heard for the first time.

When we talk about persuasion, people often imagine a single transaction or presentation in which people move from “no” to “yes”.  Rarely is it such a direct path. A more helpful (and realistic) model would show persuasion as a stepwise path in which we and our counterpart take a five step journey together as follows:

·         from resisting each other’s  input to listening (both of us are now merely actively trying to understand the other’s  position)

·         from listening to considering (now we are weighing the differences between us and examining the merits of our respective positions)

·         from considering to “willing to do” (now we see the merits of each position and agree that we are “willing to do” the thing we are discussing)

·         from “willing to do” to doing (we move to action after expressing our willingness)

·         from doing to continuing to do (having changed our position, we are now glad we did and will continue on our own)

Each of these five steps has its own special purpose and elements, which we will learn over the next few articles. For now, just understand that the ability to listen well determines which person is directing the persuasion and the likely outcome. The person that best understands all of the positions will be in the best position to direct the group to the best outcome.

Listening requires the capacity to:

·         focus without bias on what the other person has to say

·         demonstrate that unbiased focus

·         appreciate the person’s right to have a position, even if you don’t agree with it

This requires some training, which I give in my classes and will give you some exercises over the next few articles to help.

Becoming a better listener.

There is surprisingly a lot to learn about being a great listener. These four points will do for now:

·         You need to listen. As we go through these lessons, you will learn how to get them to listen, but YOU must listen first. That is because YOU are the one learning to communicate. Not listening to your counterpart creates “sides” for an argument (us vs. them). Until people feel heard, they will fight to be heard. Some will fight in an aggressive way, others will withdraw and not speak, others will nod their heads and pretend to agree. All of those actions (and there are more) are signs that they don’t feel that you are listening and considering what they say. Until you do, they will find it “impossible” to listen and consider what YOU say. So you are going to go first. Besides, there are tremendous advantages to going first, which we will discuss later.

·         Recognize that listening is not the same thing as agreeing. Listening to another person’s perspective does not require you to take any particular action. The reason to listening is so important is that allows you to get a detailed understanding of their position on an issue WITHOUT agreeing – it is a data gathering exercise.

·         Maintain a comfortable physical distance (don’t crowd, don’t separate). We begin to understand what a “comfortable distance” is for speaking at an early age. Be conscious of maintaining that. Some of us crowd the other person when we feel the subject is very sensitive and some of us tend to stop talking when crowded. On the other hand, some of us tend to step back and away when the subject matter is difficult, and to some people that signals an end to the conversation. So rather than stop the conversation, go to a place where the conversation can be conducted at a comfortable 2 to 3 foot separation.

·         Don’t interrupt (not with your mouth, gestures, or body language). When listening, it is common to interrupt with words and we all know that we shouldn’t – it is the UNIVERSAL signal for not listening. But we also do things with our body language that is actually intended to signal to the other person that we WANT to interrupt (your mouth opening and closing, your eyes rolling, your head turning away or shaking in the “no” direction) and these are very distracting to the speaker.

We'll cover a lot over the next few weeks and you will find that as you become a better listener, peple want to talk to you more. There are popular commercials for an eye doctor and a dentist in San Deigo right now that use the desire to be listened to as their main theme - "I went to DR. X and instead of them telling me what I needed, they LISTENED TO WHAT I WANTED and then discussed my options with me. I really felt like THEY CARED ABOUT ME." this is the natural response to good listeners, an we will learn how to elicit that response.
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