Holiday Communications

 I am humbled and grateful to all of you for your consistent praise, support, interest, and requests for more. Even so, I have my own Holiday list things to do, so the next newsletter will be in the New Year. Pathfinder had a terriffic year and we are starting off January 2010 with a class starting on the 22nd (info here) and will be conducting corporate classes throughout 2010. Seems to grow faster than I can keep up. I will likely have a set of one-day workshops formulated that will be open to the public in the late spring. More on that next year. For now, I just want to express my gratitude. I am delighted that I can help so many achieve fantastic results by using these methods.

I have had the privelege of meeting many of you face-to-face over the years and am wishing ALL of you Happy Holidays. Be safe, enjoy your families, and think about a few things you'd are eager to improve in next year.


The holidays bring a number of face-to-face communication challenges for a lot of reasons. I think they are probably a little different for each of us, but still most of the people I know find them a little challenging. I’d like to think that those of you that take the time to read my articles, whether newspaper or online, have a leg up on others when it comes to better holiday communications.

I want you to think of just 2 elements of THE SCORE (our model for better relationships):

Empathy – Remember that when you are speaking to others during the holidays, that their side of the story is important. Remember that if you are going to share an understanding, YOU should start the sharing and you should start by listening to their story and taking the time and effort to understand it. Avoid jumping to conclusions, assuming facts that you really don’t know. Instead….listen and ask questions. Open questions that allow the other person to answer, not questions that lead them. Remember your purpose in this communication is to just to hear their side – that is all.

Respect – Be respectful of them. Remember that your judgments are yours whether or not you share them. It isn’t often constructive for you to try to change someone’s central belief system over a football game or dinner, no matter how well-intentioned you are.

As you show respect and empathy, you will find yourself learning things you didn’t know. Then you will know that the communication was successful.


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Moving from Advocacy to Collaboration

I have spent the last few articles talking about how the use of the “advocacy” model is difficult to apply in daily life because unless, special steps are taken to assure the ENTIRE model is preserved ( rules for the presentation of evidence, 3rd party mediation, objective evaluators of evidence) , it is easily manipulated and ceases to serve its purpose as a critical decision making activity. So, how do we drive advocacy into collaboration when we see it?


We ask questions about content. Questions about content, when asked with sincere curiosity and openness, will begin to turn the discussion immediately from an exercise in satisfying an agenda into one that seeks to test all perspectives until the best decision can be made with the information at hand. The more information, the better informed the decision will be. In order to get back on a collaborative track, begin by doing the following:

• Assure yourself that the discussion is important. Use your energy to solve the things you consider “time-worthy”.

• Make sure you understand what the controversy is about. To test this, see if you can express it in one or two simple sentences and get agreement with the other party. If you can’t, you need to work on defining it (with them) until you both agree on the basics of the controversy.

• Understand what the purpose of the discussion is for each of you. Find a mutual purpose – something you both wish to achieve by resolving the issue. If your purposes are not mutual (usually they are), then at least be able to articulate what each of you would see as an ideal outcome from the discussion.

• Seek to understand exactly what the other party’s perspective is. Be able to articulate it so that they can agree that you understand it.

• Exercise empathy to understand why the other party may feel the way they do. Recognize that you may NEVER agree with their point of view, but understanding it, understanding why they hold it, and understanding that they have the right to hold it will help you see each other as respectful and reasonable. All of us are more willing to continue trying to reach an agreement with someone that we feel is respectful and reasonable than someone we feel is not.

• Be humble enough to recognize that your own view may be flawed, and courageous enough to work through it with someone else to make a new, stronger perspective.

• Welcome those moments in which you find errors in proposed path forward; the sooner you find the defects in the logic, the sooner you can strengthen it.

• Be aware of changes in the discussion that signal a move from discussion to distance. Reduce the distance between you and your counterpart by making sure that they know that you are committed to working things through with them and achieving your mutual purpose.

You can invoke this point of view at anytime in any discussion. You can control the degree of collaborative activity in the discussion. This is communication for the strong; the weak would prefer to manipulate. As your skills improve, so will your results. I will speak in detail of some collaborative approaches in the next newsletter.

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Keep it Safe

Creating safety in a conversation is critical. Once we lose safety, we need to immediately stop and try to regain it. How do we know when the safety is draining away, and how do we go about establishing it again.

One big clue is when a participant in the conversation starts to talk about something other than the TOPIC of the conversation. For instance, imagine you are talking about the difficulty in correctly scheduling resources for a given project. Your counterpart says “I don’t know what your problem is. Why do you feel the need to control every little detail?”

We aren’t talking about the project anymore, are we? We are talking about YOU.

There are several ways you can respond here. I want you to think about some that you may have heard:

- “Controlling every little detail is called ‘doing the job’. Maybe if you tried it, you wouldn’t have so many failed projects!”
- “What’s MY problem?? What’s YOUR problem?!”
- “Wow – are YOU ever defensive!”

Let’s say you responded with this:

“I hear you saying that you think I might be controlling insignificant aspects of the project. Is that what you’re saying? How do you see me doing that?”

-By NOT responding to what could obviously be interpreted as a challenge, you give the benefit of the doubt.
- By asking if you understood properly instead of reacting, you are showing that you are interested in understanding their point of view
- By asking for more information, you show that you value them.

At this point, most people will feel safe again – enough to continue to talk about the TOPIC. This is how you will learn what they see, and add it to your own perspective. Or, you could also give them one of the OTHER responses we talked about. We both know that won’t help.

Learning THE SCORE and integrating that perspective into your communication style will change the way you are perceived by others. You will be “safe to talk to”. That way, you will be recognized as someone who helps others get all the information out on the table so we can make better decisions.

That’s who you want to be. That's what you want to make happen.


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Excerpt from High Performance Communication workshop guide

The Workshop guide that goes along with the Public Workshop starting on July 10 is all new and really very good. It captures the important aspects from each of the subjects taught throughout the 3 day course in Outline form, as Summaries, and as full text which will be forever useful as a reference.

In the section on relationships, I explain the details of the perspective we need to adopt in order to develop really great relationships. Then, just before I give instruction on all the skills required to create amazing business relationships, I summarize the perspective we adopt towards our collaborators as follows:

In summary, our perspective in collaborating within our workgroup is:
The people with whom we collaborate are capable people with ideas about things that deserve to be heard. We are eager to understand their perspective fully. We believe that they want to hear our perspective as well and are willing to consider it if we present it in a factual manner, with a minimum of interpretation. We believe that the interpretation of the facts is best done collaboratively.

We recognize that blame is generally far less important than understanding the contribution system that leads up to a given outcome. Some systems MAY have a single point of failure with no other contributing factors, but these are rare and usually so simple that they don’t warrant much discussion. We know that other's will feel less defensive if we all can express our contribution to an outcome.

We know that the differences in our perspectives comes as a natural result of our diversity and that this is the great strength of our workgroup – that our diversity allows us to blend the best parts of our different perspectives and develop solutions that are better than any one of us would have developed alone. We have learned how to draw upon those differences and get the information out into the open and we practice it regularly.

We recognize that how we feel about ourselves and how others feel about themselves can come into question as we collaborate and we will practice methods to keep us open to all options and not “close off” into bifurcated (either/ or) thinking. We recognize that some of the ideas we hold about ourselves and others can be wrong, and that we can reconsider them at anytime using the tools we have learned.

We know that relationships are important to doing good work and that all relationships (and good decisions) have an emotional component. If feelings become an issue, we recognize that we will talk about them just as we would any other part of a problem.

We recognize that all of this takes training and practice in the methods that underlie these outcomes.

The book goes on to describe a collection of tools that make ALL of our business relationships as deep and powerful as the VERY BEST TEAMS you have been on.
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Complexification

I went to an event this weekend for Quattro University. I was thoroughly impressed by the university staff, and the speaker they had for the event was really top notch. A question came up at the very end of the presentation that really never got answered as fully as the I am sure the speaker would have liked due to time constraints. I was reminded what an important concept Complexification is, and so I thought I would discuss in this newsletter.

There are three areas in which out own judgments of ourselves can really do a lot of harm:
Competence ("Am I competent?")
Worthiness ("Am I worthy?")
Value ("Am I a Good Person?")

If you look at these and the FIRST THOUGHT that comes to mind is "Well, it depends" then good for you (although you aren't out of the woods, you DO have a head start!)

If you look at one (or more) of these as questions with 'Yes' or 'No' answers, you need to think a little more about it. You may have found a very tight spot from which you escape if you learn to Complexify.

Many of us feel, due to lessons learned from well-meaning people, that you are either competent or incompetent; either worthy (of love, for instance) or unworthy; and either good or not good. If you agree with these two options (dichotomies) on any one of the topics, we need to explore this a little more.

If you believe that these are absolute qualities, you are destined to be disappointed. Let's take for example competence. Many men feel that either people are competent or not - no middle ground - and so in order not to fall into the "incompetent" category, they behave as they believe a "competent" person would, since that is the only alternative. What does that behavior look like? Let's see:

1) When asked if they are willing to take on a special project, maybe one with an unusual importance or challenge associated with it, they say sure. Why? Because the only reason to turn something down is that you think you would fail - the very definition of incompetence.

2) When they find that the project represents an unanticipated amount of difficulty and is impacting other work they had previously committed to, they work harder - spend more time on it. They certainly don't ask for help. A competent person would NEVER ask for help - they don't need it.

3) When they find things going badly, they blame others, they claim they were tricked, they claim that the project was doomed from the start, they do many things EXCEPT ask for help or instruction. There's only one kind of person that asks for help, and they are NOT that kind of person.

4) Finally, when they are unable to complete the task, they become overwhelmed by the idea that they MUST be one of those other people - they must be incompetent. Because there are only two kinds - and they must be incompetent because they failed. Which is the signature of the incompetent.

I don't mean to pick on men, or to single out the competence dichotomy as the most severe of the three I mentioned. I am just most familiar with that one. Women certainly experience this kind of "binary" thinking too.

The destructive part is, that if you think in terms of dichotomies (only two choices that are opposites), then you almost certainly will be trapped in this kind of "mind game" that prevents you from being the thing you most want to be. People that INSIST on being competent eventually come to believe that they are incompetent just because they aren't ALWAYS competent in everything they do. Guess what happens once they believe that they are really incompetent? It limits the things they try, the things they can enjoy, and ultimately colors their world so that they feel they are "faking" it. Nobody is happy when they feel like a fake.

The same thing happens, in a slightly different way, for people that struggle with a worthiness dichotomy or a goodness dichotomy. They eventually come to believe that they are unworthy or not good, because they can't be those things in the absolute, universal, inflexible way that think they must.

Complexification is the act of replacing a dichotomy (an overly simplistic interpretation) with one that is proportionally complex.

In Complexifying, we:
1) Understand that competence is not absolute - there are degrees.

2) Understand that on some days, we will be more competent than on other days.

3) Understand that failure is not NOT incompetence; it is the first step of learning.

4) Understand that failure is not NOT incompetence; it is an essential part of building resilience.

5) Understand that it is not a good use of time to strive for extreme competence in all the things we do.

Think about these examples -
Would we call Tiger Woods incompetent if he is bad at Calculus?

Would we say Gandhi was not a good person if he only helped people in his own country?

Would we say that a stranger is unworthy of love because we don't feel love for them?

No, because these views are overly simplistic. These views could only be true if the dichotomies are true. and they aren't. Things are more complex than that, no matter what you were told.

Now is a great time to rethink them, before they cause you any more pain.

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Curiosity

Curiosity – The state in which you continue to ask questions about why your counterpart holds a given belief until you understand why as fully as you can. You need to be curious - ACTIVELY curious - because it transmits SO MUCH about your willingness to understand and your respect for your counterpart.

Whether you are engaged in a relationship conversation or a critical discussion, one of the hardest and most important things to do is to remain curious. That means DEEPLY curious about the other party's perspective. Many students write me after trying some things they've learned in class and tell me about "unexpected" things that happen. Almost always, the problem lies in their level of curiosity.

Curiosity is hard to attain because:
1 - It is common for us to hear a little bit of the other party's perspective and "fill in the blanks" for ourselves. This is gives us the impression that we heard the other side out, but clearly we didn't. We are taught early on to try to guess what the other party thinks from their actions. We have learned that we are usually wrong, and thus the need for curiosity.
2 - The "voice in our head" that helps us in our dealings with others is busy preparing what we will say when the other side is finished. Thus we aren't really listening to them.
3 - We feel that our perspective is more important, or more correct, than the other party's.

It is imperative that we hear the other side out for several reasons:
1 - If the other side feels that we aren't "getting it", they will escalate until they feel heard. This is usually the cause behind raised voices. What we commonly attribute to anger is usually due to frustration from not being heard. When you get to the point of raised voices, you will usually have to stop talking about the topic and shift gears in order to re-connect again. Sometimes, this is where we get defensive and one party withdraws or attacks.

2 - The purpose for the conversation is almost always mutual understanding. You won't achieve mutual understanding unless you ask questions about their perspective and listen to their answers

3 - The other party has information you don't have that could be critical to understanding the issue at hand. It is important to gather this data in order to develop an informed conclusion.

In order to maintain curiosity in spite of the desire to react, try the following:
1 - Instead of filling in the blanks for the other party, use active listening skills (listen, paraphrase, acknowledge). Ask questions that help you understand why they think the way they do ("what makes you say that?", "can you tell me more about that?", "help me understand why...").

2 - I frequently try to help the other party make their perspective and help them find supporting evidence for it. In doing so, I quickly come to understand it. Also, this lets the other party see you are objective. If you find something that you don't understand, they becoming willing to question it with you.

3 - Stop trying to silence the voice in your head. I have tried it endlessly, and it doesn't work. But it is EASY to train that voice to be curious, rather than distracted by preparing responses. When your inner voice is curious (asking questions like "I wonder how he/she got from point A to point B?"), then your inner voice is aligned with your mission - to understand the other party's story - and your manner is more authentic.

4 - Realize that you will NEVER understand the other party's perspective as well as you understand your own, but that should be your aim.

Simple Test - Before you begin analyzing the differences between your perspectives, ask yourself the question "Are there things that I see as differences between the two perspectives that I didn't actually hear the other party state?".

If there are, then you either filled in the blanks or have some more questions to ask.

If you are truly curious about the other party’s point of view, what exactly is it that will make you defensive? The answer is “nothing” because nothing they say is an attack – it is just their point of view, which is what you are seeking.

Let’s say I ask someone a very unsafe question like “What do you think of my performance on the Jenson project?” If I am curious, and they say “Frankly I thought you could have done better.” I would naturally ask “How?” If I am not curious, I might have a different response.

If I remain curious and ask how I might have done better, they might say “Well, at times you seemed a bit unprofessional when we were meeting with them.” Again, if I fall out of curiosity I might guess at what they mean and try to excuse myself, or I might just tell them they’re wrong, or I might attribute it to my style, or I might tell them that if they knew more about what I do they would understand, or I might tell them “that we will agree to disagree (yuck!)”.

If I stay curious, they might tell me “Well, in many meetings you showed up late and several times without a tie!” AHA! Guess what? You just learned what the other person’s definition of professionalism is and how they apply it. YOU STAYED CURIOUS AND LEARNED SOMETHING ABOUT HOW OTHER PEOPLE DEFINE PROFESSIONALISM. It of course will be up to you to determine what you do with the information, but by staying curious is the only way to earn that option.

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Simplicity and Sincerity

We like to be thought of as smart. It is so much nicer than the alternative. Sometimes we want to SHOW that we’re smart, and that is not an altogether bad idea either, IF it is done in a way that doesn’t make other people feel…well, NOT smart.

Since our objective is to make others feel safe in talking with us it is important to express ourselves clearly and to actively try to be easy to understand. My friend Dr Jon Wesick is one of the smartest people I know and he has a real knack for describing complex concepts using language that is easy for me to follow. I see it as a real gift, and always enjoy talking to him. It is never intimidating or difficult. Now I am sure it COULD be intimidating (Jon’s PhD is in physics and he is a poet and science fiction writer), but he works hard to keep things simple. In doing so, he keeps me engaged and open. I am reminded of a quote attributed to Mark Twain: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. It takes considerable effort to “right size” the level of language for your audience. Not doing so (using jargon , acronyms, or inside jokes) will often lead to them feeling excluded and no longer willing or able to help you in achieving your objective.

Sincerity (authenticity) in your conversations is critical. Most people have well-developed radar for distinguishing authentic conversation from that which is not (sometimes called “phony”, “manipulative”, “fake” or worse). I discourage people from using wording or approaches offered by others (including those offered by me) UNLESS they understand the PURPOSE of the approach and can construct an equivalent approach that fits THEM. I spend a considerable amount of time teaching the purposes BEHIND the words so people can accomplish this critical process.

I have spoken about sincerity and authenticity before, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me repeat myself to help reinforce this critical aspect of communication.

Authenticity is behaving in a manner consistent with your feelings. This needs to be done with respect and high purpose. For instance, without hurting another person’s feelings and for the good of your organization, you will need to tell just how you feel. Try this: Picture the person you love most in the world (your child, or spouse, or parent, or a dear friend). Picture the way you might behave in breaking some devastatingly bad news to them. It is hard, because you know how the news will hurt them. It affects you badly to have to tell them this, but you have to. You plan something to say and start to break the news, and when you see their reaction, you can’t help but feel genuine empathy for them. That feeling is an authentic feeling. There is nothing manufactured or calculated about it, and your behavior is completely consistent with that feeling. Now imagine you are delivering GREAT news to that same person. As you do, you feel amazing joy for them. You may laugh or cry, but whatever you do will be an authentic extension of your feelings. It is THAT unabridged connection between your feeling and your actions that portray authenticity.

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Engagement

We all seem to know intuitively that listening is important to communication. Of course it is. If both parties aren’t listening to each other, then what is really being communicated? But listening – that is, receiving the signals that your counterpart is sending - is as tricky as it is vital. It involves analyzing two kinds of verbal information (words and tone of voice) as well as non-verbal information. I don’t want to cover anything in this week’s newsletter other than the ATTITUDE required for good listening. And that is called ENGAGEMENT.

Being engaged with your counterpart requires that you extend the openness and curiosity that we have discussed into an ACTIVE state. You try to focus FULLY on your counterpart without OVERFOCUSING (staring, mouthing their words, nodding endlessly, saying “uh-huh” incessantly). These OVERFOCUSING issues usually come up with people that have been taught Power Listening or Active Listening techniques improperly. Equally dangerous is UNDERFOCUSING. This often is detected by your counterpart when they explain something important or personal to you, and your reply indicates immediately that you didn’t hear what they said. If they reply with “I just said…” or “As I said,…” then you know that they are picking up a lack of engagement.

Be aware that when your counterpart feels you aren’t engaged, they may raise their voice (because they aren’t feeling heard) or start to withdraw (saying something like “whatever” or another expression of passive surrender). This indicates that they are leaving the discussion without moving through the conflict to a place of understanding. This is a no man’s land where commitments have a notoriously low survival rate.

Here’s what you can do to keep things for digressing too far.

View the time that your counterpart is talking as a time to absorb information from them. That the only way you can make a better decision than you would make alone is with their input and that here is your chance to get it. You are LEARNING when they are talking and when they are done you will do one of two things. You will either ask them a question to get further information OR you will say “if I understand you, you are saying that….” and describe in your own words what you take their meaning to be.

I am very good at this and am USUALLY wrong at my first cut at their meaning. That's because there are all kinds of articulation and interpretation errors that happen, and it takes a lot of attention for both parties to fully exchange a new idea. So be patient!

View the investment you make in listening as more important than the time you spend speaking. The greatest contributors to a lack of engagement are either interrupting, formulating a response while the other person is talking, or being distracted by things going on around you. If you are in a place where you must pay attention to other things rather than your counterpart, ask to postpone the discussion due to the distraction until a later time. This communicates the importance of the discussion, and your desire to be truly present.

Many times, there is a’ little voice in your head’ that distracts while the other person is talking. It is you, because you think so much faster than your counterpart can talk, working out what you are going to say next or even worse, thinking about unrelated things. It is almost impossible to silence it. You may not realize it, but the distraction shows on your face and in your mannerisms and your counterpart will know either consciously or subconsciously that you are not fully “there”. The best way to deal with your ‘little voice’ is to convert its purpose from formulating responses to formulating questions that you will ask.

Remember – the purpose of the discussion is to get all of the thoughts out on the table where they can be scrutinized and put to their best and highest use. You can’t afford to alienate the people that have those thoughts so that they become unavailable, or the people become estranged. Remain engaged and earn their trust.

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Humility and Tentativeness

There are a couple of traits that seem to promote harmony and soften opposition almost instantly, and they also require a lot of practice. I am speaking of Humility and Tentativeness.

Humility is the key quality attributed to an unpretentious and modest person, someone who does not think that he or she is better or more important than others. There is a great strength in humility; that’s how it is distinguished from meekness. Humility is a behavior that is universally understood to be correlated to curiosity, empathy, openness, and respect. When your counterpart recognizes your humility, they feel less reason to be defensive. This reduces the odds of a bad reaction to what you have to say because they know they can count on you to hear any counterpoint they may want to present. The opposite of humility is arrogance, and arrogance will tend to set your counterpart on edge and make them defensive.

Tentativeness means presenting your opinions in such a way as to make clear that they are not final or fully worked out. This promotes safety as well, because it is clear that there is an opportunity to “build” a collaborative idea with you. This is a strong signal that you are authentic in your desire to collaborate.

These positions signal a lot. Mostly, they indicate that you are probably going to approach the collaboration with some integrity. They signal strongly that you WANT further input and that it will be welcomed. They also indicate that your perspective is not fully worked out and, since you are building the idea together, your counterpart needn’t have a fully formulated idea either. Of course, if either of you have have a fully worked out solution, we'll use our same trusty critical discussion skills to vet their idea with them.

If you think of the flip side of this, you can see why anyone might be hesitant to bring an idea to a person that is arrogant or judgmental about their perspective on a given problem and is sure they have everything worked out. It is unlikely that you’ll be given due consideration and possibele that you’ll even be open to ridicule if your idea doesn’t match your counterpart’s perspective.

There are a few ways to signal your humility and tentativeness to your counterpart.

Bob is an experienced, respected member of the Project Management department and is considered very competent by his peers and by you. He has run into a snag in a contract. You are approached by co-worker. Compare these sentences:

“Any schoolboy would know how to handle Bob’s contract problem. There’s only one right answer.”
“I can’t believe Bob is having trouble with this Contract. The answer is so obvious!”
“I have the solution to the Contract issue that Bob couldn’t figure out”
“I have a great idea about the Contract issue that Bob was dealing with”
“I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the Contract issue that Bob mentioned”
“I’m not at all sure about what to do regarding Bob’s Contract issue. Do you have any suggestions?”
“I’d love to work with you on some ideas to address the Contract issue that Bob raised”
“I’ve been thinking about the problems that Bob had mentioned about his Contract. I have a few thoughts, nothing complete though, and would like to toss them around with you a bit.”
“I don’t think I could contribute to the solving the contract issue if Bob was having trouble”

Which of these signal arrogance? Which signal humility? Which signal meekness?

Think about how the conversation might go for each of the above if it was your counterpart’s opening.

For which of them would you be inclined to contribute ideas and for which you not? Which do you think would likely be collaborative and which not? Which do you think would be productive and which not?
If you were going to approach a collaborator, with the goal of collaboratively creating a suggestion for Bob regarding his contract snag, which would you say?

I am not suggesting that ANY of them are perfect. Which do you think support a collaborative environment in an authentic voice?

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Initiating a Critical Discussion

At the moment that a critical discussion is beginning, there is a sequence of things that you need to go through before you can really get through the content of the conversation. This is where you start building safety. Notice that it doesn’t matter if you are initiating the conversation or not, YOU are still the one that goes through the sequence.

What are we talking about? Develop a sentence or two that adequately sums up the controversy. Use simple vocabulary, and try to keep it to one sentence. Make sure the other party agrees that the statement is the point of contention. It frequently sounds like this. “So what you are saying is that the company was better when we were employee owned. Is that right?” Many times your counterpart may say “not exactly. What I am saying is….” and lead to you a slight modification to it. Sometimes this process goes on for a few iterations. This is a GREAT time to be patient and get it right. The alternative is to be working on an issue that isn’t really the point of clash anyway. This sentence is called the resolution and it doesn’t matter if it is expressed in the affirmative (the company was better when we were employee owned) or in the negative (the company was NOT better when we were employee owned). We can explore it logically either way.

What is the nature of the problem? Two things here –First, What is the current impact of the problem? Secondly, What are the future consequences? Using our example, if things were indeed better when the company was employee owned, we may currently see some grumbling or some disappointment. The consequences might be apathy, turnover, and loss of competitive edge. If this is what is uncovered, these are pretty serious consequences.

Determine the purpose for the conversation. Remember that each conversation has a generic purpose and a mutual purpose. There are three possible generic purposes: to understand your counterpart’s point of view, to express your point of view, and to troubleshoot a problem. You cannot troubleshoot until you have done the other two. The mutual purpose varies with each conversation, but it is defined as the reason you and your counterpart are both willing to have the conversation. For instance, you are both willing to discuss the problems associated with the change to a non-employee owned company because you are both concerned with morale OR profitability OR employee satisfaction OR quality.

Imagine the ideal outcome for the conversation. “We will come out of this with some recommendations for measures to take to prevent a slip in quality” OR “We will come through this and understand the top five problems we may face going forward” OR “We will come through this and I will fully understand where he/she stands on the issue.”

NOW we are ready to begin discussing the content. With practice, and depending on the conversation, the whole "initiation sequence" may take just a few seconds.

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Respect

For those of you that have attended the workshops (nearly 300 now, thanks very much) you have heard me talk about the four kinds of respect we need to show in a collaboration and why. The “why” is easy – if we don’t show respect for our counterpart, the discussion will soon become about our disrespect and not the content. We will immediately shift away from solving the primary issue, and begin work on backpedalling away from some remark that distracts us from what we really want – to understand their side of the story as well as they do. So respect for the counterpart is one of the four kinds of respect, but how do we show it? And what if we DON’T respect this person to whom we are talking?

Respect for our counterpart can be thought of as a basic respect for new information. We recognize that they have views and opinions on a subject that is of interest to us. Their views may be well thought out or incoherent; they may agree with ours or be in opposition; they may be based on core beliefs that are similar to ours or are very different. The sharing of those ideas (if they are different from ours) will add to our knowledge if we hear them. If someone can add a new viewpoint, it is worthy of respect. Many (most) of the people with whom I have the pleasure to communicate are intelligent people, well-established and knowledgeable. If we differ on a subject, I am usually the one getting an education. I have a great deal of respect for these teachers and I find that if I fail to learn something from someone, it is usually my own fault by not engaging enough, or not being sufficiently curious. I kick myself when I find myself asking “I should have asked them THIS” as I walk away! Being curious and supportive, helping to find the real reasoning behind the perspective, and NOT judging but being grateful for the opportunity for the exchange are ways that you can communicate your respect. You treat them as if their ideas COULD be exactly correct, because you can’t determine otherwise until you fully understand them.

Respect for content is the second kind of respect that you bring to collaboration. I remind myself (and my counterpart) that the energy we are spending on the topic is because the result MATTERS and the way to get a good result is to sort through as many ideas as we can generate. Respect that your current understanding of the content is ALWAYS just a starting place and that your mind could be changed at any moment IF you are successful in finding a piece of mind changing information. If the topic is not important, then we needn’t talk about it at all unless it will affect our relationship going forward. If that is the case, the topic should probably be the relationship!

Respect for the process is the third kind of respect. The process of conducting a critical discussion properly is an interpersonal discipline that has been honed and refined over centuries. It helps us to do things that are VERY difficult using the tools that most of us have – it helps reach the best possible decisions based on limited information and in the face of uncertainty. As we improve in using the process, we find that it is usually easy to get a great deal of information from knowledgeable sources. What an improvement over bullying and tricking each other into accepting partially formed ideas.

I leave Respect for yourself for the fourth kind. One should never enter a critical discussion depending on the respect of their counterpart. You cannot control that they will show it EVEN if you have earned it. But you can have respect for yourself by always being non-judgmental of your counterpart, being non-manipulative, remaining authentic and empathetic. You respect that you are intelligent and have skills in communication that others desperately need. You share them. You don’t allow yourself to bully or be bullied, manipulate or be manipulated, judge or be judged. When your counterpart violates these rules, you address it with compassion understanding that they don’t know any other way, or they would use it. Further if the counterpart shows disrespect for you by committing any of the errors that could drive you to defensiveness, you should give them the benefit of the doubt by assuming that they meant no harm and telling them that the behavior is unacceptable, describing how it marginalizes you, and explaining that their disrespect is unnecessary and distracts from the purpose of the conversation.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Perspective

Thanks for all of your well wishes regarding my surgery. I am recovering nicely, and am grateful for friends like you.

We spoke last about the collaborative process and I introduced 15 items that YOU control that contribute to an atmosphere of safety, the keystone of collaborative magic.

As I have mentioned lots of times in these pages, safety is that quality in a conversation that makes others feel that they needn’t hold back things when they are speaking with you. They know some things about you, and chief among them is that you will not use what they tell you as a weapon. How do they know this? The same way you do! When you speak to someone and find yourself holding back, ask yourself why. Why wouldn’t you just share your thoughts, especially if it helped your employer get better results?

Some reasons that we don’t like to share our thoughts with some people:
They are sometimes insincere – We may feel that they have at one time or another said one thing and done another, perhaps on purpose.
They are sometimes judgmental - We may have seen them make judgments about people before and we fear we may be judged badly if we say the wrong thing, so we avoid telling a full version of the truth.
They are sometimes manipulative – We feel that they may sometimes “position” us or others, potentially putting us at risk.
They may sometimes threaten – We feel that they may sometimes overtly or subtly say things that indicate they will cause or allow unpleasant things to happen to us.
They may sometimes be competitive with us – We feel that they may use the information we give them to further themselves without giving (or sharing) credit.

These things drive us away from entering into collaboration. Who in their right mind would collaborate with someone that may treat us like THAT? Why take the chance? If YOU have a reputation for possessing any of these traits, you are driving people away from collaboration. You need to start reversing the damage immediately. It may take a while, and you need to start now.

If you are insincere, you need to show AUTHENTICITY. Authenticity is behaving in a manner consistent with your feelings. This needs to be done with respect and high purpose. For instance, without hurting another person’s feelings and for the good of your organization, you will need to tell just how you feel. Try this: Picture the person you love most in the world (your child, or spouse, or parent, or a dear friend). Picture the way you might behave in breaking some devastatingly bad news to them. It is hard, because you know how the news will hurt them. It affects you badly to have to tell them this, but you have to. You plan something to say and start to break the news, and when you see their reaction, you can’t help but feel genuine empathy for them. That feeling is an authentic feeling. There is nothing manufactured or calculated about it, and your behavior is completely consistent with that feeling. Now imagine you are delivering GREAT news to that same person. As you do, you feel amazing joy for them. You may laugh or cry, but whatever you do will be an authentic extension of your feelings. It is THAT unabridged connection between your feeling and your actions that portray authenticity.

It’s easy to imagine it when it is someone close to you, but what if it is just another guy at work? You need to practice OPENNESS. Openness is that quality that inhibits a judgmental attitude and allows us to extend the benefit of the doubt to others. By giving others the benefit of the doubt, we free ourselves to consider their words fully, without bias. We are WILLING to be influenced and OPEN to their idea. We will be fair in evaluating it. To behave with openness, all one must do is adopt a position that says “the person with whom I am speaking has ideas that they feel are important, justified, and valid. I will not allow my feelings about the person discourage me from being willing to accept their ideas IF they are good ideas”.

After listening to the ideas, be GENEROUS. If the ideas were good, allow yourself to be influenced by them and help to spread them, always giving proper credit (“you know, Paul had a great idea about this that I think you’ll find interesting”). If you don’t agree with the idea, be generous enough to say so in a constructive and supportive way (“I don’t feel that I have a sufficient understanding of your idea to really get behind it with you. I would be glad to listen if you have more to tell me about A, B, C…”).

People that display these behaviors to us make us feel respected, and we like to collaborate with people that respect us. Others will not want to collaborate with you if they feel you disrespect them.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

A BIG Lesson

At this point in this series (started 12/29/2008) we have begun discuss ways to unilaterally lead conversation AWAY from unproductive advocacy debates and towards a collaborative flow of ideas that serve a mutual purpose. We are in the process of learning to direct collaborative discussions even as we participate in them. It seems a little unsettling, because it requires the practice of actually helping our counterparts strengthen their positions and finding flaws in our own, but that is the way it may go when you value the RESULT and the RELATIONSHIP more than “winning” an argument.

The most frequently asked question of me? “How do I do this when emotions are running high?” The message from last time was to build collaboration by building safety. This time, more details – ‘nuts and bolts’ stuff – both about building safety and trust AND how to keep emotions from interfering. I say “keep emotions from interfering” rather than “conduct a discussion without emotions” for good reason. Sometimes, the discussion IS about emotions. Sometimes, the trouble we have in speaking with each other IS mainly emotional. So we have to talk about them; we just don’t have to get swept away by them.

Let’s start with unilaterally building safety and trust. Why do we care if our counterpart feels safe in a discussion? We have all seen people bullied into doing someone else’s will, right? IT WORKS! So why not learn how to fillet your counterpart’s perspective, embarrass and humiliate them until they concede your position?

BECAUSE IT IS NOT ABOUT YOUR POSITION ANYMORE. It never was. It is about getting all the information out on the table. ALL of it (some of which is partially in your counterpart’s head). You want it given to you with willing assent. You want it given to you because you are going to do the right thing with it; something both of you want done and to do it right, we all have to know exactly what we are dealing with and we all have to participate willingly in a discussion about what the information means.

We already talked about how to sort through the CONTENT of the conversation (9/26 – 12/29) to challenge the data as a group. Now we are talking about CONDUCTING that conversation so that people will share and participate fully. So we need make a specific set of things known in every conversation we have. We need to live it and breathe it so that we are credible when we do. When asked, we need to know just what to say about any of the following items so we need to understand them thoroughly. I will now present about 20 concepts that you will come to know as your TOOLBOX in unilaterally conducting a collaborative critical discussion. I will give you the basics today, and refer back to them over the course of this series.

Defensiveness – This is why we care about safety. If the participants in a conversation feel adequately safe, they won’t feel defensive. If anyone, including you, starts to feel defensive the collaborative part of the discussion is over until YOU (the communications guy) restores safety.

Purpose – There are many purposes for having discussions, but the purposes for having COLLABORATIVE discussions are simple 1) to understand someone else’s point of view; 2) to express your OWN point of view (or facilitate someone else in doing so; 3) to work through differences (gaps) between each other’s perspectives.

Mutual Purpose – Mutual purpose is more specific than the purpose of the conversation (see “Purpose”). Mutual Purpose is what you stand to gain from fulfilling the purpose. For example, the purpose of a given conversation is to understand the other person’s perspective on a given issue. The Mutual Purpose at work might be that understanding their point of view may improve a relationship that you both care about, or that it may fill gaps in your knowledge of something that will help the company you both work for. If we don’t work for the same company, our Mutual Purpose may be celebrate their expertise or develop a relationship based on their credibility. You and your counterpart stand to gain if the Mutual Purpose is achieved and it is important that you learn to identify it and how to communicate it to your counterparts so that you are actively working together to achieve it.

Respect – Four kinds of respect at work in collaboration and they are unilateral – your counterpart does NOT have to share them. 1) Respect for content – you respect that the thing you are talking about is worth talking about and that, since it is natural for people to have different perspectives on most things, respect that your current understanding of the content is ALWAYS just a starting place and that your mind could be changed at any moment IF you are successful in finding a piece of mind changing information. 2) Respect for process – you respect the fact that Plato and Aristotle argued over the principles contained in these lessons and that Aristotle and countless great minds since have refined them to the state they are in now. That most of the time, if we follow the principles of communication that we are learning, we will come to the very best answer. That advocacy is NOT the best way to resolve business issues, but collaboration yields better decisions and preserves and promotes good relationships. 3) Respect for counterpart – you respect that the counterpart (in the absence of diagnosed mental illness) is a rational human being and is doing their best to stay with you in the collaboration. The difficulties they seem to have are simply differences which they lack the skills to overcome but YOU POSSESS. You maintain curiosity about their perspective and you NEVER assume that they are malicious in their intention unless you have strong evidence. You treat them as if their ideas COULD be exactly correct, because you can’t determine otherwise until you fully understand them. 4) Respect for self – You respect that you are intelligent and have skills in communication that others desperately need. You share them. You don’t allow yourself to bully or be bullied, manipulate or be manipulated, judge or be judged. When your counterpart violates these rules, you address it with compassion understanding that they don’t know any other way, or they would use it.

Openness – Openness is the state in which you believe that your counterpart might be right and you might be wrong even if nothing you have heard YET indicates it. You are willing to be persuaded; even hopeful to be persuaded because if you are, it means you didn’t bail out too soon but held on until the ONE important piece of information was finally put into the collaborative “pot”.

Empathy – The state in which you are trying hard to see things from your counterpart’s perspective, even describing things that they haven’t mentioned that support their perspective. You recognize that they have a right to feel the way they do, even if you feel differently.

Curiosity – The state in which you continue to ask questions about why your counterpart holds a given belief until you understand why as fully as you can.

Presence – The state in which you are not distracted from the discussion, either by things going on around you, by the voice in your head, or by your desire to interrupt.

Engagement – The state in which you are really invested in your counterpart – you want nothing more than for all the information to be surfaced and a GREAT informed decision to be made.

Depth – The state in which you show willingness to ask – respectfully and humbly – about things beneath the surface (feelings, beliefs) that may be important to understanding each other.

Humility – Humility is the natural position to assume when you approach a discussion with curiosity, empathy, openness, and respect because you realize that you are FALLIBLE and could very well be wrong until you have used your skills to elicit all of the needed information. The opposite of arrogance, this is KEY in promoting safety.

Tentativeness – Like Humility, this is a state that promotes safety because it shows that you are not completely sure and are anxious to change your mind if you are changing it for good reason – that your mind is not made up until all of the information is available and has been vetted.

Recognizing unexpressed emotions – For now, we will say that like the three primary colors, there are three primary emotions (Fear, Anger, & Embarrassment) that people feel when threatened. Which ones, in what mix and proportion, to what degree, and how they are expressed vary due to the many variables that make us who we are as individuals. They are frequently expressed in collaborative critical discussions (withdrawal, name-calling, sarcasm, personal attacks, crying) when the sense of safety is removed. Learning to recognize them and use them as triggers to step out of the content conversation and into a safety creating conversation will be discussed in one or even two special newsletters.

Subverting Safety – There are things that you will learn how to suppress but your counterparts will do to you (either on purpose or because they are feeling emotional) that can throw a conversation into a tailspin. When your counterpart does these things, you may become defensive; you must first forgive them and then start rebuilding safety for YOURSELF. These things include:
***Judgment (You’re just saying that to hurt me! You always try to hurt me)
***Insincerity (I would never lie to you)
***Manipulation (You should go ask him and then tell me what he says)
***Threats (if you don’t, I’ll make it tough on you)
***Competition (Your idea will never win if you tell everyone about it’s weaknesses)
***Raising Voices – Many times, people raise their voice in a conversation as a signal that they don’t believe you are hearing them. Frequently they are right; while they are talking, you are not listening but waiting for them stop so you can say something. At that time, it is a great idea to NOT raise your voice in retaliation, but instead to pause and acknowledge that your mind has been racing to keep up with theirs. Repeat back what you think their position is an a respectful way, asking them to tell you if you have it right and if not, to clarify their position.

This may seem like a lot for one newsletter, but I am having a little surgery done and I am not positive that I will be able to write next Sunday night. I will be writing again soon, though – forgive me missing a week. Take the time to catch up.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Getting to Collaboration

Last week, I said we were going to learn to conduct both Advocacy discussions and “Hard” Collaborative discussions with the aim of converting them to “Soft” Collaborative discussions. We want to do this because a “Soft” collaborative discussions are 1) most useful in getting input from all participants and, 2) least destructive (most supportive) of the relationships with the people involved. I also mentioned that we are going to learn to do this unilaterally, meaning we will be the only one in the discussion that is consciously guiding it towards this end. If there is someone that is helping, so much the better – but we won’t count on it because we can’t.

To begin with, recognize that doing this is a form of “leading from within” – leading without being a formal leader. In this effort, our objective as the leader is singular; get all the information on the topic out on the table so that we can examine it, critique it, and use it to make the best possible decision. The difficult part in doing this is that, for more reasons than we can count, people are reluctant to share information unless they feel it is safe to do so. Our main job, therefore, is to create safety. If we fail to do that, the people with whom we are speaking will not be able to share.

We have been trained since kindergarten in NOT sharing information, and we have received NO training in creating safety, so the odds are stacked against us UNTIL we learn how to create and maintain an environment in which people feel safe. Fortunately, there are lots of easy techniques to do it. The most important thing is to develop your own personal mindset that seeks to be collaborative and supports others in doing so. In this series, I will describe in detail what that mindset consists of and how to express it.

Not today though. Today, there are just a few things that I want you to get your head wrapped around; things that challenge the way you look at participating in these discussions.

It is a process of guiding people through the model for content exchange that we discussed in the last series of newsletters (9/26/2008 – 12/29/2008). Remember that in that model, we start by understanding and making clear what the controversy is about (we make the resolution explicit). Then we make (and ask for) claims, raise issues, offer evidence, and supply and weigh inference. So how will we lead from within? We will behave as if they know the model, and when they fail to perform as the model would dictate (e.g., they fail to ask for evidence) then we will do it for them. I know it sounds crazy, but it will start to become clear in a moment.

First, I want you to understand the objective of the collaborative conversation. There are 3 acceptable objectives for these conversations; 1) to understand the other person’s point of view (this should ALWAYS be your primary objective), 2) to express your point of view to the other person so that they understand it, and 3) to troubleshoot or come to a mutual understanding about something (in which case we have to do the first two).

The exchange is not complex, but it is different than usual because it is about building safety FIRST. We want to understand the other person’s perspective. We want to be curious about it. We want to understand it the way an interviewer wants to understand the inner thoughts of a politician or celebrity – NOT to compare them with ours, but to understand THEM - fully. We want to ask questions (remember the 3 ways to formulate issues?). We want to offer thoughts that support their perspective (to offer supporting evidence and strengthen inferences). We then may want to express OUR perspective. We will follow the rules for exchanging content and offer evidence and inference. We will ask them about the weaknesses in OUR idea. We will ensure that they understand our position. We will then discuss the differences in our two perspectives. We will talk a lot about this technique over the next few weeks, but for now understand that we will build safety and trust.

To illustrate how we know that this objective is achieved, I want you to recall a time when you took a position that you were CONFIDENT was right. You felt very sure that you are on the right side of the issue, and then you found a piece of information that indicated you were wrong. I want you to remember that as clearly as you can, in that it is very instructive in learning how to conduct a collaborative discussion. You are on a hunt for THAT piece of information – “What would indicate that we are on the wrong track? How can we find it? Let’s look everywhere for it”. This is the purpose for raising issues, questioning inference, evaluating evidence, all of it – because we want to know if we are on the wrong track and get OFF of it as soon as we can. We want that “A-HA” moment as soon and as often as we can get it. Once we exhaust those pieces of information, we can be on the right track. You may recall that this is the opposite of an Advocacy discussion, in which we hide information that subverts our position. Here we want to subvert ALL positions as soon as we can and get to the one that is most sound. Then we have a collective win.

I also want you to remember that, until you got that piece of information, your analysis of all the other data led you to a wrong conclusion. In other words, that you are fallible. If you can remember that, then you can accept that it is appropriate to be tentative and humble, rather than arrogant or even bold. When you are in a collaborative discussion, there can be lots of wrong positions. Since you are trying to build safety, you have to make it possible for someone to be wrong and not lose face. You need to make it possible for someone to disagree. Boldness and arrogance work against that – tentativeness and humility work in favor. There is a lot to building safety that we will cover in the coming weeks, but this is the starting place.

In closing for this week, I want you to remember is that it is NOT a requirement that we settle an issue in one conversation. I can’t tell you the number of times I sit in a meeting with 10 minutes left and someone raises an interesting, but complex, issue. The natural inclination is to try to settle it in the time remaining in that meeting. Fight that urge. Recognize that it is unlikely to reach an adequately vetted position and properly supported decision on anything of complexity in one conversation. Fight the urge to shortcut the process. It needn’t take a long time, either. My experience is that I have seen more harm caused by discussing too little than delays caused by discussing too much.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Types of Critical Discussions

Last week marked the beginning of a new series of newsletters dealing with improving communication skills. The main ‘take-aways’ were:

• We are not naturally skilled and having critical conversations, so we need some training.
  
• There are always two things being exchanged during a critical conversation – Content and Attitude.

In the coming weeks, we will talk about improving our skills at exchanging content and being able to read and shape attitudes. I usually try to accomplish these kinds of lessons by using models and examples. For this series, I will use everything I can think of to clearly explain the mechanics of conducting real-life critical discussions. If anything is unclear, post a comment or email me at Gregg.Oliver@PathfinderCommunication.com and I will do all that I can to clarify.

This week, let’s talk about the categories of critical discussions we typically have at work. Not every discussion is a critical discussion. Recall that a critical discussion is defined as one in which we are being critical of something. I don’t aim to improve your capability in anything other than critical discussions. I say these discussions fall into 3 categories:

• Advocacy discussions, in which (at least) two individuals are trying to convince one another as to the superiority of their own position in a given matter, without much regard as to the merit of the other position.
  
• “Soft” Collaborative discussions, in which (at least) two individuals that are generally not adversarial are trying to come to an understanding about a given matter.
  
• “Hard” Collaborative discussions, in which (at least) two individuals that become adversarial are trying to come to an understanding about a given matter.
  

Advocacy discussions are contests. The individual is a spokesperson representing a given position. The purpose of the contest is to “win” by achieving acceptance of their advocated position. Period. These are the most common types of discussions we have in business and, while they do have a place, they are poorly suited to 1) developing a common understanding of a position or, 2) promoting group problem solving.
Their weaknesses are many. It is beneficial for a contestant, for instance, to withhold weaknesses in a particular position in order to increase the likelihood of its acceptance. So while there may be known deficiencies in an approach, those deficiencies will not be disclosed UNLESS raised by participants other than the presenter. Likewise, strengths of the idea may be overstated; opposing or tangential opinions may not be considered for “blending” with the original idea in order to preserve the value of the “win” associated with its adoption.

The basic flaw in an advocacy discussion is that it is by nature unbalanced. The presenter brings a fully formed position and views other positions as competitors to be beaten. So any means to preserve imbalance (in their favor) is justified.

Collaborative discussions seek balance. They are not competitive in nature, but cooperative. Many ideas are brought together by contributors and they are compared and reconstituted into a common understanding and perhaps a solution to a problem. There is no loser in this type of discussion. There is a shared solution.

You can get the right answer in either type of discussion, but the long term cost of Advocacy discussions are pretty high if one is trying to use them for things for which they are not suited. They tend to marginalize some participants, and promote and ‘Us versus Them’ mentality. In some cases, I have used them to great effect. Example – a company that was going out of business had used equipment for sale on an “as-is” basis that I wanted to buy. I was not making friends, nor did I see any chance for a long term relationship. I was, in fact, competing with them for my money. I took an Advocates approach to the negotiation. Without being unethical, I went after (and got) the very best value that I could.

They are also possibly useful in situations in which there are a small number of options that are well-defined. In other words, there are few other options. I would support advocacy from a medical provider dealing with a routine issue. No second opinion needed.

Most discussions in business, however, are not so isolated. There are relationships to preserve, credibility and reputation to protect, and important considerations that are different than (and sometimes opposed to) our own that should be considered. These are best reached using collaborative methods. We learned how to manage the exchange of content in the last series of articles. Content is seldom where the difficulty lies, however. The exchange of attitudes is where most of the skill is applied.

In some settings we have a group that gets along well, understands each other, has respect for each other and has respect for the importance and difficulty of the process of collaboration. They may or may not have been trained in collaborative skills, but can work together to come to an understanding. These are the situations that I call “Soft” Collaborative Discussions. If we follow the model for exchanging content in a critical discussion (covered in this blog starting 9/26/08), the temperament of the group will allow for easy management of the exchange of attitudes regarding the content and the process of collaboration.

In other settings, the management of the exchange of attitude is the most challenging. It is what makes collaboration difficult. These Hard Collaborations are difficult because they demand groups of people that may not like or respect each other to work together on ideas upon which they might completely disagree.

In summary, we have:

• Advocacy discussions, which are by far the most commonly used, and simultaneously are the least useful in achieving the ends of most business discussions and are somewhat destructive to a business.
  
• Soft Collaborative Discussions, which are the most useful, least destructive and least common.
  
• Hard Collaborative Discussions, which are most useful in that they are collaborative, but potentially are the most destructive due to the difficulty of managing the exchange of attitudes. These are the discussions most of us avoid at all costs.

What we are going to learn in this series is how to turn Advocacy discussions and Hard collaborative discussions into Soft collaborative discussions by introducing Collaboration into the Advocacy format and by managing the exchange of attitudes. Oh, and we will learn to do it unilaterally – that is, without the support of others. This is no simple matter and will require your attention, but starting next week, we will begin reshaping your ideas on how to interact with your peers and superiors at work.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

SO Many Differences

I am speaking on October 29th on the subject of “Working with Difficult People” and spent some time this weekend working on that presentation. If you have been to a Pathfinder class, you know that I teach that what makes people appear difficult are the differences between them, which I categorize loosely as Rules, Perceptions, Beliefs, Preferences, and Styles. It always surprises me (although it shouldn’t) at how little we believe these impact us. We acknowledge that there are differences, but feel most of them are trivial and really don’t interfere with our ability to communicate. I will say here for the first time that this is probably the single largest mistake we can make!

These differences may usually be small, but they invade our communication in such numbers that they quickly combine to overwhelm almost any serious discussion except for the most logical (for instance, discussions about math or science) and can cause us to lose sight of the facts. Here is what I mean – imagine that you and a sibling are sitting in a class with me. I ask you both to write ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a series of questions like this one:
1 – Is a sofa a piece of furniture?
2 – Is a chair a piece of furniture?
3 – Is a wooden stool a piece of furniture?
4 – Is a wooden cube a piece of furniture?
5– Is a wooden crate piece of furniture?
6 – Is a cardboard crate piece of furniture?
7 – Is a piece of cardboard a piece of furniture?

Around questions 4, 5, & 6 the concept of a piece of furniture is raised. You and a sibling may agree on this. Maybe not. Would you and all your peers at work match up? You and someone from another country?

Remember, this is a question about the concept of furniture – something we form very early; something very familiar and concrete. Are we all on the same page? How about with something a more abstract – would you expect that you and your peers agree on what comprises professional behavior? Freedom? Art? Business results? As the subject gets more abstract, the more radical the differences between people becomes. Even on fairly concrete things, we vary widely.

We also have differences in the way we think things will play out over time. If you have a general rule that "things usually work out for the best", your boss has a general rule that "what can go wrong, will", and your peer has the idea that "nothing we do is really important", do you think it might affect the way you approach projects and your impressions of each other's work?

These differences exist within nearly every concept that we hold. What I think is assertive leadership, you may feel is bullying. With so many differences it is difficult for me to see how we EVER get past them. The answer is, we usually don’t and many of us just “put up” with what goes on, believing that we are right and others wrong. The thing is, keeping score that way is pointless and counterproductive.

If you want to understand “Working with Difficult People”, recognize that they are only difficult until you understand them. I mean understand them in a way that they KNOW you understand them, which generally means you can explain their position TO THEM and have them say “Yeah….you got it!” If you do that, you have asked questions, listened carefully, let them talk, considered what they had to say, and repeated it back to them. You asked them to correct you if you had it wrong. You made their point of view important – not right or wrong, but important enough to work to understand.

If someone did that for you, how difficult would you be?

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Defensiveness

Last time I wrote about Advocacy as an impediment to the logical give and take that distinguishes collaboration. I characterized it as a learned behavior, and one that can be partially or fully managed by a skilled communicator that recognizes it and knows how to steer a group around it. I also mentioned another impediment - Defensiveness. That is the subject this week.

First of all, I know it is a little obvious that these are learned behaviors. I mean, we are not born knowing how to communicate a position as an advocate. Our natural position (so I am lead to believe) is simply to want to do what is best for us, and we are not at all picky about being the author of the idea. Early in life, it seems that we become aware that what is often best for us is to be the author of good ideas. And not just a few, but a LOT. And we should have them frequently. And they should outstandingly productive and profitable. This is recognized as competitive advantage and one highly sought. We learn this in school – that we are rewarded for having the best ideas. This teaches us that it is wise to be able to advocate a position, and exclude others. There comes a time in everyone’s life when they are presenting their idea, sure that it is the right one, and we hear another one – a better one. If at that moment, you begin to support the better idea, or you choose to question it to see if it is really better, or you begin mixing the best parts of your idea with the best parts of theirs; CONGRATULATIONS! You are collaborating.

If (on the other hand) when faced with the better idea, you dismiss it, or discredit the person presenting it, or use half-truths to make your idea look better, or omit important unknowns about your idea to make it more likely to be accepted (and therein increase your competitive advantage), you are advocating.

Defensiveness is just as universal as Advocacy, but not nearly as simple. Defensiveness comes into play when some parties in the conversation feel that an open and authentic exchange of information is not safe. They begin to tailor their words and their level of participation because they feel a need to defend themselves from some threat, real or imagined.

So Defensiveness is the impediment to a collaboration resulting from a real or imagined lack of safety. What causes that?

The answer is that it depends on the individual, and I know that is a TERRIBLE answer so I will try to fix it. There are two general categories:
· Credibility – The person doesn’t feel safe because they perceive a problem with the credibility of someone in the collaboration. If someone thinks they are dealing with someone that isn’t credible, they often begin to censor what they say.
· Respect – The person doesn’t feel safe because they feel disrespected by or feel disrespect for someone in the collaboration. If someone feels they are being treated disrespectfully, or their dignity is being threatened, or that the person with whom they are dealing is unrespectable, they often begin to censor what they say.

These are the general categories, and their contents vary from person to person based on many things. I once worked with a person that kept me at arm’s length, never really sharing their thoughts on our business dealings with me. It was very uncomfortable for us both. After a series of talks about it, she admitted that she considered me unprofessional. I was very surprised. We had done a lot of good things together and I considered myself to be VERY professional in all if my dealings with her. After a few more conversations, she told me it was my appearance. My hair was long for her tastes, and I seldom (very, very seldom) ever wore a suit or even a tie. We had some conversations and eventually we agreed that I could be very effective in doing my job and would wear a tie on any occasion she felt would be enhanced by that level of “professionalism”. We further agreed that she would tell me when those occasions arose.

My point is that the root causes of Defensiveness in communication vary, but fall into a small number of general categories. In the next few newsletters, I will describe the most common things that underlie defensiveness and ways to create sufficient safety to overcome them.

This is very important because keeping Defensiveness under control is the way to keep collaboration productive.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Safety and Trust

There have been many times in our lives when we have wanted to say something, but elected not to. Afterwards, we may wish we had and ponder why we didn’t. Sometimes, we remember when we said something and wish we hadn’t, or a time when we blurted something that was harsher than we meant it to be, or the other person was offended even though we were “diplomatic”.

We feel like the other party will get mad. Or we don’t feel like it will help. Or we feel that the other person won’t understand. Or we feel they will say something that we don’t want to deal with.

You get the picture. We either worry that we will be “attacked” or we don’t trust that they will follow the direction of conversation that we want them to. In the final analysis, we don’t feel safe.

Feeling safe in the conversation is the most fundamental position. It allows us to start, and all parties constantly check their safety levels in formulating their statements. When someone becomes defensive, it is because they feel threatened – a.k.a. “not safe”. When someone becomes defensive, the productivity of the conversation falls to zero until you re-establish safety. Pretty simple to understand, but how do you do it?

The task is twofold; 1) to feel safe yourself and 2) create safety for others in the conversation. Why do YOU have to do it? Because they don’t know this stuff!

Making yourself feel safe takes practice and concentration. You have to stay curious, open, engaged, authentic, empathetic, present, and collaborative. You MUST believe that if you do that, the conversation CAN’T go anywhere you don’t want it to, because you AREN’T STEERING IT!

Take curiosity – if you are truly curious about the other party’s point of view, what exactly is it that will make you defensive? The answer is “nothing” because nothing they say is an attack – it is just their point of view, which is what you are seeking. Let’s say I ask someone a very unsafe question like “What do you think of my performance on the Jenson project?” If I am curious, and they say “Frankly I thought you could have done better.” I would naturally ask “How?” If I am not curious, I might have a different response. If I remain curious and ask how I might have done better, they might say “Well, at times you seemed a bit unprofessional when we were meeting with them.” Again, if I fall out of curiosity I might guess at what they mean and try to excuse myself, or I might just tell them they’re wrong, or I might attribute it to my style, or I might tell them that if they knew more about what I do they would understand, or I might tell them “that we will agree to disagree (yuck!)”. If I stay curious, they might tell me “Well, in many meetings you showed up late and several times without a tie!” AHA! Guess what? You just learned what the other person’s definition of professionalism is and how they apply it. YOU STAYED CURIOUS AND LEARNED SOMETHING ABOUT HOW OTHER PEOPLE DEFINE PROFESSIONALISM. It of course will be up to you to determine what you do with the information, but by staying curious is the only way to earn that option.

Making others feel safe should be thought of as making a safe environment for discussion. YOU have to be sensitive to the rhythm of the conversation and observant enough to see when the exchange isn’t going smoothly. The earlier you detect changes in the timbre of the exchange the easier it is to keep things safe. You can tell they are feeling unsafe if they start to withdraw (sarcasm, subject changing, or silence), attack (name-calling, controlling, anger), or begin to act as if you have diminished their dignity. At that moment, you should stop talking about the subject of the conversation, and try to talk about the way the conversation is being conducted (“What you just said makes me think that I may have said something offensive. I didn’t mean to say anything hurtful and if I did, I apologize”). Note – only apologize if it is warranted.

Some things to remember:

Focus on the deeper purpose that you both hope to achieve in the conversation. You hope to understand their side IN ORDER TO accomplish something that will benefit you both. Make sure you BOTH understand what that something and its benefit is. You may see one way solve a problem and the other party may have a totally different solution. You need to assure that you both are committed to solving the problem and agree on what it is. The mutual purpose will help carry you through the discomfort of the conflict over methods IF you explicitly state it. “I want to tell you that, even thought we differ on some of these details, I am delighted to be working with someone that is as passionate about solving problem x as I am.”

Don’t try to accomplish everything in one conversation. The healthiest way to work through things is generally in several small conversations. Difficult topics take some time to work through and the best way to allow the time is to hold several conversations rather than one or two long ones.

Be sensitive to other points of view. A good way to show this is to be tentative. “I may be wrong about this, but I think we should…” is less likely to put someone on the defensive than “Any schoolboy would easily see that we should….” Along those same lines, being humble is a great help. There is no need to hammer someone with your credentials after they have been established. Humility and tentativeness will automatically be part of your demeanor if you are practicing openness.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Openness

The elements of the engagement stance (Presence, Engagement, Empathy, Openness, Curiosity, Depth, Safety, and Collaboration) are so vital to good communication that I will post articles about all of them over the coming weeks. These eight points are the keys to the kingdom, and if you master nothing else but these, you will be amazed at the improvement in your communication. I covered Curiosity already, so I will look at a Presence this time.

Presence is achieved by giving your collaborator your undivided attention. Why is this key? Let’s think of some things expressed (and implied) through undivided attention:

·       “You are important to me”

·       “This discussion is important to me”

·       “I want to understand your point of view”

·       “I am here for you”

·       “What you have to say matters to me”

·       “I respect you”

·       “ I believe you can contribute to my understanding”

·       “You are credible”

In being authentically present, available, undistracted, and focused in your exchange with your collaborator you demonstrate that you give  their input the consideration that THEY think it deserves. Imagine the difference in the depth of their commitment to whatever decision you eventually develop if they truly believe that you understand them and you can communicate fully the differences between your perspectives. Imagine how difficult it would be to get strong commitment if they felt you DIDN’T pay attention to them and DIDN’T understand what they were saying to you! Maybe you can think of examples of both in your life and you can remember your feelings.

In being present, make sure that:

·       You are authentic. Don’t stare doe-eyed at your collaborator, nodding and repeating word-for-word all that they say. These are all-too-familiar earmarks of inadequate “active listening” classes. BE REAL! It is important to demonstrate that you are hearing the other party and understanding their perspective, so it is wise to paraphrase what they are saying (“If I am hearing you correctly, you are saying…). Likewise, if you aren’t ‘getting’ them, prompt for more info (“help me understand why (how)….”, “tell me more about….”) and them LISTEN. This is ineffective;”Tell me again about why you feel that a four day work week is good for productivity because it’s my feeling that it isn’t and I have read a great deal on the subject and have a good feel for what the experts say and… Everything I wrote in italics may be true, but it detracts from the sense of presence. You’ll have a chance to tell your story. This is about understanding THEIRS. So LISTEN and UNDERSTAND.

·       You are available. If you have only ten minutes before your next meeting and need to get ready, don’t start the conversation. Be honest and respectful. “I have a meeting that I have to get ready for and I KNOW that this topic is important to us both. Let’s set a time when we can both talk about it for an appropriate length of time to fully cover it.” NOTE – ALWAYS make it back at that time to discuss it. This can NOT be a stalling technique if you wish to be thought of kindly or to build credibility. Skipping the meeting with them will demonstrate just how unimportant they are. I once had a person promise to get back with me at a specific time to go over something important, call me and tell that they couldn’t make it and would reschedule later, and then I saw them taking a break instead of making their original meeting time with me. Their dishonesty really put me off. There were better ways to handle it.

·       You are relaxed. Being relaxed telegraphs your comfort with the other party – nervousness says “I don’t want to do this”. I can just hear my students asking…”well, what if I DON’T want to do it? What if it is a difficult topic for me, or I don’t like the person”. I’ll tell you what I say:

o   “Look, I don’t really know how to say this so I am just going to say it”

o   “I want you to know this is difficult to say, but it needs to be said”

o   “I know we have some history, but we need to go over this and come to a mutually beneficial conclusion”

o   “You and I have to come to terms on this for the good of the organization and I am willing to do anything reasonable to come to an agreement with you”

·       You are focused. The big enemy here is that internal voice that tells you what’s wrong with the other guy’s perspective, tells you what you are going to say as soon as he stops talking, and wanders off thinking about the next deadline or what you want for lunch. The best way I know of to stop this is DON”T try to silence the voice (it doesn’t work – it never stops unless you are a skilled meditator in ideal conditions). Instead, make the voice curious instead of judgmental. Train the voice (over time) to formulate clarifying questions about the other perspective. Don’t interrupt the other party as they talk, though. Keep the inner voices questions to yourself until it is time to ask “tell me more about…” or “can you clarify what you mean by…”. Take notes if you must. This also shows that you are interested in “getting this right”.

In other words, I convey the thoughts expressed by presence (see above) and build mutual respect and common purpose. Don’t worry about the words I use – use words that are AUTHENTIC to you. The job here is to show that you are in this together and that the REAL you is THERE!