Posts
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
Monday, February 2, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
A Poll Question
The online classes I promised are in production. The online forum I promised is about ready to go. I am training instructors to provide more live classes. My question is: How else can we connect so that you all are getting the ongoing practice and instruction? Leave me some comments.
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication
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.
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
Sunday, January 11, 2009
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
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
Monday, January 5, 2009
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
Monday, December 29, 2008
Applying the Lessons
(Note to new readers – Thanks for joining us. Since 9/26/2008, I have written a series of weekly newsletters regarding the model for critical discussions. Reading them will help you catch up on the basics).
The lessons learned in the last 3 months in this newsletter are most easily and appropriately applied first to ourselves. I cannot overstate the importance of taking every opportunity to examine my OWN claims, evidence, and inference before sharing them. Over time, this examination becomes a habit and is done very quickly (milliseconds) and to the great benefit of one’s credibility.
I stress here that you need to practice analyzing claims, issues, evidence, and inference in your own thoughts as a matter of course. The more you do, the easier it will be for you when you start using it to analyze the words of others. Twenty-five or so years ago, I practiced by reading books and analyzing the logic in them, much the same way that a grammar student might diagram sentences. I progressed very quickly when I began taking classes. Using the model that I have laid out over the last three months (a modification of a more complex structure called Toulmin’s model) will help you find gaps that you would not have seen before AND help you identify strong positions that you would have not been willing to support before. In other words, you will develop the skill to assess the position being presented by its merits and not solely its alignment with your own views. This is the purpose of Informal Logic – to help one develop a well-founded idea in the face of uncertainty. This is why it so improves our real day-to-day lives – because so little is certain.
At this point, almost all of the people I have taught say “This all sounds so easy, but the people I need to talk to won’t go for this! They are too (stubborn, mean, one-sided, difficult, smart, dumb, etc, etc, etc) to deal with in any kind of logic. What am I supposed to do when emotions come into play and someone gets angry?” I could go into a lengthy dissertation on the weakness of the above position, but I won’t (you should, though, just for practice).
Picture yourself faced with a difficult task – one for which you don’t have the skill. Maybe it is “to get from California to New York in 5 hours”. Could you do this on your own, without enlisting the skills of another adequately trained person? Probably not – unless you are a jet pilot.
Now, picture the person with whom it is “too difficult” to converse. The difficult task with which THEY are faced is to successfully get through a critical discussion with you and do so in a way that improves your relationship, rather than injure it. They can NOT get through this task without enlisting the skills of another adequately trained person. You are going to be that person – a “communication jet pilot”.
I know (from surveys conducted in 2008 with over 9,000 respondents) that 81% of people polled avoid having critical discussions because they fear they will end badly, with someone being angry. If you don’t hold these conversations, your choices are to:
- Accept the bad situations and their aftermath
OR
- Learn the skills required to master the conversations.
I know a lot of people that put off talking about the most important things in their lives (marriage issues, child issues, work issues) because they are afraid of what the other person might say or do. I also know that the more capable you are at having “relationship building” conversations around well-thought out content, the better your decisions will be in both the long and the short term. My belief is that you have already made the choice to improve your communication skills. You believe they can be learned and you are trying to learn them. I will do all that I can to teach you all that I know.
This brings us to the first nugget in this series about applying critical discussion and informal logic to business life.
In any conversation, there are always two things being exchanged: Content (the topic and supporting discussion) and Attitudes (everything else, including the baggage).
Think about the last few times that you got into a discussion which ended with you getting mad. Did you get mad about the content being exchanged (“If you say that man is the cause of global warming ONE MORE TIME I will never speak to you again!”) or because of the attitude being exchanged (“I can’t stand the way he acts! Like he knows EVERYTHING! He NEVER listens to what I say.”). My experience is that conversations end badly because we aren’t naturally skilled in dealing with attitudes (our own and others) when we speak about difficult things. We get distracted by things that don’t much matter AND we ignore things that are VERY important.
Just as we have spent the last few weeks dissecting and examining claims, issues, evidence, and inference we will spends the next few weeks examining attitudes in a conversation. How we interpret feelings and thoughts (our own and those of others) and act on that interpretation form the balance in the conversation. We will learn how to make that interpretation, to spot when things are getting out of balance, and how to bring them back into balance. To do this, we will dissect conversations to separate their components (content and attitude) and come to understand how to move forward together.
Some readers will remember the articles I posted in July and August regarding creating safety, being authentic, maintaining openness to ideas, using collaboration vs. advocacy to improve decisions, etc. These are the key to understanding the attitude components of a conversation and we will revisit them in a new light. We will learn how to recognize them and create them, just as we learned to analyze claims and create issues.
So, remember to practice analyzing YOUR OWN claims, issues, evidence, and inference as you go about your day and in your reading. Also, begin listening to conversations with the idea of identifying the differences in the ways that we exchange Content and the ways we exchange Attitudes.
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication
The lessons learned in the last 3 months in this newsletter are most easily and appropriately applied first to ourselves. I cannot overstate the importance of taking every opportunity to examine my OWN claims, evidence, and inference before sharing them. Over time, this examination becomes a habit and is done very quickly (milliseconds) and to the great benefit of one’s credibility.
I stress here that you need to practice analyzing claims, issues, evidence, and inference in your own thoughts as a matter of course. The more you do, the easier it will be for you when you start using it to analyze the words of others. Twenty-five or so years ago, I practiced by reading books and analyzing the logic in them, much the same way that a grammar student might diagram sentences. I progressed very quickly when I began taking classes. Using the model that I have laid out over the last three months (a modification of a more complex structure called Toulmin’s model) will help you find gaps that you would not have seen before AND help you identify strong positions that you would have not been willing to support before. In other words, you will develop the skill to assess the position being presented by its merits and not solely its alignment with your own views. This is the purpose of Informal Logic – to help one develop a well-founded idea in the face of uncertainty. This is why it so improves our real day-to-day lives – because so little is certain.
At this point, almost all of the people I have taught say “This all sounds so easy, but the people I need to talk to won’t go for this! They are too (stubborn, mean, one-sided, difficult, smart, dumb, etc, etc, etc) to deal with in any kind of logic. What am I supposed to do when emotions come into play and someone gets angry?” I could go into a lengthy dissertation on the weakness of the above position, but I won’t (you should, though, just for practice).
Picture yourself faced with a difficult task – one for which you don’t have the skill. Maybe it is “to get from California to New York in 5 hours”. Could you do this on your own, without enlisting the skills of another adequately trained person? Probably not – unless you are a jet pilot.
Now, picture the person with whom it is “too difficult” to converse. The difficult task with which THEY are faced is to successfully get through a critical discussion with you and do so in a way that improves your relationship, rather than injure it. They can NOT get through this task without enlisting the skills of another adequately trained person. You are going to be that person – a “communication jet pilot”.
I know (from surveys conducted in 2008 with over 9,000 respondents) that 81% of people polled avoid having critical discussions because they fear they will end badly, with someone being angry. If you don’t hold these conversations, your choices are to:
- Accept the bad situations and their aftermath
OR
- Learn the skills required to master the conversations.
I know a lot of people that put off talking about the most important things in their lives (marriage issues, child issues, work issues) because they are afraid of what the other person might say or do. I also know that the more capable you are at having “relationship building” conversations around well-thought out content, the better your decisions will be in both the long and the short term. My belief is that you have already made the choice to improve your communication skills. You believe they can be learned and you are trying to learn them. I will do all that I can to teach you all that I know.
This brings us to the first nugget in this series about applying critical discussion and informal logic to business life.
In any conversation, there are always two things being exchanged: Content (the topic and supporting discussion) and Attitudes (everything else, including the baggage).
Think about the last few times that you got into a discussion which ended with you getting mad. Did you get mad about the content being exchanged (“If you say that man is the cause of global warming ONE MORE TIME I will never speak to you again!”) or because of the attitude being exchanged (“I can’t stand the way he acts! Like he knows EVERYTHING! He NEVER listens to what I say.”). My experience is that conversations end badly because we aren’t naturally skilled in dealing with attitudes (our own and others) when we speak about difficult things. We get distracted by things that don’t much matter AND we ignore things that are VERY important.
Just as we have spent the last few weeks dissecting and examining claims, issues, evidence, and inference we will spends the next few weeks examining attitudes in a conversation. How we interpret feelings and thoughts (our own and those of others) and act on that interpretation form the balance in the conversation. We will learn how to make that interpretation, to spot when things are getting out of balance, and how to bring them back into balance. To do this, we will dissect conversations to separate their components (content and attitude) and come to understand how to move forward together.
Some readers will remember the articles I posted in July and August regarding creating safety, being authentic, maintaining openness to ideas, using collaboration vs. advocacy to improve decisions, etc. These are the key to understanding the attitude components of a conversation and we will revisit them in a new light. We will learn how to recognize them and create them, just as we learned to analyze claims and create issues.
So, remember to practice analyzing YOUR OWN claims, issues, evidence, and inference as you go about your day and in your reading. Also, begin listening to conversations with the idea of identifying the differences in the ways that we exchange Content and the ways we exchange Attitudes.
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Inference - #5 (Narrative) and #6 (Form)
This is the LAST INSTALLMENT on inference, which finishes the introduction to the basic elements of critical discussion. Next up - how to hold critical discussions (and other delicate conversations) and NOT having it end with hurt feelings.
Let’s recap once more what we have learned in the weekly installments for September 26 to present:
1 – How to identify the main topic of the discussion (the resolution)
2 – How to identify the 4 types of Claims used to support the resolution (fact, definition, quality, policy)
3 – How to develop questions (issues) to request evidence to support claims
4 – How to identify the 3 types of Evidence used to support a claim (Objective, Social, and Credibility)
5 – How to identify the 6 different Inferences used to connect the evidence to the claim (Example, Cause, Sign, Analogy, Narrative, and Form)
That is a lot of information and I congratulate all of you that have steadily read and learned from the information offered. As you learn to put these concepts together, you will find yourself quickly gaining ground in getting to the core of controversies in which you are involved. Let’s go over the last two inferences – Narrative and Form, starting with Narrative.
The inference from Narrative is the inference in which I connect my evidence to the claim by telling a narrative (story) that is intended to describe how a situation will play out. The warrant for an inference from narrative is that “if real life unfolds in the same way the story does, we can expect the same result”. Fables are generally written this way, with a final conclusion called a moral.
We’ve all heard the fable about the Ant and the Grasshopper, in which the grasshopper plays all day and stores no food while the industrious ant builds a nest and creates a store of food. The grasshopper makes fun of the ant, because the ant never has any fun and seems to waste his life while the grasshopper parties every day. When hard times come, though, the grasshopper is in big trouble but the ant is in good shape because of his hard work and dedication.
So this is even more abstract than an analogy. We are not assigning roles of saying “you are like the ant and I am like the grasshopper” and thus drawing literal comparisons. We are making a broader comment about forgoing instant gratification in favor of security; of accepting personal responsibility for one’s future. More directly, we are saying “if you fail to plan for the future, you are likely to have problems when the unexpected strikes”.
Let’s say my child received a bad grade on a test and I asked them if they felt they had studied for it. The child says they hadn’t; they had chosen to watch a movie instead. I might make a claim of quality that it is better to study and secure a good future than to enjoy a movie and get a bad grade. I would offer as evidence the bad grade and the confession about the movie. Rather than say the bad grade was CAUSED by watching the movie, I might use the NARRATIVE of the Ant and the Grasshopper. Why? Because I really am not sure that the movie caused the bad grade. I know there are tests that you can study for intensely and still fail. That would defeat a causal inference. The narrative, though, would say “this kind of behavior has been associated with these results, and the outcome can be devastating”.
So why have children believed this fable for so long (since ancient Rome)? Why do we readily accept its’ moral and make it one of our core values? Because it passes the tests for a good narrative! Whenever you plan to use a narrative (or hear one) you should base its value on these four tests:
1 – Is the narrative believable – plausible? Do we believe that ants are industrious and grasshoppers are not? Do we believe that failure to plan for the future can end up badly?
2 – Is the narrative coherent? Does one thing lead to the next in an expected way? Is it consistent?
3 – Are the characters consistent in their behavior? Is the ant sometimes lazy and sometimes not?
4 – Does the narrative resonate with us? Does is it seem that we could see this play out, or that it would never really happen? Does it “just seem true” at a basic level? Can you relate?
The Inference from Form is a thorny one. It is used all the time, and is rarely questioned. It is based on the (false) idea that statements that are expressed like formal logic (mathematical logic) are automatically useful in informal logic (topics cast in language rather than numbers). Almost all business discussions are best analyzed with informal logic, due to their uncertain nature.
In formal logic, there is a form called Disjunctive Logic that says “either a or b”. Then we analyze the truth of “a” and make a decision about “b”. As an example “2+2 is either equal to 6 or it is equal to 4; it is not equal to 6; therefore it is equal to 4.” If the premise is correct (2+2 is either equal to 6 or 4) and the analysis is correct (it is not equal to 6) then the conclusion (therefore it is equal to 4) MUST be correct. That is the glory of formal logic – the answers are CERTAIN to be correct IF the premises are true and the FORM is correct.
But look at this inference from Form “either we will watch a movie tonight or we will read; we will not watch a movie tonight, therefore we will read”. In the case of 2+2 above, the choices were mutually exclusive – both couldn’t be correct. But we COULD watch a movie, or read, or do both, or do something else entirely. There is no reason to think that the two choices given were the only two or that we had to do either one. So if I say “tonight we can either watch a movie or read, and I don’t want to watch a movie”, you might think “then I guess we have to read” but would that be true? Of course not.
Another formal logic form is Conditional (if-then) like “if 3 is greater than 2, then 2 is not greater than 3” is always right because it is deductive. What if we make a non-mathematical argument in that same way? “If companies ship late, then they lose customers”; is that true? Really? It is expressed using the conditional form, but it isn’t always true. I buy books from Amazon all the time – there are very few times that I care even within a week when it gets to me.
We will explore more later. Let me wish you all a happy holiday. Next we will explore how to get through these discussions while preserving (and hopefully improving) our relationships.
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication
Let’s recap once more what we have learned in the weekly installments for September 26 to present:
1 – How to identify the main topic of the discussion (the resolution)
2 – How to identify the 4 types of Claims used to support the resolution (fact, definition, quality, policy)
3 – How to develop questions (issues) to request evidence to support claims
4 – How to identify the 3 types of Evidence used to support a claim (Objective, Social, and Credibility)
5 – How to identify the 6 different Inferences used to connect the evidence to the claim (Example, Cause, Sign, Analogy, Narrative, and Form)
That is a lot of information and I congratulate all of you that have steadily read and learned from the information offered. As you learn to put these concepts together, you will find yourself quickly gaining ground in getting to the core of controversies in which you are involved. Let’s go over the last two inferences – Narrative and Form, starting with Narrative.
The inference from Narrative is the inference in which I connect my evidence to the claim by telling a narrative (story) that is intended to describe how a situation will play out. The warrant for an inference from narrative is that “if real life unfolds in the same way the story does, we can expect the same result”. Fables are generally written this way, with a final conclusion called a moral.
We’ve all heard the fable about the Ant and the Grasshopper, in which the grasshopper plays all day and stores no food while the industrious ant builds a nest and creates a store of food. The grasshopper makes fun of the ant, because the ant never has any fun and seems to waste his life while the grasshopper parties every day. When hard times come, though, the grasshopper is in big trouble but the ant is in good shape because of his hard work and dedication.
So this is even more abstract than an analogy. We are not assigning roles of saying “you are like the ant and I am like the grasshopper” and thus drawing literal comparisons. We are making a broader comment about forgoing instant gratification in favor of security; of accepting personal responsibility for one’s future. More directly, we are saying “if you fail to plan for the future, you are likely to have problems when the unexpected strikes”.
Let’s say my child received a bad grade on a test and I asked them if they felt they had studied for it. The child says they hadn’t; they had chosen to watch a movie instead. I might make a claim of quality that it is better to study and secure a good future than to enjoy a movie and get a bad grade. I would offer as evidence the bad grade and the confession about the movie. Rather than say the bad grade was CAUSED by watching the movie, I might use the NARRATIVE of the Ant and the Grasshopper. Why? Because I really am not sure that the movie caused the bad grade. I know there are tests that you can study for intensely and still fail. That would defeat a causal inference. The narrative, though, would say “this kind of behavior has been associated with these results, and the outcome can be devastating”.
So why have children believed this fable for so long (since ancient Rome)? Why do we readily accept its’ moral and make it one of our core values? Because it passes the tests for a good narrative! Whenever you plan to use a narrative (or hear one) you should base its value on these four tests:
1 – Is the narrative believable – plausible? Do we believe that ants are industrious and grasshoppers are not? Do we believe that failure to plan for the future can end up badly?
2 – Is the narrative coherent? Does one thing lead to the next in an expected way? Is it consistent?
3 – Are the characters consistent in their behavior? Is the ant sometimes lazy and sometimes not?
4 – Does the narrative resonate with us? Does is it seem that we could see this play out, or that it would never really happen? Does it “just seem true” at a basic level? Can you relate?
The Inference from Form is a thorny one. It is used all the time, and is rarely questioned. It is based on the (false) idea that statements that are expressed like formal logic (mathematical logic) are automatically useful in informal logic (topics cast in language rather than numbers). Almost all business discussions are best analyzed with informal logic, due to their uncertain nature.
In formal logic, there is a form called Disjunctive Logic that says “either a or b”. Then we analyze the truth of “a” and make a decision about “b”. As an example “2+2 is either equal to 6 or it is equal to 4; it is not equal to 6; therefore it is equal to 4.” If the premise is correct (2+2 is either equal to 6 or 4) and the analysis is correct (it is not equal to 6) then the conclusion (therefore it is equal to 4) MUST be correct. That is the glory of formal logic – the answers are CERTAIN to be correct IF the premises are true and the FORM is correct.
But look at this inference from Form “either we will watch a movie tonight or we will read; we will not watch a movie tonight, therefore we will read”. In the case of 2+2 above, the choices were mutually exclusive – both couldn’t be correct. But we COULD watch a movie, or read, or do both, or do something else entirely. There is no reason to think that the two choices given were the only two or that we had to do either one. So if I say “tonight we can either watch a movie or read, and I don’t want to watch a movie”, you might think “then I guess we have to read” but would that be true? Of course not.
Another formal logic form is Conditional (if-then) like “if 3 is greater than 2, then 2 is not greater than 3” is always right because it is deductive. What if we make a non-mathematical argument in that same way? “If companies ship late, then they lose customers”; is that true? Really? It is expressed using the conditional form, but it isn’t always true. I buy books from Amazon all the time – there are very few times that I care even within a week when it gets to me.
We will explore more later. Let me wish you all a happy holiday. Next we will explore how to get through these discussions while preserving (and hopefully improving) our relationships.
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication
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