Decisions - Emotions and Logic

So far, I have suggested that getting good results from our decisions is strongly correlated to employing an improved decision making process based on three things. I would like to start describing such a process right now. First let’s recap the three things that must be considered in our decision making process

·         Perspective

o   One would like to include all important perspectives in their consideration. A perfect decision making process would consider the points of view from anyone impacted or involved in the decision. This is seldom possible, so we try to get as close as practical.

·         Impact

o   One would like to be able to estimate and express the amount of impact and likely consequence and benefit from a problem scenario (“current state”) and a solution scenario (“proposed state” or “future state”) in order to assign the correct priority and resources.  A perfect decision making process would completely and correctly predict all possible consequences from all possible outcomes of a decision. This is seldom possible, so we try to get as close as is practical.

·         Basis for Decision

o   One must understand the strength and coherence of the facts being used to portray the problem and solution scenarios. A perfect decision making process would use only information that had been vetted and confirmed to be accurate, and we would have ALL of the information necessary to present a complete picture. This is seldom possible, so we try to get as close as is practical.

 

A good process evaluates all three of these elements constantly and “spirals into” a decision, meaning that the first iteration takes us from zero information on all three elements to our initial understanding. If there are gaps in our initial understanding, we iterate through again, and again.

If we imagine the theoretical PERFECT process I eluded to before, we would require just one iteration and it would be instantaneous. Your current process is probably near perfect for simple decisions (e.g. only one perspective matters and it is yours, the decision doesn’t carry very great consequences, and you don’t have to deal with a great deal of data or strong conflicting emotions). This is the kind of decision we often face when ordering lunch. For decisions in which there is more complexity in these elements (i.e. risk), our process needs to be more robust.

The first thing we concentrate on are the stakeholders, their identity, their input (and its basis), and the impact of the direction that their input implies. Note that we haven’t discussed who is going to make the final decision, whether it is a group decision or an individual decision; we are just gathering data.

Since the last 150 or so articles I have written have been about how to have these kinds of conversations with people, I am going to summarize that towards the end of the Decision Making series. For now, I am talking about the middle step –basis for decisions.

We have touched on the idea that there are emotional decisions and logical decisions, and that we would prefer to eliminate emotions from our decisions because they tend to distort reasoning. The fact is, almost all (greater than 95%) of decisions have an emotional content and, as long as it doesn’t distort reasoning there is no reason to exclude an option because it is emotionally based (“Logically, I know I need to wear a tie to dinner. Emotionally, I am going to pick the red tie because I like it more”). If, however, you know that the person you are trying to impress tends to distrust people with red ties, then you shouldn’t allow your emotion (liking it) distort your reason (my purpose is to impress this person).

Since we are talking about business decisions, the following emotional components are likely NOT useful and should be scrutinized carefully if they are the primary reason you are making a business decision:

·         Indifference (Whatever – I don’t care – it’s not MY company)

·         Addiction (We should hire more people because I WANT a bigger department)

·         Faith (We are too big to fail; I just know that customer would never drop us)

·         Emotion (We should acquire that little company that makes cellphone applications because EVERYONE is buying cellphone app companies these days and I don’t want to look out of touch)

·         Intuition (I have a feeling that that this is going to be a great quarter…I can feel it in my bones)

I am not saying that you can’t think or feel these things, or that if you do something is going to go wrong. I am saying that if your process recognizes these as adequate support for business decisions, then your process is going to disappoint you more often than if you DON’T rely on them.

In fact, emotion adds certain aspects to decision making that are valuable:

·         Improve Speed (fear increases speed of decisions)

·         Provide Information (a potential course of action that may bring regret or disappointment will promote greater discussion and reflection about alternatives)

·         Assessing relevance (we consider the likelihood of getting a result that will make us feel regret or disappointment and assess the associated factors relevant and worthy of consideration)  

Here are some bases that tend to produce better results than the above. These bases are viewed as “reasoned” or “logical” and are arranged in order from lowest to highest likelihood of success:

·         Pressure (The boss says we should do it this way. He wouldn’t be in his position if he didn’t know something about this)

·         Policy (The law directs a particular way in which we deal with customer issues. Or, could be our policy or regulatory requirements)

·         Experts (the reasoned conclusion of someone with experience in the issue at hand)

·         Facts (use of decision analysis tools such as criteria ranking, prioritization and weighting, or compliance tables. The Kepner Tregoe decision making model is such a tool)

·         Probability (requires modeling to determine certainty and uncertainty and to determine specific values of various outcomes)

It is important to note that I am NOT saying that unless you have a probability based process, your decisions will be wrong. Can experts be wrong? Sure. Can intuition be right? Yes. I am saying that if your process recognizes that decisions that are decided solely on emotion are more risky than decisions that include logical elements, then you are likely to arrive at better results that if it doesn’t.

Also, I am saying that your process must recognize that almost all decisions contain some emotional content and it doesn’t hurt so long as that content isn’t the entire basis for the entire decision AND it doesn’t distort the reasoning that is present in the decision.

Next time we will talk a little more on this, and then move on to Assessing Impact and Consequences.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Decisions, Decisions #2 - How do you make them now?

Last time we learned that judging the soundness of our decisions based on the PROCESS we use to make them is a better strategy than basing that judgment on the RESULTS we achieve. This approach is rests on three ideas:

1)      By developing a decision-making process that rigorously considers a standard set of attributes and criteria, we can arrive at better results IF the parameters and criteria we use are USUALLY important factors.

2)      By revisiting our decision making process after achieving our results, we can adjust our attributes and criteria based on lessons learned and improve the probability of making a good decision next time.

3)      If we accept that the result of the decision is the only way to judge its soundness, it inhibits our addressing the process of making a decision.

Clearly, these attributes and criteria must be important. Fortunately, people have been developing them for thousands of years, continually refining them.  To begin with, I will put them in 3 different categories for general discussion and then go through them in detail:

Category 1 – Perspective

There is generally more than one (meaning more than just YOUR perspective). This means you need to understand the various other perspectives and account for them in the decision.

Category 2 – Impact

Decisions that can result in serious and / or permanent results deserve different scrutiny than those that make little difference. One of my early mentors put it this way “The size of a problem can be measured by the difficulty to recover from it.” I think that is pretty sound advice.

Category 3 –Basis for Decision

We have all heard decisions characterized as “an emotional decision” or “a fact-based decision”.  However, few of us are trained such that we really know what these terms mean, or if there are other bases for decisions (which of course there are), and how to IMPROVE our basis. If you understand the basis for a decision and you understand the differences between the various bases, you can improve your likelihood of making a good decision. Would you rather make a decision based on intuition, or on the results of an expert study? Which do you think would have the greater likelihood of being correct?

The above are the things in which we will develop expertise over the next few articles. For now, I want you to consider the following questions. Feel free to write me (gregg@PFComm.com) or post your thoughts here on the blog. I want you to think about how you CURRENTLY do these things – define your current process……

Perspective Questions –

·         How do I assure that I know which viewpoints are important in a decision?

·         How do I make sure I understand what decision should be made in the eyes of the people that hold those viewpoints?

·         How do I make sure that competing viewpoints are resolved such that the people involved can be depended on to carry out the decision and work towards achieving the desired result?

 

 Impact Questions -

·         How do I determine best, worst, and likely-case results for my decisions?

·         How do I define critical vs. non-critical with respect to outcomes? By the way the outcome affects me personally? My boss? My customers? Other stakeholders?

·         How do I determine the consequences of the outcomes?

·         What if it the likely outcome is good for some and bad for others?

 

Basis Questions –

·         Everyone says that using emotion as the basis for decisions is a bad idea, but I seem to do it a lot (I bought my car cause it looks hot, I picked my favorite basketball team because all my friends liked them and were mean to people that didn’t like the same team, I chose to get a dog “just because”). What would be a better way?

·         How do I make decisions when I know that my boss disagrees? My spouse? My supplier?

·         How do I make decisions when I am short on time? Short on data? I don’t really care about the outcome?

 

Think about how you use these three areas to make decisions now, and we will talk about how I recommend you view them over the next few articles. I look forward to hearing from you.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Decision Making (#1 of a short series)

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

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

·         wanted to enter a new market

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

·         made the design changes

·         began competing in that market

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

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

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

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

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

o   benefit and consequence

o   permanence

o   strength to bind the stakeholders to the outcome

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

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

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

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Listening (part 5 of 5)

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

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

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

2) Remedy things if they DO shift away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Evidence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Listen (4 of 5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Listening (3 of 5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Listening (2 of 5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

·         Respect the context of the speaker’s remarks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listening requires the capacity to:

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

·         demonstrate that unbiased focus

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

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

Becoming a better listener.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have spoken about conducting discussions about important topics and how we can use the SPIRAL model as a guide for better discussions. We have spoken specifically about:

·         Categorizing the statements (claims) made into one of four categories.

·         Formulating good questions to investigate the basis for statements (questions are based on the statement’s category)

·         The three categories into which the responses to those questions will fall.

In other words, we have gotten through asking good questions and being given a response. We still have a very important part of the model to consider – analyzing the logic, the validity…the weight of the responses and the argument.  We will now start discussing how we analyze the logic of the statement(s) made in a discussion.

 There are five skills in which you will need some expertise, and each of them is easy to understand. Remember that you are likely already doing these things, but you may not know EXPLICITLY how you do them. Until you develop clarity regarding these elements, it is unlikely that you are consistent in your application and are not getting optimum results. Developing your skills in these areas will bring you an exceptional amount of confidence and credibility. We will discuss them one by one over the coming weeks.

 

They are:

1.       Accurately determining the threshold of acceptance of evidence (Certainty vs. Likelihood)

2.       Listen critically to what is being said

3.       Evaluating the construction of what is being said; which statements are made as claims and which are offered to support the claims (mapping)

4.       Evaluating the strength of the support being given (the power of the support lies in its likelihood of providing a correct conclusion)

5.       Evaluating the strength of the connection between the statement being supported and the support itself (the power of the connection lies in its likelihood of providing a correct conclusion).

 

Threshold of acceptance of evidence (Certainty vs. Likelihood)

The first thing we must consider is the threshold we are trying to reach. Must we be CERTAIN that we are correct? Must it be HIGHLY LIKELY if not certain? More likely than not?

 If we demand certainty in a given situation, then the quality, volume, and rigor of analysis are paramount. There are few cases in business in which certainty can be achieved. This is possible through a process called “deduction” which is notoriously slow and requires a great deal of input – two things that are in short supply in most cases. Even a capital crime requires just enough evidence to squelch “reasonable doubt”, and those discussions can go on for many years.

Generally, the degree of confidence (likelihood) of correctness is directly proportional to what is at risk. This is why I tell my students that it is important to understand the IMPACT and CONSEQUENCES associated with a given situation, and for the various participants in the discussion to vet those before too much discussion takes place. This prevents us from discussing things that really don’t warrant discussion (no impact on our business, regardless of our outcome), or requiring an inappropriately high level of likelihood when the risks are low (and vice versa).

In some cases, a consensus of opinion between a few observers is acceptable (if not much is riding on the outcome), but in the event that the company’s future is at stake, we would surely aim for a higher threshold.

The generally accepted ranking of evidence (think of this as the nature of the response you are given to a question) is as follows (low to high):

1.       Lay Opinion (opinion of a single non-expert)

2.       Consensus of Lay opinion (consensus opinion of several non-experts)

3.       Reasoned Lay Opinion OR Expert opinion (opinion of a single non-expert that has been vetted with stringency OR the opinion of an expert)

4.       Consensus of Expert opinion (consensus opinion of several experts)

5.       A study of expert opinion (consensus opinion of several experts, vetted with stringency)

6.       A consensus of studies (consensus opinion of several studies)

This doesn’t mean that an opinion is usually wrong. It means that when deciding the sufficiency of evidence, it is more likely to get better guidance the higher up you go on this list. Decisions on high risk items would demand a higher level of evidence due to the potential impact.

 

When is Evidence Sufficient (in order of sufficiency, high to low)?

·         When it leads to a conclusion with certainty

·         When it leads to a conclusion that has the force of probability

·         When it leads to a position that is demonstrably more reasonable

o   That means demonstrating stronger reasoning

Otherwise, it must be considered insufficient

Next time, we will talk about the most important skill you will ever develop.
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