How to Work With Others #

Everyone you are working with will have a model in their heads that describes their best solution to the problem at hand. Everyone involved must take their models out of their heads so that others can amend their own models in an effort to reach some kind of consensus. This is hard work and is not always treated as such.

Not only is it hard work to do this model-sharing, but it can create cognitive dissonance, which causes pain. This can necessitate further model-sharing to resolve, which can balloon a small issue into a massive ordeal. I like this quote from Valarie Kaur:

“Deep listening is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear.”

To expect people to readily do this is in my opinion expecting too much. Of course, putting effort into this process is necessary for many types of work; lots of problems arise when someone is not willing to ever do this.

This article does a good job of providing a methodology for resolving friction around model-sharing:

https://medium.dave-bailey.com/how-to-resolve-a-conflict-when-both-sides-are-right-1f375bc82f7f

Emotional Consensus and Disagreement #

People are very sensitive to emotions of others (accurately understood or not) in conversations. This is especially true of negative emotions. Because of this, it can very easily become the goal of a conversation to help resolve negative emotions present in your conversation partner. This can be good, but can also be a problem if your are mis-reading your partner’s emotions or if they don’t want those emotions resolved. I think it’s good to be aware of this tendency and catch yourself if you see issues arising because of it.

Related, one thing I’ve noticed that sparks involved discussions (or heated arguments) is lack of emotional consensus on a topic. I’ve had several talks where it seems like I agree with my conversation partner, but there is still an unresolved tension in the air. This tension existed because, although we clarified facts, we still had different emotional reactions to the topic, implying that we hadn’t created a fully shared perspective. Identifying that this is the root cause of the tension can be a good way to get to the bottom of the disagreement.

Pitfalls in Productive Conversations #

If we say a “productive conversation” is one where people are trying to find consensus on a particular question, there are a couple patterns that can make these conversations take much more time and energy to achieving their goal:

Having unclear definitions #

It can sometimes be easy for a lot of conversation to happen before the participants realize that the definitions they are assuming are not the same for the relevant terms/concepts. It’s usually worth the time to get core definitions really nailed down before moving past them into what effects they have on other concepts.

Exploding the Scope #

Often conversations lead to tangents that might be even more interesting to some participants than the original conversation. Being explicit about when one is making a jump to discussing a tangent can be really helpful for several reasons:

1. The other participants may not care about the tangent.
2. The other participants may feel like the tangent-follower is assuming that they believe something about the tangent based on the previous conversation, when that’s actually not true.

A common reason for following a tangent is when trying to argue for a particular viewpoint, and not finding a good path forward with the current argument. For instance, take an example where one is arguing why book X is better than a similar book Y. They might start by describing why they think the main character is more relatable, but then shift into talking about the world being more fleshed out when they run out of points. This can be jarring if the other participants are still thinking about character-relatableness, and feel like the tangent-follower is just glossing over their own points. Worst case, the tangent follower can to this intentionally to confuse their “opponents” to “win” a debate.

Reactance #

People inherently like to be in control of what happens to them in their lives. When this control is threatened, resistance to the threat is the natural response. I definitely have felt this when in a situation where someone tells me to do something - even something I know I want to do. The very fact that I was told to do it makes me less interested in doing it! Sometimes this effect can be extreme.

This is one of the reasons why micromanagement of others leads to all sorts of problems. It is much more motivating to let people come to their own decisions about whether to do something if possible.

In my experience, learning is also easier when the topic of study is not dictated to me, but instead I explore it “freely”. Even reading a linear textbook can feel free (and I absorb the information better) when I set the pace and am able to jump around at will.

Circumventing Reactance #

Sometimes you still need to tell people what to do to effectively get things done. For cases where reactance is strong, creating an environment in which a person can explore and independently come to your conclusion for what needs to be done may be an effective strategy. This has the added benefit (?) of allowing them to come to an even better conclusion than your own!

Assuming Good Intentions #

It’s pretty hard sometimes to figure out why someone is doing something in particular. This clip from Malcolm in the Middle about changing a light bulb is a pretty funny extreme example, but I find this kind of situation comes up in smaller ways fairly often. If you must have expectations for someone doing something for you (which are best avoided entirely), it’s good to keep in mind that their approach is probably going to be different from yours in ways that are hard to predict. Trying to figure it out - or worse, micromanage them - may often be wasted effort and lead to interpersonal frustration.

Complaining #

People complain for at least two main reasons:

1. They need help with something. Either via:
   1. Direct help (offloading their problem in part to someone else).
   2. Advice help (having another person help improve their understanding of their problem, so that they can solve it alone without transferring any responsibility).
   3. In “How to Change your Mind” by Michael Pollan this was described as a “doing” behavior.
2. They want to share their feelings so that others around them are on the same page about their emotional state. This is helpful e.g. so others around them will not burden them further, unaware of their current burden. This is also helpful for emotional validation reasons - it is useful to know if the thing you are upset about upsets others; if not, perhaps you are missing an easy resolution to your problem.
   1. In “How to Change your Mind” by Michael Pollan this was described as a “being” (in the moment) behavior.

It is easy (at least for me) to jump strait to advice help when people complain around me and ignore the fact that the complainer may need one of the other types of resolution described above.

Categories: Mind