How to remove conflict from conversations when people doubt or challenge you
reddit.com
reddit.com
People have different values of associations with different opinions, and while it's a shame I can't discuss things like international development issues with some friends because they hold their opinions about that too close to their personality, it has helped me to start looking out for bad conversation paths.
However, as the top comment on reddit says: "They're still my friends, but I just don't ever have any actual proper conversations with those ones - we instead just have boring conversations about cheese or something."
1) you cannot always be right.
2) truth is truth no matter it comes from.
3) denying or avoiding truth to protect your social rank is not ethical. admit when you are wrong and step on the shoulders of giants.
If you let the best ideas prevail, everyone wins.
If someone cares a lot about social rank, and comes up with comments such as "don't tell me what to do", "i know how to do my job", etc... that's the kind of people that you should just ignore and avoid. Those are people that are stuck in their ego bubble and will eventually stay in an ignorance limbo.
The dynamics of conflict are very complex. For example, consider rationalising with ISIS or a discussion around religion. Sometimes, there is no compromise in a discussion.
Here are two contradictory examples of extreme conflict. 1/ Don't pay the Danegeld. 2/ Don't say no to the Mongols. Both were equivalent situations, but totally different outcomes. One guaranteed annihilation (as an example).
I would suggest the methods suggested work on small scale but not on a large scale (eg. Religion, Nations).
Great comment. Values, not truths.
Companies define their values and if they're not defined you can ask a manager or stakeholder. If some anarchist dude shows up not wanting to unit test their code because of some hippie ideals I cannot care less.
The problem with developing monocultures is that when you need something else, it's pretty hard to find.
You can reject an approach, but the key is HOW: if you are rejecting an idea it needs to be the result of a serious dialog, comparing ideas side to side and being open to accept that the dominant approach can be replaced or improved.
Now even if the idea is better, the gains need to be significant enough to compensate for the cost of changing the way of doing things and getting people on the same page.
Even in supposedly cut-and-dried things like engineering decisions, there is very little capital-T Truth. People think their technical preferences are based on objective criteria but more often than not they are just as subjective as anything else. The only difference is that they can articulate an argument that on the surface sounds like it's about cold hard facts rather than personal preferences.
It's uncanny how often people who fail to get other people to do things their way feel like they lost that battle because their "truth" couldn't overcome someone else's "ego" (scare quotes intentional). It's also uncanny how often people who resent other people for trying to tell them how things should be done will perceive that as someone else's "ego" trying to steamroll their "truth".
So, I do try very hard to apply those ideals of objectivity/rationality/egolessness to my own life, but even then it's on a best effort basis because the human mind's ability to delude itself into thinking things like "I am right because of logic and they are wrong because of feelings" is utterly staggering, and that is just as true of myself (if not moreso) than it is of other people. By trying really really hard to overcome this common cognitive bias, I may actually do better than some or most other people in this regard. Or maybe not. All we can do is try, and also try very hard to not fall into the trap of thinking that other people aren't also trying (perhaps in their own way that doesn't completely make sense to us).
There are many KPIs that can be extracted from engineering processes. Cyclomatic complexity, statement length, function length, number of arguments, when seen as cost, can help you compare code that does the same thing and have a rational discussion beyond "that's your opinion". Budget is not always an opinion, cost is not always an opinion, especially if each participant have well established rates.
The Lion King, an animation film, has dozens of frames per second, each one hand drawn by multiple people. But it is consistent, and that consistency holds the film together. We can also say that if that consistency didn't exit, the film would probably not be as successful.
If animators and illustrators, people considered creative/artists can be consistent, then why can't an engineer, someone with an engineering background not have the same level of consistency and attention to detail. That's not an opinion, that's a fact.
In 2003, Charlan Nemeth, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, put that to the test. She had folks brainstorm a problem. One group was told not to criticize the ideas, the other group told: "you should debate and even criticize each other's ideas."
The group told to debate and criticize each other?
Generated 20% more ideas. And when asked for more ideas after the experiment was over, again, the critical/debating group produced on average of 7 more ideas each vs. the "don't criticize each other" group of 3 ideas each.
Criticism and argument didn't kill creativity, it created even more of it. Osborn's ideas, though well intended, don't exactly all work when tested.
I increasingly find that the best companies/organizations are simply those groups that now how to argue well.
I recently took over Highrise from Basecamp and so being a long time 37signals/Basecamp fan I have this weird "almost" 3rd party perspective now getting to see how things work on the inside.
The early founders/employee trio of Jason Fried/DHH (the co-founders) and Ryan Singer argue. A lot. It was surprising at first. It was a handful of months before launching their latest version of Basecamp, Basecamp 3. And they were in a conference room, and though all the walls in this Basecamp office are made of sound dampening cork, you could hear them arguing. Strong opinions about some feature that was necessary, and someone else thought wasn't. When they broke for lunch, you could feel the heat come out of that room.
I went to lunch with them and it was like no argument even happened. We had a pleasant, fun, meal amongst friends.
And I keep seeing this in the way the chew on their ideas. Nothing is sacred. But they realize how talented each other is and the rest of their team. There's nothing personal about the arguments. A huge reason I think their stuff is designed so well is that the stuff that stands the barrage of attack is the good stuff. The stuff that doesn't gets iterated on or thrown out and the stakeholder moves onto something else.
You hear a lot of this at Pixar too amongst the creators (http://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/lessons-learned/inside-th...) and even when Catmull had to argue with Jobs http://firstround.com/review/Spark-Creativity-with-These-Tip...)
So, want to get more creative and have better decisions. Probably don't go the route of censoring argument; get better at arguing.
While I agree with this point, I think it is only one piece of the puzzle. In order to have productive "arguments" it is important to also make sure you provide an environment conducive to it. That means finding ways to eliminate concerns one might have with "arguing against a boss or executive's point" due to fear of risking their job, or simply being steamrolled due to rank. Cultures that place a strong emphasis on building consensus can also breed situations where people don't speak against someone because they are playing things politically and need that person's support for their own pet project and don't want to risk giving up that capital just to voice a contrarian opinion.
Beyond that, it also takes the right temperament of people in the room. I've worked with some people that I can only classify as "overly-sensitive." They are very passive-aggressive people, and read into any random negative thing they hear as a personal attack against them. There's simply no effective way to have a constructive debate with people like that in my experience.
But I do agree that this sort of "bare it all" dialogue is critical to moving things forward. The real question I have is how to transform an organization or team to that state in as painless a way as possible.
Or even get them to consider the possibility that the organization might suffer from the problem in the very slightest, let alone solve it.
I guess the trick is "how to criticize the right way". Criticizing is very important - after the idea has enough to stand on; if you're looking into something which has lots of "don't know how this could be done" parts, it's not the right moment. At this time the idea needs not a critique, but a collaboration on how certain unsolved problems can move forward.
Compare with a boss walking up on the floor and bellowing, "so, why is it late???" Now the whole office is cued in to maneuver and deflect blame, not just that one time but throughout the day, every day, until they leave the job entirely.
Really good leadership understands how to maintain the atmosphere for the situation. They can turn up the heat but do so judiciously. They have to do it with care precisely because the individuals tend to be a "bag of emotions", easily swung off track with careless dialogue.
The Reddit thread is cautionary towards a neutral business situation where the goals are simply to maintain trust, gather basic information, and assign tasks and plans. Confrontation in that instance is quite destructive.
i'm sure the 37signals founders and senior executives have these skills, built up over a decade or more of banter and working together. the danger comes when you put junior employees, socially awkward employees, or perfect strangers into a room and tell them to start breaking down each others' input.
1) be compassionate to others 2) don't take anything seriously
I recommend the read, I especially love the discussion of "why" versus "how" - as someone who self-reflects, I often ask myself "why" more than anything, but it may be myopic to over-rely on that, as stated in the article.
Why = get more rationale for their thinking
How = get them to do critical thinking