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Too often I come across in discussions where the listener does not accept a view point from a person but accepts the same point when someone else says it.

Example: Targument-1299108_640.pnghere is a conversation in the team about ‘Is September a good time to travel to coorg’? Novi  says strongly that it is generally misty and rains a bit but not to the extent to spoil a good vacation. The others in the team quickly look up weather patterns in the internet and conclude what Novi said is not right, it is not easy to travel in rains to hill stations. Novi tries hard to convince about the previous visits but no one is in the mood to listen. At this point Ivon an avid traveller enters, looks at the argument and says Novi is right, it is a good time to travel. No one refutes, they agree to Ivon.

Why did they agree to Ivon but not Novi when both of them are saying the same thing?

Dave Gray explains in his work ‘Liminal Thinking‘ that we carry a lot of beliefs from what we observe from our experiences; we then keep validating that our beliefs are right by choosing only the relevant data from experiences that will validate our beliefs again and again in a vicious cycle. This vicious cycle creates a shortcut in our brains so that we directly map the experiences without a conscious thought to conclusions. The example I had given about Ivon and Novi are very small in impact compared to what we encounter every day.

What we perceive as ‘I am saying that the same thing as the other person, but they trust the other person’ is nothing but people’s mental model about us is different as they do not know what our experience has been. This is the reason that more the people in a group are willing to understand each other’s experiences and talk out loud about their beliefs and assumptions, the better they communicate.

The video below is a nice explanation on why our experiences shape our beliefs. The narrower our experiences are, the narrower our beliefs will be. If we are not able to communicate right, first we should expose our experience; no one will buy our beliefs. If we need to understand someone better, we should have had similar experiences that have created their beliefs or we should be exposed to their experiences by suspending our judgements.

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In group discussions or design meetings it is tough to get everyone’s participation. The people in the group will have different experience levels, context & expertise which  puts shy people on the back-foot, as people always assume that someone will know better than them. Bystander effect also kicks in as soon as the number of people in the meeting increases beyond three and the ambiguity of the problem discussed increases.

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We can address participation issues by considering these

Make the environment safe

Many people are shy and they fear judgement, if the environment encourages participation with commonly agreed rules like ‘no question is a bad question’ or ‘every input is valuable’ and people see it actively getting practiced will ease the burden on shy people. This works for small groups of 3-4 people, thinking aloud also begins to happen

Pass talking token around round-robin and time box talking time per person

There are people who love to talk and there is no starting trouble for them to talk, they will easily mask the hesitant ones in every discussion. An easy way to break this unfair advantage is to have a facilitator and a talking token passed round-robin for participation.

Make everyone write their ideas and opinions down 

Some people may easily get biased when they hear other’s opinion. It is due to the need to belong to a group and not sound different. If in a brainstorming session participants are given a quiet time and write down their thoughts, chances are high that people may put down what they think without rephrasing or rewording.

We can prevent bystander effect or people zoning out when we have someone playing the moderator role watching for signs and also time box discussions, thereby making meetings very productive and outcome based.

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I read the story of stone soup when I was in primary school, I did not understand how someone made soup with a stone. It was too deep a concept to understand as a kid. It is about moving something from 0 to 1,  from then on there are plenty of ways and people to take care to take it forward.

running-498257_640Why is it hard to move something from 0 to 1? Our brains are hardwired to be anxiety neutral. It hates ambiguities and new things to do, that is why things like driving becomes a sub conscious activity by becoming motor memory, once we start driving often. On a day to day basis you can observe your tendency to be anxiety neutral, it may take up only 15 minutes a week to clean a table but it is too difficult to get started with it. When that thought is going on your mind, if someone starts cleaning it up, then you are more likely to join the task and get it done.

My last post was about getting started with something and getting people to join. The first person who does something new is perceived to be the lone nut, there is a fear of judgement that prevents people to start something. This was very evident in a aum meditation session where there were only few of us and we need to chant aum but every person was waiting for the other to start, I took the lead after the first two half hearted attempts by being the first person to start the chant and the rest followed.

There are two things needed for people to start doing new things,

  • Provide an environment which helps them to shed their fear of judgement
  • Be the lone nut and start something which someone else has in mind, it is for sure that someone will follow.

The first point is not easy to address but it is too easy to be someone who starts doing things to facilitate change. We should shed our fear of judgement and be okay to do something that will be criticised. The results are surprising, what might take days to nudge someone to do something from scratch is way too easy to make them pick up a rough draft and take it to completion. Making stone soup is not deception, it is a tool to help people come out of their anxiety neutrality.