[Advice] When The Bubble Bursts…

Denouncing decisions made in the past without empathy is a sure way to be surprised when a bubble bursts.

Bubbles are created when we think we have predictive powers about future events, that we don’t. And then, we proceed to tell stories and build narratives that back up the “reality” of those bubbles in our heads.

This would be fine if it were an isolated incident.

Unfortunately, everybody’s doing it.

See, since no person knows the future (and a majority of people tend to denounce the past without learning from it), the chances of the narrative bubble we’re living in being the only bubble (and by extension the right bubble) are pretty slim.

To none.

There are other ways to be surprised when our bubble bursts, either collectively, or individually:

Lacking curiosity to explore alternatives—or even hear of them—from people with other narratives, who we find abhorrent, or wrong.
Assuming only one outcome to a conflict, a decision, or even a problem is the “right” one.
Manipulating available (and unavailable) information to “get consensus” from a fickle and wavering crowd.
Presuming that since we’ve already heard an alternative solution one time, that the next time we hear it, it will be the same as before. And thus dismissing important information we’d rather not consider.

The really humbling (or humiliating) point to consider is that bubbles invariably burst.

The presence of a bubble, whether an information bubble, or a narrative bubble, almost always ensures that there will be a resounding “pop” when the bubble bursts.

The only compelling question coming out of that burst bubble is: Are we going to learn from the bubble bursting, or are we going to continue to commit the logical and emotional fallacies that got us to “bubble-based thinking” in the first place?

[Strategy] I’m Right

The reason why talk of biases (implicit and otherwise) doesn’t connect with audiences listening for tips on how to manage conflict, is that the audience already knows that they’re biased.

And they’re fine with it.

The challenge is not to harangue them until they give in and admit that biases (implicit and otherwise) can be attached to values.

The challenge is to persuade them that their biases aren’t helping them get the results they so desperately crave.

And yes, it’s easier to harangue and force an “I’m right you should listen to me” -argument, on an audience that has already heard your “I’m right you should listen to me”-argument and has rejected it.

It’s easier for the person presenting the “I’m right you should listen to me”-argument that is.

But the audience leaves (mentally, emotionally, or physically), loses interest, or gets distracted by something more entertaining.

And less badgering.

Persuasion serves to manage and resolve more issues in ways favorable for both parties (the biased and the unbiased) alike.

First, connect through persuasion. Then build a relationship. Then change behaviors.

And last, change the world.

[Advice] Understanding is Disruptive

When you understand the nature of a thing, it becomes simple to predict an outcome.

When you understand the nature of a conflict, it becomes simple to manage it.

Simple, but not easy.

We confuse the simple with the easy because we desire to attain outcomes that “work” for us with a minimal amount of emotional effort expended on our part.

We confuse simple with easy because confrontation is hard, and increasingly, we communicate in a world that rewards avoidance in the face of increasingly seemingly intractable, conflict.

We confuse simple with easy, because understanding the nature of anything—from the science of managing conflict to the science of climate change—requires critical thinking, objective reasoning, and the emotional bandwidth to be surprised, be delighted, and to be wrong.

Predicting outcomes from human behavior is dicey at best. But since human beings seek to bring reason to a world that appears to be in chaos, the ordering of patterns and the innate desire for reason, combine to fool us into thinking that outcomes are predictable.

Once, of course, you understand the nature of the outcome you’re predicting.

When we don’t take the time to understand the nature of the conflict we’re in, because we don’t care about the outcome, we disagree with the other party, we think that we’re right and they’re wrong, or we don’t engage with critical thinking and reasoning, then we search and seek for the easy answer.

The simple solution, the jiu-jitsu, that will make all our conflicts, our problems, and the other party, either disappear or change to suit us.

When you understand the nature of a conflict that you’re in, it becomes simple to seek, not the quick and easy solution, but the patience to deal with the ambiguity of a long, and complicated solution, without getting angry, defensive, or disruptive.

[Advice] The Edges

Consuming content and ideas passively, instead of creating content actively.

Reacting to an idea immediately, instead of responding with critical thinking.

Seeking assurance of safety and stability, instead of anchoring in ambiguity.

Collaborating without courage, instead of connecting in all the ways that make us uncomfortable.

Desiring information without wisdom, instead of demanding an exchange of clarity with conscience.

Passive-aggressive manipulation without candor, instead of active engagement with conflict.

These are the edges that people in all organizations, from government run organizations to private entities, need to make an active decision about whether or not they are pursuing.

Our societies, our culture, and our future depends on figuring out the edges.

[Advice] The Fundamentals

When analyzing a problem to move forward towards a solution, there is a lot of emphasis placed on the fundamentals of the problem.

We place a lot of importance in understanding, revisiting, and honoring the fundamentals of a problem, because they come, not from conceived wisdom, or even perceived wisdom, but from received wisdom.

Of course, this wisdom is received from a past when the fundamentals weren’t fundamental, they were merely subjective reality, based upon the circumstances of that time and place.

Or, this received wisdom isn’t really wisdom at all, but merely regurgitated conventional wisdom, which has two marks against it before it even is spoken into existence—yet again.

In the now, when confronted by a problem that seems to resembles one we faced in the past, we hearken back to that received wisdom, and being trapped by hindsight bias, we demand that fundamentals be reinstituted.

But this is just a clever version of the idea of returning to a past when everybody got along, there was no strife, and the fundamentals were sound.

Here’s the thing:

Demanding a return to the fundamentals can be a callback to received wisdom, but only if the current problem resembles a past one in any kind of way. And problems involving people, rather than processes, are constantly in flux.

Creating a solution to a problem based in the fundamentals can be a foundation to work from. But they can also be the concrete that traps a person, a community, a society, or culture, in a species of cloudy nostalgia for a past that never really was. And once trapped by such nostalgia, those same people, communities, societies, and cultures, are inevitably surprised when an outlier comes along who fundamentally doesn’t care about the concrete of the fundamentals.

Advocating for fundamentals based in received wisdom can be biased, not only because they reflect the prejudices of our personal attributions to past events, our personal desire to minimize dissonance in the present, and our personal need for stability and security in the future, but also because our personal hindsight is always perfect. But in reality, getting to resolution and discovering what fundamental actually worked to solve which problem in the past, was always complicated, messy, mistake-prone, and not assured of success.

Making a rhetorical appeal to return to fundamentals is inherently flawed when the current circumstances don’t even remotely resemble previous circumstances.

And having the courage to throw the past fundamentals out and establish new ones, will always increase conflict, rather than decrease it.

[Advice] White Space

The person, or organization, pressuring you to make a decision right now, to hurry up, to do the quick and easy thing, are crowding your decisional white space.

This is a rhetorical and persuasive technique where all the methods of persuasion and influence from reciprocation to consensus, meet at the head of a pin.

They know that you know this. That’s why they’re crowding you.

And you know that something is happening to influence your decision making process— you feel the pressure and the stress emotionally and psychologically—but you’re not quite sure why or how.

The framing the person, or organization uses, is that the quick decision is benefiting you, but in reality your quick decision actually benefits them.

Make a quick decision and don’t think about the future, because maintaining the status quo is really what matters, and besides, who can know the future?

Hurry up to achieve harmony, or ensure stasis.

Make a quick decision for immediate gain—or at least, the perception of immediate gain—based on the appearance of an immediate need that needs to be filled.

Don’t slow down.

Don’t consider all of your options.

Even better, you have no options other than the ones that the organization—or the person—in charge gives to you.

Full pedal to the metal driving 105 miles per hour.

But…

The singer Jewel turned down a $1-million-dollar recording contract when she was homeless, broken, sick, and needy.

Money is really no object.

Bob Dylan made albums when no one was listening.

Neither is safety, security, or the status quo. They are stories we tell ourselves, and let ourselves be told.

The future is unknowable, uncontrollable, and imprecise, yes, it always has been. But, today is the place where you have the most control over what you do.

Patience, slowing down, meditating, praying, contemplating, thinking deeply, disagreeing, exploring options, taking your time, being mindful of your surroundings and your inner life—these are not stories, frames or listicle based techniques or shortcuts.

They are skills, based in deeply held values, that resonate through your decisions.

These skills expand your decisional white space, and make it less likely that the person—or organization—pressuring you to make a decision across the table, will have any success at filling your white space.

And they will have even less success crowding the white space of your life.

[Advice] No More Accidents

Here’s an observable fact:

Many people (though not all) are just fine with the outcomes they are getting from their communication styles.

Many people (though not all) are comfortable with the disagreements, differences of opinion, conflicts, verbal fights, tensions, stresses and other outcomes that result from engaging in dysfunctional—and sometimes damaging—communication on a daily basis.

Many people (though not all) are just fine with letting communication happen by accident, taking a reactive—rather than responsive—stance and not really thinking about the impact that a word, a phrase, or even an idea may have upon another person.

Many people (though not all) are just fine not thinking strategically about how they communicate, rather than focusing obsessively over whether or not what they communicated got across to the other person.

Many people (though not all) find it to be more emotionally, psychologically, psychically, and even physically, comfortable to sort of just “go with the flow” and not to engage intentionally with communication patterns in their own lives—at work, at home, or even at school.

Yesterday, following a training in a local workplace, a woman told a story.

She said: “There was a supervisor working here who left recently. She said that everyone here was mean to her. She told me before she walked out the door, that I needed to ‘think outside the box more.’

I don’t know if she meant the comment to be hurtful or not, but I was hurt by it, and I have been thinking about it ever since. And it’s really hard to change the box you’re in if you can’t even see it.”

Many people (though not all) are ready to change their responses to observable facts, once they become aware of the facts they’re in.

[Advice] Re/Solution

What’s going to be on the test?

Is this going to work out?

What can we get here?

Who benefits?

All questions that revolve around what is commonly known as resolution. Some in psychology call it closure, but really it’s the mental and emotional process of getting a definitive answer that “ties off” any loose ends.

Narrative structures such as novels, films, short stories, all rely on an ending that is “settled.” Even when we talk about data and research—areas that should have nothing to do with a narrative, but are merely reflections of the world as we have objectively tested it—we use the phrase lately “the science is settled.”

Yeah. Ok. So why are we still arguing?

The problem is not closure, an answer, an end to a narrative or even getting other parties to agree. The problem inherent in all of this phraseology and narrative structure around conflict is two-fold:

We are framing our arguments, negotiations, mediations, and litigations, in the language of closure and resolution, when in reality we are selfishly seeking a way for us to win, and for the other party to lose. Rather than chasing a “lose-lose” outcome, this is a corollary to the idea that we seek an answer—or a conclusion—that matches our worldview, which is the best one, or else it wouldn’t be our worldview.
We are seeking a manipulation, not of facts, but of other people whose ideas, positions, and interests we find to be distasteful, disagreeable, or just downright wrong. We seek to shut “the other” up, raise our own perspective up and devalue the other party, all in one fell rhetorical swoop.

When we seek to disconnect, rather than connect, and to ignore rather than understand; when we seek to replace the value already provided in an experience with the value we would rather the experience have; when we seek to judge rather than to educate; we aren’t looking to get to resolution.

We are merely seeking a solution.

[Opinion] The Non-Negotiables

There are non-negotiable issues in a conflict.

But a lot of those issues are determined to be non-negotiable by the parties involved in the conflict.

If a party decides that their emotions are the only driver that matters, and that they aren’t going to put those emotions away, for the sake of getting to a deal, then that party’s emotions are non-negotiable.

If a party decides that other parties who aren’t at the table (i.e. outsiders, colleagues, an audience, etc.,) are the ones that are going to control how the negotiation goes, then those outside actors become non-negotiable elements.

If a party decides that their current mood (which can change, day-to-day, moment-to-moment) is the only mood that matters (because, well, it’s their mood) then that decision becomes non-negotiable.

We often think of everything as being negotiable, which is not the same sentiment as “Everyone has a price” or “Everyone can be bought.” Many things, issues, positions, and interests are indeed negotiable. But the problem is, each party decides what’s on the table—and what isn’t.

What makes this decision particularly sticky is that moods, emotions, relationships with other parties not at the table, and many other non-negotiable elements of a negotiation process, involve recognizing the impact of identity, story, and meaning.

And who really wants to negotiate their identity, story, or meaning with a party, whom they automatically have framed as untrustworthy before the negotiation even began?

The skills of persuasion, evasion, coercion, facilitation, and active listening, are often discounted in the rush to close a deal. But those skills become crucial ones for negotiators to value and practice.

Honing the craft of negotiation is more than about sitting in a room and role-playing a case study. Honing the craft of negotiation is about developing intuition, patience, rapport, and caring along with those other skills, in order to get the best possible outcome.

Which usually just means, “The outcome that works best for me, right now.”

[Advice] Intentional Anchoring

The first sentence in a discussion anchors the rest of the conversation.

“I need him to shut up.”

“I don’t like what’s happening here.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“The fact that we’re focusing on this issue is crazy.”

“They don’t know what they are talking about.”

“Who’s in charge here?”

“I’m in charge here.”

The first sentence of a blog post, the first sentence of an online status update, the first sentence of an email does the same thing.

In a negotiation, this tactic is called anchoring. It’s the process of putting an idea into another party’s mind about a topic of discussion, and then using that initial idea to push or pull the other party in a particular direction.

There is verbal and nonverbal anchoring. Anchoring occurs with signs and symbols. Anchoring happens when parties speak and when they are silent. Anchoring happens with body language.

People perform anchoring all the time, mostly unintentionally, but occasionally, someone “gets” it and intentionally chooses their words carefully and judiciously for maximum effect. And with the purpose of generating maximum conflict.

In any negotiation—along with management, facilitation, mediation, arbitration, or litigation—of a conflict, the person who establishes the anchor first has a greater chance to do better than the person who doesn’t. In this context “doing better” just means “getting an outcome that works for me.”

What outcome are you dropping an anchor for?