Interactionauts

During the last few days I have gained some interesting insight in discussing. Last Thursday I observed people who were having a meeting, a brainstorm. They didn’t really come to a conclusion or resolution, because – in my opinion – all of them constantly defended their own piece of land.

So here goes, some infallible* rules for effective discussions.

Don’t do it
Perhaps the most effective action you can take to make a discussion effective is to avoid it. That seems contradictory, but let me explain. A discussion, in my opinion, is a conversation between people where certain opinions or views do oppose each other (or at least do not endorse fully). There is something to discuss, a necessity to come to some sort of an agreement. Apparently it is necessary, so you’ll have to do it. But how and why did it become a must? Because you didn’t agree with it in the first place. You started the discussion, because you wouldn’t agree. So agree!

People tend to see change as a problem. The problem needs to be solved, we don’t like change, so we bring it up in a discussion. We want the old situation back, the way it used to be. However, change is good. It means something is going on, it’s the natural way things go. Things never say the same. You can resist that, bend it, lobby, work your way around it – it won’t work.

So what do you do? Agree? Snap – just like that? Let them walk all over you? No, of course not. You just approach something you perceive as a problem as something else: an opportunity. If you can do nothing against it, go with it and use it to your own liking. Use the influence you have, not the influence you don’t have.

Steer with, not against
That said, you’ll probably end up in a discussion the way you used to do. But now you have a chance, a chance to change the discussion and its outcome to your liking. Not by steering against the current, but steering with the current. Seek within the subject of discussion for things that can help you further. This is an opportunity to act, to change and to have benefit. It seems contradictory, but when you look at it from this perspective: the more problems, the merrier.

By many people, wise and unwise, this has been described as a “win-win situation”. It is a circumstance where both sides can have benefit, together. Neither makes a concession, because that’s win-lose and lose-win. Which is basically lose-lose and nobody wants that. Making a situation mutually beneficial takes responsibility, the courage to look at a situation from the perspective of the opposite person. By understanding their side of the story, you can discover what their real goals are and you can support them with achieving it. They, on the other side, do the same. You both come to an agreement that suits you both and is for everybody of equal benefit. It sounds utopic, but it is fairly easy to ask “What do you mean” to somebody, isn’t it?

Be reasonable
There are problems you can’t solve and there are solutions you can’t accept. When that happens, try to look beyond the problem. What happens if this continues? Make a plan for that situation. Is the solution still unacceptable?

Always suggest a reasonable solution. The opposite side of the table won’t agree with less. They want their money and so do you. Being reasonable is key in this.

Also, note that being reasonable also means that you’ll eventually have to accept something you don’t like. But do you really dislike it? Is it really that bad? Relativize the solution. What happens when it really happens? Is the world still turning? No? Really not? It probably still is.

When the world stops turning
Abandon ship. Come to an agreement with one another that you simply don’t agree and will part as friends. It is useless to fight against a current too strong. You didn’t lose, you just couldn’t figure it out and will try another way. It’s worse to continue with a bad solution, than to abandon discussion if you can’t agree.

The asterisk *: if you don’t agree to what I’m saying, feel free to discuss it.

We all work together in groups, whether its for work, educational or personal projects. You all work towards one or several goals, which can only be achieved more or less with this group. You rely on others for their speciality and you try to be valuable yourself to help the group achieve what it set itself to.

Working in groups, professionaly and in my education, I have experienced several factors that limits the groups achievements. One of these lies within the very heart of each group: expectation. You expect a certain job to be done from a certain group member and after a while you discover that the certain person just didn’t do the job or didn’t do it properly.

In the past, when this sort of event occurred, I simply asked of the group member to do it again. Sometimes I would help them with it, or when it all went south I just did it my way myself. This usually resulted in a lot of stress, frustration and probably a worse result in the end. I emphasize “my way”, because I am well-aware that delegating a job is as important as delegating it to the right person. If somebody doesn’t “own” a task, they won’t feel responsible for it and then they won’t do it or do it badly. However, the inability to delegate tasks is beyond this short essay.

At a time I figured that this wasn’t the correct way to deal with it. It was a good way, but not the most succesful. At first I thought I was handing the wrong jobs to the wrong people. Trying to improve that made things go better, but it was not a real improvement. By handing the jobs differently, I wasn’t using the group’s capabilities to the fullest.

Then I realized that within each group, within each person of that group, lies a very complicated set of goals. A group doesn’t have one goal, it has several goals on several levels within several persons.

Consider yourself working on a major piece of software, that has to be released in the next product launch. You’re on the clock, you have ten features to build and you have five developers to do it. Four of five are doing great, but one seems to struggle with the easiest bugs and features.

You anticipate and assign part of his jobs to other developers. This causes stress for the others of your team and the bad-performing developer feels bad, because he’s not performing well. However, you think job well done and the management congratulates you on your success: with your management skill you got the product to launch in time.

Unfortunately, the bad-performing developer resigns next day. In his personal life he was having trouble with the relationship with his partner, and they separated. The stress in his work caused all this and his fading relationship made him perform even worse, which eventually led to their separation.

Three months later the developer is working for your competitor. He’s doing fine again. Although you won the short term, you turned out to be the loser in the long run.

I’m not saying you should get involved in the personal lives of your group members. In this case, it would have done well though. Apparently, this developer had one correlated goal aside his professional goals: maintaining a relationship.

In a group, expect people to do their jobs to their best effort. That’s all. Do not only look to their competences and skills, find out why they do what they do and what motivates them to do it. All work starts with motivation, which mostly derives from liking or interest. If you understand what the individual goals are of your group members, you can possibly perceive what the best goal for this group is.

You cannot change people, but you can change your goals. Trying to make your goals is not about getting to them, its about setting them correctly. I am well aware of the fact that this can turn your group into a tea blending party – so be it. If your group is very capable of blending tea, they should make tea blends.

But most likely your group is good at what they’re doing, with a few exceptions. Find those exceptions and find out if they are grounded in bad expectations, they probably are. Try to figure out better places for these people, or better circumstances. Try to find out what the individual goals of your group members are and try to help them to achieve those goals. Only like that you get real cohesion in a group, all aiming for individual goals to achieve the goal you’re all having.