High Performance Communication

Backing Up Your Statements

2012-01-23T23:16:00.000-08:00

We have spoken about conducting discussions about important topics and how we can use the SPIRAL model as a guide for better discussions. We have spoken specifically about:

· Categorizing the statements (claims) made into one of four categories.

· Formulating good questions to investigate the basis for statements (questions are based on the statement’s category)

· The three categories into which the responses to those questions will fall.

In other words, we have gotten through asking good questions and being given a response. We still have a very important part of the model to consider – analyzing the logic, the validity…the weight of the responses and the argument. We will now start discussing how we analyze the logic of the statement(s) made in a discussion.

There are five skills in which you will need some expertise, and each of them is easy to understand. Remember that you are likely already doing these things, but you may not know EXPLICITLY how you do them. Until you develop clarity regarding these elements, it is unlikely that you are consistent in your application and are not getting optimum results. Developing your skills in these areas will bring you an exceptional amount of confidence and credibility. We will discuss them one by one over the coming weeks.

They are:

1. Accurately determining the threshold of acceptance of evidence (Certainty vs. Likelihood)

2. Listen critically to what is being said

3. Evaluating the construction of what is being said; which statements are made as claims and which are offered to support the claims (mapping)

4. Evaluating the strength of the support being given (the power of the support lies in its likelihood of providing a correct conclusion)

5. Evaluating the strength of the connection between the statement being supported and the support itself (the power of the connection lies in its likelihood of providing a correct conclusion).

Threshold of acceptance of evidence (Certainty vs. Likelihood)

The first thing we must consider is the threshold we are trying to reach. Must we be CERTAIN that we are correct? Must it be HIGHLY LIKELY if not certain? More likely than not?

If we demand certainty in a given situation, then the quality, volume, and rigor of analysis are paramount. There are few cases in business in which certainty can be achieved. This is possible through a process called “deduction” which is notoriously slow and requires a great deal of input – two things that are in short supply in most cases. Even a capital crime requires just enough evidence to squelch “reasonable doubt”, and those discussions can go on for many years.

Generally, the degree of confidence (likelihood) of correctness is directly proportional to what is at risk. This is why I tell my students that it is important to understand the IMPACT and CONSEQUENCES associated with a given situation, and for the various participants in the discussion to vet those before too much discussion takes place. This prevents us from discussing things that really don’t warrant discussion (no impact on our business, regardless of our outcome), or requiring an inappropriately high level of likelihood when the risks are low (and vice versa).

In some cases, a consensus of opinion between a few observers is acceptable (if not much is riding on the outcome), but in the event that the company’s future is at stake, we would surely aim for a higher threshold.

The generally accepted ranking of evidence (think of this as the nature of the response you are given to a question) is as follows (low to high):

1. Lay Opinion (opinion of a single non-expert)

2. Consensus of Lay opinion (consensus opinion of several non-experts)

3. Reasoned Lay Opinion OR Expert opinion (opinion of a single non-expert that has been vetted with stringency OR the opinion of an expert)

4. Consensus of Expert opinion (consensus opinion of several experts)

5. A study of expert opinion (consensus opinion of several experts, vetted with stringency)

6. A consensus of studies (consensus opinion of several studies)

This doesn’t mean that an opinion is usually wrong. It means that when deciding the sufficiency of evidence, it is more likely to get better guidance the higher up you go on this list. Decisions on high risk items would demand a higher level of evidence due to the potential impact.

When is Evidence Sufficient (in order of sufficiency, high to low)?

· When it leads to a conclusion with certainty

· When it leads to a conclusion that has the force of probability

· When it leads to a position that is demonstrably more reasonable

o That means demonstrating stronger reasoning

Otherwise, it must be considered insufficient

Next time, we will talk about the most important skill you will ever develop.
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Answering Questions about Claims

2011-12-18T23:28:00.000-08:00

In recent newsletters, we have covered the four types of claims and the questions that one asks in order to clarify and gain a better understanding of what is meant by the claim. With this newsletter, we will cover what we should expect (and what we should accept) as a response to those questions. I will lay this out in a model called the SPIRAL model.

Imagine that there is something, perhaps a piece of sculpture, sitting on a pedestal. There are several people standing around it in a circle, all viewing it from a distance and from different angles. If asked what they see, it is unlikely that all of them will report seeing the same thing because they all have a different view of it. If they are allowed to move around it, approach it and study it from ALL of the available angles it becomes much more likely that they will begin to reach consensus about what they are looking at because they all have the same information. This is the advantage of SPIRALLING in on a topic in a discussion; we get to exchange viewpoints and “see other sides”.

The other reason I call it the SPIRAL model is to help remember the sequence of actions that allow us to evaluate a topic:

1. Someone makes a Statement (a claim). If there is no problem with the claim (that is if we understand and accept as spoken) we move to the next claim.

2. If there IS a Problem with the claim, then we raise an Issue (a question) based on the type of the claim.

3. When we raise an issue, the party that made the claim needs to provide a Response.

4. Once the response is provided, we Analyze the Logic of the response. That is, we determine if the response supports the claim.

Statement. Problem? Issue! Response. Analyze Logic…….SPIRAL

Graphically stated…

We have spent some time covering the types of claims AND the stock issues related to each type of claim. So let’s talk about those responses.

Formally, the response is called “evidence” and that is one way to look at it, but the word implies a certain kind of courtroom methodology that we really don’t mean here. Think of the response as just that – a response to a question about a claim.

For instance, your friend comes in and says “Make sure your windows are rolled up. It’s going to rain.” The Statement here is that it going to rain. This is the first you’ve heard of it, and maybe you saw no sign of rain, so in your mind there is a Problem with the claim and you want to take Issue (question) as to whether the claim is true, so you ask “What makes you say it’s going to rain?” Your friend’s response could be many things:

1. My joints always ache just before a rain, and they are aching right now.

2. Everybody knows it rains this time of year.

3. It was raining 10 miles up the road when I came in to work, and the clouds were moving this way.

4. It is Tuesday. It has rained the last 4 Tuesdays in a row.

5. The weather report said so.

These are all responses meant to answer your question, but how would we sort through them or compare them? It seems like you can answer an Issue with anything!

Just like there are only four types of claims that we have to deal with, there are only three categories of evidence, each with their own evaluation schemes that will be important to us when we begin the “Analyze Logic” step of SPIRAL model. The categories are:

1- Objective Evidence: Something we can examine or test. Example - an object (a wet car or a cloudy sky for response 3 above) or testimony (a weather report for response 5 above). Objective evidence is something that we can look up or review or somehow further examine independently. It doesn’t mean that, for instance, that the item being examined is objective (that is, unbiased). It means that the item being examined is an object, as opposed to the other two forms of evidence (below). Testing objective evidence is done by examining it using the same two questions we would use for testing a claim of fact. That is, we would ask “How would we know if the weather report was credible?” and “Does it meet that test for credibility?” for response 5 above.

2- Social Consensus: These are those things that we decide to agree on generally. For instance, if someone were to claim that “democracy is better than tyranny”, we might ask what they mean by better, but we wouldn’t generally disagree in principle. There are many times when we believe things are generally accepted only to find out they are not. For instance, you may believe that it is common knowledge that people don’t wear white after Labor Day. I would contest that saying that it may be true in some circles, I don’t think it is GENERALLY true at all. When reasons are offered because “everybody knows…” (like response 2 above), that is using Social Consensus as evidence. Testing Social Consensus is done by asking explicitly

3- Credibility: The speaker’s credibility can play a role as evidence as well. Are they knowledgeable in the subject being discussed (training, education, background)? Are they trustworthy (biased or untruthful)? Do they have access to the information they are talking about (the activities going on in private or ‘secret meetings’)?

So there are the three categories of response that are given to back up a claim. When you ask a question, you should try to view the answer in light of one of these categories and, if necessary, ask further questions to clarify the claim.
In the last few newsletters, we have discussed all of the elements in the SPIRAL Model EXCEPT the last one – that is, how do we Analyze the Logic to decide if the statement is cogent and logical? We will cover that next time.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Claims of Quality and Claims of Definition

2011-11-26T23:06:00.000-08:00

Last time, we covered how to analyze the two main things we talk about at work (the way things are, and the way they should be) and I gave the methods for analyzing those questions that were written down by Aristotle 2500 years ago. I promised that this time we would talk about how to resolve the two “subtype” claims – those of quality and those of definition. Let’s do it.

Claims of quality (also called claims of value) are, not surprisingly, claims that attempt to attribute a quality or a value to something. When we refer to things as being “good”, “best”, “healthy”, “kinky”,“large”, “difficult”, “worst”, “regrettable”, and so on, we are attributing a quality that has either a) a non-specific or relative meaning, or b) a meaning that is not easily definable on its own. When we refer to a car as “large”, for instance, what do we mean? How big is a large car? A test that I use for this kind of thing is a test of universality. That is, if I hear a claim and think that in the context it was made that anybody would get more or less the same picture in their mind, then I don’t make much of an analysis. On the other hand, if the claim is subjective and I think it is important for all the parties to have a clear understanding of exactly what is meant, I begin to ask clarifying questions.

The first question is – “Which value should be used to evaluate the subject?”

A claim of value might state that “Quality is more important than on-time delivery”. The phrase “more important” is the “value” phrase here. It could be “more difficult” or “more profitable”. The point is that it is a phrase that has a clear meaning to me, but maybe not the SAME meaning to everyone. So we need to question what is meant by “more important”. Is it more important to the customer? To us? And HOW is it more important - in what way? To the customer’s desire to do business with us? To their ability to be profitable? To our need to meet certain contract requirements? We would hopefully be able to come up with a statement like “Quality is critical to our customer because they don’t have equipment to do rework. It would be better to be late and of good quality than on-time and need to be returned"

This statement still has a problem; it says “it would be better…” which is another claim of value. We would like to have a standard to which we can measure that value. Therefore…

The second question is – “What standards are used to measure competing values?” Are we comparing this to customer needs? Industry norms? Military Standards? Our own business restrictions?

We may ask the customer for a guideline in our case statement. Let’s say that we tell them that we need a guideline to help us with these decisions if we are faced with a minor quality discrepancy, how much time would you be willing to risk? Let’s say they answer “Five days. It would be better for a shipment to be five or fewer days late and be of good quality than for us to have to find a local supplier to do the rework for us”. Now we have a customer supplied guideline. We could revise the statement to say “Quality is critical to our customer because they don’t have equipment to do rework. We may ship up to five days late if it means they receive quality goods”.

After the second question, we have transformed our claim of value into a claim of fact. We can therefore test it the same way – now that we have a standard, we ask if that standard was met. Therefore…

The third question is – “Have those standards been met?” Whatever standards we settled on at the second question must be measurable to the degree that we can settle the question. In our test case, we ask if we meet the five day window or not.

A claim of definition is one in which a word is associated to a definition. You think this is not complex, but it is at the center of argumentation. Developing definitions is CENTRAL to controlling the flow of a discussion and much time is spent in developing evidence to support them.

To resolve a claim of definition, we follow the same strategy (convert it to a claim of fact) but with different questions.

The first question we ask about a claim of definition is “Is it relevant if the term is defined?” If it doesn’t matter, then let it pass. If we need to know what it means, then this is a CRITICALLY important question. If we say “Capital Punishment is murder”,then we are saying that capital punishments is illegal (‘murder’ indicates a life taken unlawfully). If we say “Capital Punishment is killing, and killing is wrong”, then we are offering a moral rather than legal definition but we have to then support attacks on our position like “is it wrong for a soldier to kill? Or in self defense? Because if it is alright to kill in those cases, then not ALL killing is wrong. And isn’t capital punishment more like societal self-defense?”as I said, definition (and learning how to RE-define things in an argument) are critical when it comes to persuasion.

The second question we ask is “Is the definition fair?” That is, does it represent a biased point of view or not? Sometimes we might not like the definition, but if it is unbiased we need to consider it. For instance, in the case of “the product is ready to launch”, we may be listening to an engineer who means that “the design is complete” or a marketing manager describing that“the campaign is designed”. Both of these could be true, but the bias may lead us to believe that more has been done than truly has been.

The third question we ask is “How do we choose between competing definitions?”You say the product is ready to launch, and I say it’s not. How do we choose? We may suggest that we defer to an authoritative source like a Systems Engineering definition, or a Project Management definition, or just a dictionary if it applies. We may agree that we need some criteria that define what“product launch” means to us. We may defer to the definition that the company president uses. Maybe we’ll ask our customers what would constitute readiness, like“is the training ready yet?” Whatever method we use to make the choice, the choice needs to be made.

Again, we are converting the claim of definition to a claim of fact by asking these questions, and testing it by asking for evidence.

Oh, yeah – evidence. This week, all I want you to ponder about evidence is that there are only three kinds of evidence. Ever.

1 – Credibility: The person making the statement is credible, and because they are, we accept what they tell us.

2 – Objective Evidence: This is something we can examine or review, like something tangible or testimony.

3 – Social Consensus – This is something we all agree to. If we don’t agree to it, then we have to find one of the other two kinds of evidence to support it. Think about a statement like “Democracy is better than Tyranny”. We accept it at face value because we all agree with it.

Since there are just three kinds of evidence, I will get through them all next time AND be able to describe how you rate the strength of a specific piece of evidence.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

The Way Things Are and What We Should Do

2011-11-13T23:34:00.000-08:00

Write me or leave a comment to congratulate me on my 150th article!

In the last newsletter, I invited you to take some time in your workplace and try to categorize what you heard into the two main types or two subtypes of claims. They were:

Claims of Fact (the way things are)
Claims of Definition (the way we define things)
Claims of Value (seeing things and good vs. bad (absolute values) or better vs. worse (relative value))
Claims of Policy (what we should do)

Judging by the mail I got, some of you were able to pick them out readily, and some had trouble hearing them. That’s because, in real life, people generally don’t organize their sentences in the form of claims (unless they are trained communicators). The words flow like thoughts and listeners, if trained or very interested, will organize the words into claims in order to process them. Said another way:

A trained communicator will express claims in the simplest form to promote understanding in the listener.
A trained listener learns to use a few techniques to help clarify and organize an untrained speaker’s words so that a clear meaning is shared between them.

The readers of this newsletter are getting the training and, judging by the email, the next thing I need to do is describe how to categorize claims.

Writers master the art of creating dialog that is simple to follow and still mimics natural speech. This is so regular people can remain interested in what characters have to say, understand their meaning, and feel what the emotions that the writer intends to convey. This task takes talent, training, and practice to perfect, and I don’t intend to turn anyone into a screenwriter (not that I could). However, I CAN show you how to listen and use the inquiry model to dissect normal unscripted speech into the correct claims. Let’s start with some talk I heard this week at work:

“We thought the changes in the customer’s budget would cause a slowdown in new contracts, but they seem to be coming in faster. I think, though, we are going to keep hiring at the same rate we planned. I think we should hire at the same rate that the contracts come in.”

These three sentences represent a typical natural language thought being expressed – maybe between two people or even in a small group. You know from experience that this just comes gushing out of people all day and that when you hear it, you process it in silence – making a number of assumptions about what the person means and what the impact is. Our assumptions usually are incorrect. Often they are not SO wrong that we have a negative effect on the company operations, but sometimes they are.

First we learn to listen. The key to being a good listener is to focus on the speaker and their words. Don’t try to analyze and “mentally argue” while they are speaking. Just try to understand their perspective, and put them in the form of claims.

1 - New contracts are coming in faster than we expected

Claim of quality (due to the word ‘faster’ - need clarification on what ’faster’ means)
Need to clarify what ‘we’ means
Need to question if why the situation is different than we expected is relevant

2 – We are going to keep hiring at the planned rate

Claim of fact
Need to clarify what ‘we’ means (same ‘we’ as above?)

3 – Our hire rate should match the rate of incoming contracts

Claim of policy (note the word ‘should’ – denotes a claim of policy)

Now the analysis:

#1 - With a claim of quality or definition, we try to convert it to a claim of fact by working through the value or word meanings until we agree on their specific meanings. In our example, we will ask questions about the words ‘we’ and ‘faster’ until we arrive at a statement like this:

New contracts are coming in at the rate of $300K per week
Our department manpower budget was set for the work associated with a $200K per week rate

By using this method (more on that next time), we create two claims of fact to examine.

To examine a claim of fact, we ask just two questions (formally known as "raising issues"):

How would we test the claim to know if it is true? (what evidence will we accept?)
Does it pass that test? (is there adeuquate evidence?)

Going back to our example, how would we test the claim that new contracts are coming in at the$ 300K rate? Well, we could ask accounting if we are averaging that rate over some period (like 90 days), or we could ask them what a fair test is to determine that. We would be wise to ask them to use the same test as we used to determine that the old rate was $200K. Let’s say that the calculation accounting always uses is to take total sales for the quarter and divide by 13 (weeks in a quarter) to get the weekly rate. That is the test we will use.

Next, we have to determine if the claim passes that test. Let’s say that when accounting makes the calculation, we find that the average is $291K for that last two quarters. We decide to agree that it passes the test and now we know that the incoming contract dollar rate is $291K. If it wasn’t true – if the actual number was still at the planned rate – then we might stop here and wonder” how do these rumors get started, anyways?” Let’s say you didn’t like my suggested test, and I don’t like yours. We might agree to seek someone out that knows more about it than we do about how to determine these things

The second claim of fact is tested using the same two questions, So How would we test to determine is the manpower budget was set to handle $200K per week? Easy – that one we could probably look up. When we look it up, we find that is correct. We were set to handle $200K per week. So the WAY THINGS ARE is that there is a difference between the budgeted and actual amount. At this point, that is all we know.

#2 – “We are going to hire at the planned rate” is another claim of fact, so we test it the same way. First, clarify to see that ‘we’ in this claim is the same ‘we’ that is planned to hire for $200k per week and let’s say that it is our department. How would we test it to know if we are going to hire at that rate? I would want to ask the person that knows the rate at which our department (the ‘we’) is hiring and plans to hire. Let’s say that we decide that it is our boss. We ask the boss and they say we are adding people at the rate we planned – the $200K rate. So the WAY THINGS ARE is that there is a difference between the budgeted and actual amount of new contracts coming in and we are hiring at the lower rate.

#3 – The last claim is a claim of policy and that is the trickiest kind, although we have done some of the legwork already. A claim of policy has five questions associated with it. They are:

What is the problem exactly?
How big an impact does the problem have?
What is it about our standard operation that keeps the problem from being solved already?
What is the proposed solution and does it solve the problem?
Does the solution cause problems?

Let’s step through these:

What is the problem exactly?
What we know is that contract dollars are coming in 30% faster than we planned. The unplanned work could outstrip our ability to perform it.

How big an impact does the problem have?
We don’t know, but at the worst it could cause us to deliver late, or to be rushed and inject defects into the system. All of the problems that come with dinge overwhelmed. At best, we can handle the work within the current hiring plan (if the work is different than usual and requires less resources OR if we find ways to do the work more efficiently than before OR if the new employees we hire come up to speed quickly OR…).

What is it about our standard operation that keeps the problem from being solved already?
There is no automated linkage that would make us review the hiring plan as part of reviewing incoming contract dollars.

What is the proposed solution and does it solve the problem?
We propose increasing the rate of hire to match the rate of incoming contract dollars UNLESS we analyze the cause deviation from planned hiring and find that somehow it is unwarranted.

Does the solution cause problems?
The solution would cause problems if we hired more people than we need to do the incoming work.

RECAP – this week we learned that:

Listening is the first key and remaining objective is the second key. Listen to ensure that the issue is important and work through the issue objectively to ensure that it is clearly understood.
Natural speech doesn’t present claims on a silver platter, like a TV script might. You have to listen and then re-phrase definitions, values, and qualities to develop a common understanding of them.
The resolution of these issues can happen very quickly if you know how to work this model. It is a model called the SPIRAL model, for reasons that will become obvious in a couple more newsletters.
Claims of Fact have just two questions that need to be answered in order to resolve them.
Claims of Policy have five questions to resolve them.

NEXT TIME - In the course of resolving the issues above, we asked people for information and they gave it to us. When you ask for information to resolve a claim, the information is formally called “evidence”. Next time, we will learn:

What questions to ask to resolve claims of quality and claims of definition?
What are the three kinds of evidence that we use and what are the rules for evaluating its strength?

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Two Types of Business Conversations (and two subtypes)

2011-10-30T22:16:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make a stronger connection for you all in reference to a statement I frequently make when talking about business communication, Specifically, the following:

“Many of us have a ‘rule of thumb’ that supports a belief that there is a nearly infinite variety of things can be said in business communications, but in reality there are only TWO primary topics and TWO secondary topics (secondary topics being those that expound on the primary topics. This is a total of just FOUR categories”

I often feel badly when I say this, because the looks I get are either looks of disbelief, confusion, disagreement, or enlightenment. That means I am not doing a very good job with that and so I will try to fix that here, and hope for more enlightenment.

First, let’s discuss why it matters. Being able to categorize the types of conversations allows us to observe and establish theories about our communications. Theory is the part of science that supports analysis and prediction.

We can predict the path of a bullet if we know a few things about the context of the act of shooting. We can even determine things we don’t know about the act, if we analyze the path of the bullet. So first, there is the understanding that there is a science of communication that has robust theory that allows for prediction.

Imagine how useful it would be to recognize ANYTHING said in a business meeting as being one of four types of statements and YOUR method for analyzing it is the simplist and surest method for getting a good result, and using it promotes buy-in.

My statement is that, in business, we are usually either talking about the way things ARE, or the way they SHOULD be – those are the two primary topics. We often hear assignments of definitions assigned to things (“Capital punishment is murder”) or values (“Greed is good”) when describing the way things are. These definitions and values are the secondary topics we talk about.

Next, we go to the classics – Aristotle. Aristotle wrote there are four types of claims (fact, definition, value, and policy). Claims are statements made in critical discussions (discussions in which we are being critical, otherwise known as “argument”). Information about each type is as follows:

Claims of Fact attempt to describe ‘the way things are’. We recognize “Elephants are gray” as a claim of fact. It is a little more difficult to see the statement “Elephants are red” as a claim of fact, but it is. It is not necessary for a statement to be true to be considered a “claim of fact” – just that it asserts a fact. Part of the robust theory I mentioned earlier gives us tools to examine each type of claim and determine its degree of factuality.
Claims of Definition attempt to attribute a particular meaning to something. “Late Shipments are epidemic” may be one that a customer might offer when finding out that another order is going to be late. This definition of a late shipment carries with it different meanings to different people. We will use some of our rules to transform this into a claim of fact (maybe several claims of fact in complex issues).
Claims of Value (also Quality) attempt to assign a value to something. “Our competitors are irresponsible” assigns a quality to our competitors. “Being a vegetarian is better than being a meat eater” assigns a value. Both ask us to make a judgment that needs clearer understanding of the use of those qualities and values. Aristotle will show us the necessary tests.
Claims of Policy attempt to determine a course of action – what we ought to do, or need to do, or should do. Most of my business discussions are based on this type of claim. It has the most rules of all of the claims (six rules) which are easy to memorize as are they all.

For the next two weeks, just do this for me – Listen. Listen to the things people talk about around you and develop the skill of putting the ideas into one of the four categories. You will see that people sometimes use a lot of words to describe a simple thought. We will go over the importance of collaboratively condensing these “long concepts” into shorter statements to analyze and cover some methods for doing so.

I promise that the methods I show you are well-understood and have been practiced for millennia. The reason you weren’t taught them in grade school is – well, they are very powerful and probably boring to someone that has not had exposure to critical conversations that were important to them and their livelihood. So, now that you are a person that has decided to tackle this aspect of leadership, it is your time. Start by LISTENING. Always.

We will begin learning the rules for testing these for types of claims next time.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Managing Attitudes in Difficult Conversations

2011-10-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

When we hold work conversations, there may think we there is just one subject and therefore just one topic to manage, but there are always two conversations in progress – the one about the topic, and the one about the relationships and attitudes held by the people in the conversation.

When I watch someone walk away from a conversation I judge how they appear and whether they appear upset or happy, I often ask them why (because I am a student of such things). Nearly always, the person will tell me the about:

• The way they had imagined the conversation going and how different it was from the way it ACTUALLY went, or

• The other person’s behavior, or

• The other person’s manner of speaking and attitude, or

• The other person’s listening skills (or lack thereof), or

… you get the idea.

We walk into the conversation and if we prepare at all, we prepare to talk about the topic. We evaluate what we know about it, we may research a little if we need to more before we can have a meaningful conversation, and then we consider what questions the other person may be able to answer in order to help shed some light on the topic for us. Seldom, if ever, do we prepare ourselves regarding the person to whom we are going to talk. This week, I want to talk about how to prepare for a conversation in which we anticipate some kind of controversy.

First, let me state that having this kind of conversation is REALLY good for us – we can’t master conflict by avoiding them, and mastering these kinds of conversations moves us from the 85% of leaders that DON’T know how to the 15% of leaders that DO. I suggest that the two most important activities that you seek to master are:

• Asking questions so that you understand just what your counterpart’s perspective, and

• Listening

Other things like understanding their non-verbal cues or learning logical fallacies or cognitive biases are all helpful, but listening and asking questions are foundational.

Some things you will need to ask questions about:

• Why is the topic important to you?

• What impact does the current situation have on you?

• What consequences do those impacts carry? That is, if things don’t change what is the likely outcome?

These are simple questions, and the answers are critical in being able to decide the weight and priority of the issue at hand. We don’t want to spend too little time on important issues nor too much time on trivial ones. This also helps “anchor” us to a given priority for an issue, so that later on we can refer back to the priority we first set and not leave to early nor hang on too long.

Also, it takes some skill to ask them effectively. We have lots of bad habits surrounding asking questions, mostly around the subject of listening.

• We begin to compare their answer with how WE feel about the topic, or

• We stop listening shortly after we ask the question and begin thinking about what we want to say next, or

• We start to judge or evaluate the “rightness” of their position

These habits just take time and effort to break. I started by trying to silence the “voice in my head” that was all that talking that makes it difficult to concentrate on the other person’s words, and found that very difficult. I found that if I guided that voice to be curious about what the other person was saying, it was far easier. That way, it was easy for me to keep my focus on learning the other party’s perspective as well as they do and not be distracted. So I learned to keep the voice curious and asking questions like ”that’s a very different way of looking at this. I wonder how they intend to handle keeping the customer in the loop?” Thinking like that INSTEAD of silently comparing my idea to theirs keeps me very focused on their perspective.

My students sometimes express concerns that following along with their counterpart’s idea, that is considering it so fully while not mentioning their own, makes them feel as if they are falsely leading their counterpart to expect that at the end of the conversation, the idea will just be accepted because no opposing idea has been offered. The best way I have found to deal with that is to be explicit about stating that you have your own ideas on the subject, but would be interested to hear theirs. That way, it’s CLEAR that you each have perspectives, and that you are trying to understand theirs. MANY times, I have found that the other person’s ideas are very good just as they are, and find that I buy in to them completely. So, if the goal is that we end up with an idea that we both buy into, it does no harm to listen to their perspective first.

Even if our ideas are very different, the other person will find you to be a good communicator because you listened to them (people that DON'T listen are the ones most frequently labeled poor communicators). Also, you will find that IF you listen carefully to others and are genuinely interested and curious, your counterpart will usually extend that same courtesy to you. I you find this NOT to be true, write me. I can help you with that.

As far as what questions to ask, there is a model used forformulating questions depending on what it is you want to know about the topic. Here is a link to an article I wrote 3 years ago for that information.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Understanding the Expressions of Defensiveness

2011-10-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

Last time, we talked about the basic actions taken when one is defending oneself in a perceived attack. These actions drive us away from addressing the issue constructively, and towards escaping relevant discussion about it.

These actions are taken by us all, and our expressed in our own personal way. The graphic below shows how we express these actions on a continuum. In the middle is the “ideal” expression. Honest, adult, explicit, and empathetic so that our counterpart knows just how we feel AND that we don’t harm our relationship with them. This is sometimes difficult to do, especially if one feels fear about how the other party may take it and hasn’t developed the skill to express themselves using THE SCORE. If we fail to express ourselves (and keep others on track to express themselves) in the “ideal” zone, we will find ourselves in a conversation that is not targeted on collaboratively finding our best ideas. Instead, we are engaged in a “face-saving” activity.

The continuum ranges from very passive ways to act and react to very aggressive ways (from “silence to violence”).

For instance, depending on the severity of the threat we are feeling, we may choose to express our feelings using sarcasm. This is just to the “passive” side of ideal, a form of “masking” in which we don’t directly say what we mean but instead say the opposite of that we mean, but in a way that conveys our feeling. This is how we avoid confronting a perceived threat.

Let’s say coworker presents an idea that we feel isn’t practical. If we are timid about telling them the idea isn’t very good (for instance, we are afraid they will react badly) we may use sarcasm to avoid saying that the idea is bad. We might say “Oh …that’s a GREAT idea” in such a way that it is clear that we think it is a bad idea, but without really SAYING it. Sarcasm is a way of “masking” what we really mean, but in such a way as we are still expressing it.

Slightly more passive is “avoidance” in which we say something, but don’t even hint they we don’t agree. This often takes the form of wordplay. From the example above, instead of being sarcastic we might say “Very interesting idea…I wouldn’t have thought of it”. Here we have used ambiguity to avoid letting our coworker know our true feelings. Finally, the most passive position is “withdrawal” in which we simply don’t say anything, or we just “go along”.

Moving the other way on the continuum from ideal, we travel down increasingly more aggressive methods of defensiveness. “Controlling” is one in which we may ask a question in a loaded way (“You aren’t going to believe THAT, are you?”) in order to create uncertainty in another’s mind and encourage them to change without using reasons. This is what controlling is about.

Next stop is labeling, in which we affix labels usually emotionally charged labels, as a substitute for reason (“I can’t believe that you listen to NPR and all their socialist nonsense!” OR “I can’t believe that you listen to Fox News and all their fascist nonsense!”). The labeling is more aggressive than controlling because the labels are SUBSTITUTES for reasons; the emotional charge of the labels are intended to be enough to cause the counterpart to react as the speaker intends. Last stop is attack, in which there accusations made that do not address the topic, but perhaps the person making the suggestion. Google “ad hominem” attacks for lots of data on this.

The best way to deal with departure from the ideal is to ask questions about the topic; specificly about how your counterpart sees things, and to avoid becoming defensive yourself. Both take more skill as your counterpart moves down the continuum towards withdrawl or attack. We have recently talked about, and will talk next time about, the questions that one can askto draw the counterpart back to the ideal state in the continuum.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Collaborate More, Defend Yourself Less

2011-09-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

I have written a lot about moving from an Advocacy (also known as adversarial) type of discussion to a Collaborative type for a long time. Advocacy discussions are the kind we see most often, in which we make claims and defend them, and attack the claims made by the other side. This style is not as productive for many reasons (search on “collaboration” in this blog), and has two key weaknesses:

1. It sets up a “winners and losers” situation that leads to obvious negative impact on teamwork, integrity, listening, and “buy-in” do to the emphasis on winning. People will do surprising things to “win”.

2. It drives us into defenses that tend to drive us away from the reality of the situation and towards a distortion of that reality in order to reduce our anxiety regarding the potential of “losing face” associated with being wrong. It can cause a disconnection in relationships as well, and that makes it useless as a long-term strategy for solution generation.

The defenses to which I refer are classic positions that we all tend to choose from in cases where “winning” is at risk, and disconnect us from the reality of the situation. They protect us from changing our opinion publicly, which is often falsely seen as “unacceptable”. There are seven and they are:

1. Denial – The act of refusing to admit that an opinion that differs from ours is relevant, or conceding its relevance but expressing that the consequences can be postponed until they are moot.

2. Avoidance – Refusing to face a weakness in our argument. We may ignore it, change the subject, or refuse to discuss it.

3. Rationalization – Easily our favorite! Making excuses and explaining away any opinion that threatens to expose our weaknesses.

4. Intellectualization – View this as “rationalization for the well-educated”. The excuses and explanations are just more complex. They still serve the sole purpose of distancing the speaker from any perceived weakness of opinion or of character.

5. Displacement – Redirecting our reaction to being threatened away from a more formidable party to a less formidable one. Instead of standing up to the boss, we go home and yell at the kids.

6. Projection – Rather than deal with our negative emotions, we blame them on other people. Even more common, we simply blame others for our problems.

7. Regression – This is a specific behavior, and may be a pattern for some, in which we revert to childlike behaviors when facing stressful or unhappy situations. “I don’t want to talk about money problems tonight – let’s go out and party!”

These tactics from facing weaknesses in our own positions only postpone our having to deal with the underlying issue. Therefore, they promote wasting time and are only useful in the short-term if at all. Learning to find ways to use a collaborative model as often as possible will help us to neutralize these defenses and move us more quickly into finding solutions that improve teamwork and “buy-in” across stakeholders.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

The basics of Personal Excellence - part two

2011-09-05T19:04:00.000-07:00

This is the final part of a two part article on the basics of Personal Excellence. Quite a lofty title, but I just mean that we are talking about starting from where we are today and getting better. Last week we covered the basics of Goal Setting and Mental Rehearsal, two very important elements. This week, we’ll cover Self-Talk and Arousal Control.

1) Self-Talk

I want to be careful here… ALL the elements I am mentioning here are fundamentally important and all of them need attention, but Self-Talk is the one element that will support the others when all else is going against you. For most of us, our self-talk is a parental voice, one that admonishes and reprimands, even scolds. Our self-talk usually doesn’t contain “attaboy’s” or “attagirl’s” and frequently contains such negatives as “idiot”, “moron”, “loser”, and other harsh terms that do little to encourage. There are two immediately dire consequences of this: a) we cause ourselves to think we can accomplish less than we actually could with a more generous perspective and b) at those times when others disappoint us, our immediate and primary urge is to use this kind of talk on them. We may or may not always be successful in censoring ourselves, but we FREQUENTLY transmit messages with our body, face, and tone that communicate our initial feeling very clearly. This causes a separation between us that we do not intend and that is not productive. Learning to conduct positive self-talk will cause us achieve more than we dreamed, not because “happy talk” makes us more productive, but because it replaces the destructive negative self-talk with which we have been punishing ourselves (and others).

2) Arousal Control

When I am teaching classes on conducting High-Performance Communication, one of the most common comments I hear is “I never can seem to remain calm in the ‘heat of the moment’ in an argument.” I usually ask what kind of thing the person would be talking about, and they reply with something about their dignity being impugned or their integrity being questioned. I then ask them to imagine they are talking to a judge with the option of giving them a year in jail, a boss that could and would fire them, or a 300 pound felon with a gun and ask them again what it would take for them to fly off the handle and be unable to control themselves. Those that answer honestly say, “Well, under THOSE circumstances, I could.” I point out to them that the judge’s presence is NOT what censors them – the censoring is done by a CHOICE. So the first thing to recognize is that you CAN control yourself if you CHOOSE to.

The second issue is what to do INSTEAD of losing control. That takes practice. In any kind of martial arts training, there is an activity called “sparring” in which combatants use their skills on each other in order to practice them AND to be in the flow of the activity. These are not fights, but they aren’t quite mock fights either. They are practice sessions in which we develop skills in “supervised combat” against an opponent that has the same goal – to improve their skills. As a martial artist gains skill, they gain confidence in their ability to apply the skills they have learned. They feel less panic and more confident that little can happen that will catch them off guard.

It is important to notice the moment we begin to feel threatened or concerned and study it; understand objectively what has happened, and determine what it is about the situation that threatened us. Usually, the threat comes from our fear of something that might happen. We need to learn skills that help us understand that while certain consequences are usually preceded by specific events, they do not necessarily follow with certainty and that we need to analyze the specifics to determine the fear of those consequences are warranted in this case.

For you and I, the idea of physically fighting someone may be very frightening, especially if we know that person is trained. But if we are also trained, does that change the way we look at it? If we have trained longer? If we have fought them before and won? All of these specifics alter the way we apply a general feeling about fighting.

In a communication situation, I generally recommend to students that they take a deep breath before they respond to something that immediately triggers a fear reaction and that their response should be aimed at trying to discover precisely the topic of the conversation. So if I were told “You know, others have lost their job over doing just what you have done”, I would take a deep breath (to try to center myself and suppress any kind of knee-jerk reaction) and ask “What is it that I am supposed to have done?” This could be followed with other questions aimed at trying to determine the extent and the quality of evidence, the impact of my actions, and the consequences.

The point is that controlling one’s arousal reaction and reacting in the best way automatically takes time and practice, and is critical in gaining self-awareness and executing self improvement.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Personal Improvement

2011-08-28T23:14:00.000-07:00

For some of my students, learning High Performance Communication is part of a larger objective. They express to me the desire to be more in many ways, not just to become better communicators, but to develop an advanced degree of competence on many levels. Call it “personal excellence”. And while they see improved communication, collaboration, and persuasive skills as a big part of the picture they know they need to develop more than those to be all they intend to be. I say good for them and I’d like to suggest some areas in which they can focus to get better. There are four areas I want to discuss – two this week and two more next week.

1) Goal Setting

Being able to select goals allows us to focus and prioritize. The most difficult part for most people is being willing to spend the amount of reflection required to truly “select” an end goal. It is certainly worth getting in touch with your desires and determining what really makes you happy. Volunteer work is a good way to do this. If you suspect you are a charitable type, you may volunteer to local organizations that expose you to lots of different experiences. I found that professional organizations were best for me (my goals centered on contributing to the success of people in a business setting). Your aspirations may differ, so find a way to volunteer and do something that you find satisfying and fulfilling. Volunteer organizations are frequently open to allowing people to develop experience in something they’ve not done before but would like to try.

With your goal set, you will be able to focus on finding the “small steps” required achieve the goal. This is the act of “bringing order out of chaos”. As we develop our goal, we can start to categorize our attitudes and behaviors as either “supportive to our goal” or “not supportive of our goal. We can then choose what to work on. It can be discouraging to try to achieve your goal in one leap. I have found it very helpful to talk with people that have done what I intend to do, and to watch how they go about it. I try to detect differences between how they do it and I do, and then try to “key in” on those things that I am not doing that seem to contribute to their success.

I also try to determine what they do to recover if they encounter the unexpected (recovery failures). It helps to recognize that unexpected results are where the most important learning opportunities come from. It is best NOT to ignore them or try to sweep them under the rug, but to examine them openly especially with others. Talking about one’s goals, failures, plans and such help to keep us motivated because by declaring our plans out loud to people we care about, we are less likely to want to give up (and lose face) and more likely to get encouragement.

2) Mental Rehearsal

In performing my “small steps” towards my goal, I visualize myself doing what it is I intend to do. In a deep state of concentration, your brain doesn’t fully distinguish between visualizing doing something and actually doing it. As you see yourself performing over and over, you become comfortable with the activity. OF course doing it is likely different than visualizing it, but as you start to do both you will find yourself developing mastery faster.

Next time I will talk about the next to components of learning new skills – Self Talk and Emotional Control.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

We Need to Express the "Inexpressible"

2011-08-11T18:45:00.000-07:00

A few key points that I have made over the years:

1) We are often harder on ourselves that we are on others. This is in large part because the standards to which we hold ourselves are many times irrationally stringent, and the work of recalibrating them is often difficult.

2) Unresolved feelings are often communicated non-verbally (tone of voice, facial expression, body language). I have expressed this as “We either SPEAK up, or we ACT up”

3) The “Actor-Observer Bias” is the widespread tendency to think: "If others have trouble or make mistakes, it's due to their actions. If I have trouble or make mistakes, it's not my fault. It's due to the situation I'm in."

If we take these separately, they are interesting tidbits and we can use them to improve our communication. When we take them together, it becomes very clear that by working to notice when they are happening and learning to respond differently, we will view others in a different light. These simple aspects of communication interact powerfully.

We will begin to see that our standards are only ours and that if we hold others to them (“that guy never really does it as good as the way I would”), WE will developed unresolved feelings (“he is incompetent, but I won’t say anything”) and will transmit those feelings via non-verbal means. Those feelings will send a clear message of how we feel and who we blame (“it’s his fault of course”).

From our counterpart’s perspective, we will have “as much as said” these things to them because they are hardwired to interpret non-verbal communication. Of course, they are operating under the same rules as we are, and will begin to view US as lacking integrity or being “two faced” because we act one way and say another.

Our perspective will be something like “I really don’t want to push my own standards on the guy, but he never gets very good results because of his methods. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, though”.

Our counterpart will be thinking along the lines of “What is UP with that guy? I can tell he uncomfortable talking to me, but I can’t figure out why. It’s like he has a problem with me.”

This kind of misunderstanding is due to a lack of clarity between the two parties and it only takes one of them to become a bit more aware and change the experience for both. As we pratice our skill at expressing what we previously kept to ourselves, we will begin to move towards engaging our counterparts in the most productive way.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Relationship for Results

2011-07-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

The four elements for building productive relationships. Think of these as the "Four R's" of relationships.

1 - Rapport

You build rapport by being:

Competent (able to speak knowledgeably and be capable of doing)
Trustworthy (Honest; acting with your counterpart's interests in mind)
Engaged (interested)
Accessible (available to talk)

2 - Reciprocation

You develop confidence in each other by reciprocation; that is, doing for each other what the other needs to have done. This is an ESSENTIAL step and is the often left out because sometimes it has to be done with "blind faith". Do it anyway. You may not always be paid back by the one with whom you are trying to build the relationship, but you reputation as a "do-er" will drive many great returns for you.

3 - Respect

Respect for another person is shown in many ways. Three I would highlight are:

Courtesy - People have different perspectives on how they like to be treated, so "Treat others as you would like to be treated" doesn't always apply. I would say "Treat others as THEY wish to be treated". It takes more listening to do, but we all need the practice with that AND it is really the best long-term strategy especially for an important relationship.
Encouragement - Being a person that mentors others brings great rewards, and encouragement is a subset of that. Helping someone to see their own capability is critical to showing how you respect them for their competence.
Empathy - Critically important to showing respect for your counterpart is demonstrating your understanding for their situation. Celebrating their successes and regrouping after a failure and everything in between is key to great relationships.

4 - Recognition

Be free in giving credit to others whenever it is appropriate. Feeling appreciated is a big part of working in a team and few things raise more controversy than seeing the credit for an achievement go to someone that doesn't deserve it. One way to have "Important Friends in High Places" is to help them get there by ensuring that others know of their capabilities.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

What to Say in Difficult Conversations

2011-07-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

As we develop our skills as a communicator, it is common to focus on what we will say as if “saying” was the most important part of communicating. As if crafting a message as if it were a single entity and delivering it was the act that causes the listener to understand it. The listener, however, has much to consider BESIDES the message before they can truly understand what we mean in an even moderately complex message.

We have all experienced being told something about ourselves that we didn’t want to hear – that we didn’t accept at the first mention. “Your work quality doesn’t justify a raise at this time”; “You aren’t someone with whom people like to spend time”; “You are not carrying your share as a parent”. Is there ANY WAY that someone could craft that message in a way that you would accept it at face value and say “I suppose that is true.”?

The idea here is that when you have a conversation about a topic in which the other person is going to be faced with the prospect of looking at something from a new (and potentially uncomfortable) perspective, you need to be prepared to deal with MORE than just the message. They will be looking for you to not only to justify your words with logic, but also to lead them through the difficulty of hearing the words. So we have two messages; a content message and a relationship message.

Regular readers of this newsletter (and I am SO grateful for the many of you that there are) will recall that I have described a model called the SPIRAL model that defines the four basic elements of a content message (claims, questions, evidence, and inference). I will recap that model in the next newsletter. This week, I want to talk about the relationship message.

The relationship message is built on three principles:

1) Use THE SCORE to reduce defensiveness in your counterpart(s)

2) Pay careful attention to the LISTENER, whether it is you that is listening at the moment or your counterpart. The speaker usually understands their own message; it is the LISTENER that needs extra help especially if the content is complex or “difficult to hear”.

3) It is important to demonstrate attention-to-detail regarding the relationship message AND to guide your counterpart(s) in showing the same attention to detail as you (the skilled communicator).

I have developed a matrix that describes 10 common activities that a skilled communicator will use in a conversation. Depending on the difficulty level of the conversation, you may use just one, or you may use all 10. The matrix shows an activity (for instance, Clarification) and describes the essential elements you need to convey when demonstrating clarification. The third column shows the words I might use in clarifying something (that is, demonstrating clarification. The fourth column shows words I would use to guide a counterpart into giving clarification. Many times, people don’t communicate as effectively as they could because they don’t know how or they don’t know that it is alright. So the fourth column contains what I might say if I were guiding them to do that. The matrix is here.

I stress that the third and fourth columns contain words that I would use, and they may not be the words that YOU would use. IT IS CRITICAL that you convey SINCERE emotions using words that come naturally to you. If you try to read from a script, you will sound like it. Determine the words you would use and use those – they are the BEST ones for you.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Come See Me!

2011-06-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

Speaking at the Society for Software Quality on June 28 - come see me. Details at http://www.ssq.org/sd/
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Why Is The Other Guy Such A Problem?

2011-06-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

One of the major obstacles I encountered in learning collaboration and in teaching it was overcoming the desire to see the other guy as the problem. Seeing the other guy as the problem leads us to thinking that we need to somehow change them in order to be successful. I can’t urge you strongly enough to abandon any efforts aimed at changing another person’s beliefs. We need them to believe just as they do in order to maintain a useful level of diversity in the perspectives we solicit to evaluate complex problems. Also, it is very difficult for someone to change their beliefs and seldom sustainable.

However, it is not to difficult to explain where all these different beliefs come from, why we find them difficult to deal with, and how we are going to be able to collaborate successfully by acknowledging them rather than contesting them.

Conditioning, Beliefs, and Heuristics

We come by our beliefs honestly enough. We develop them based on what we see and what we are told. If someone tells us “people that are smart are not good athletes”, we may just believe that if it is told to us by someone we trust or is founded in some experience that would tend to support it. Most beliefs are formed early on, are not based on data but emotion, and are as a result of something called “conditioning".

Two forms of conditioning are Operant and Avoidance. Operant conditioning is the way we learn to do something by receiving a reward for having done it well. This is called “reinforcement” and what constitutes a reward is based on – our beliefs. Maybe money, praise, recognition, love, or anything else the individual values. If you ever worked for prize, and were disappointed by it, you know how much the perception of a reward can vary. Avoidance conditioning is about avoiding something we perceive as negative, based again on our beliefs. If you have ever started talking about politics or religion and had a negative experience, you may choose not to talk about those issues again. BOOM! A belief is born! And it may have all kinds of subtleties based on your existing beliefs (never discuss politics in a public setting, or with a woman, or with a guy wearing a suit, or whatever) because beliefs are highly interactive.

The significance of avoidance conditioning is that AVOIDING the negative reaction is the reinforcement. So, if you have a conversation with someone about, say, the weather and it is a wonderful conversation you might think “boy, I am glad they didn’t bring up politics – that would have been a disaster”. That reinforces the belief not to talk about politics, but should it?

We take our beliefs and package them up into informal models called “heuristics” for the sake of convenience. Rather than analyze each situation we encounter, we process them using these heurisitics. If we see a person acting in a way that our heuristic tells us is suspicious, we act in the way the heuristic tells us to. We may avoid the person, crossing the street; we may smile at them to show them we are friendly; we may scowl to show them not to approach; we may overtly threaten them to keep them away. We do what the heuristic says to do. If it works, it reinforces itself. We cross the street and there is no trouble, and our mind says there was no trouble BECAUSE we crossed the street. Is that what really happened?

In communication, people say what they say and do what they do from these heuristics. They treat the specific situation as if it conforms to their heuristics because that is how we problem solve. The methods I teach do some pretty powerful things in some simple ways:

1) Assure the person that their perspective, as it is, doesn’t have to change in order to collaborate. I want it just as it is.

2) Help them analyze the subject - at - hand as a specific instance and not necessarily a perfect example anyone’s heuristic model (i.e., talk about the issues surrounding THIS SPECIFIC production problem, not general production problems) in a way that guides them to use the heuristic in a tailored way and welcomes their input.

3) Help condition them to conducting relationships using a specific model by rewarding them with better results and guiding them out of “avoidance” behaviors.

Using THE SCORE sets the stage for this. The next newsletter will start a series of concrete examples for how managing the content of the conversations and the contributions of the participants.

In the interest of brevity, this newsletter makes some claims for which I offered no backing. I am counting on you, the inquisitive participant, to be curious and write comments here. I PROMISE I will answer each one.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Just Getting Started

2011-06-12T22:42:00.000-07:00

Often we don't speak up about how we feel because:

1 - We are afraid to express our anger
2 - We are afraid to make someone else angry
3 - We are afraid we may become embarrassed
4 - We are afraid we may embarrass someone else
5 - We are afraid to open up publically
6 - We are afraid to reveal too much of ourselves

You get the idea.....

When we DON'T speak up about how we feel, we betray the fact that we haven't by expressing our emotions in other ways. We may:

1 - Withdraw entirely from the discussion - shut down
2 - Use phrasing and "word games" to avoid saying what we'd like
3 - Use sarcasm or humor to convey what we feel from behind a "mask"
4 - Use passive-aggressive words to convey an implied meaning ("Are you going to wear THAT?")
5 - Use labels to imply things, rather than define them precisely ("He is SUCH a company-man!")
6 - Attack others with our words, rather than address the specific issue ("You must be an idiot!")

I am saying that when we don't SPEAK up, we often ACT up - and in doing so, we cause huge issues in our communication. As soon as we start to ACT up, we begin losing interest in the content of our communication and start focusing on how lousy the other person is to deal with. We stop solving the problem we wanted to work on because we created another.

Because we ACTED up instead of SPEAKING up.

We never learned how to conduct a conversation that has significant importance for one or more participants in such a way that everyone feels safe to speak up. We know enough to say "Watch Your Step" when we are working with others in a difficult terrain, in order to preserve safety. So what do we say to them when we are working on a perilous topic, in which someone is likely to become anxious?

1 - "I recognize that we may touch on some difficult subjects. We all need to keep in mind that we are here to address [define specific issue] and NOT to fault."
2 - "We need to cover some pretty sensitive topics and i suppose that some of us may feel like we are being chastised. I want us all to keep in mind that this is to remain constructive and respectful."
3 - "We all know that errors were made on this project, but knowing it isn't enough to prevent them from happening again; we need to address them. To do that, we need to identify them in a caring and respectful way. We need to keep this a safe place to bring these things up with each other."
4 - "I don't know how we can do it without hurting some feelings, but we are going to need to talk about this. Let's make a promise to be honest, extend each other the benefit of the doubt, and recognize that each of us have been doing what we think is right. We need to help each other understand what the full impact of our actions has been."
5 - "I don't know how to say this without just saying it, but I first need you to know that I believe that you have been doing what you think is right and don't believe that you have any ill will about anything that I know of."

In other words, we convey that the topic is important enough to discuss honestly and that we know it might be controversial. We convey that we know that it could make others feel unsafe, betrayed, or feel as if they should not speak up. We convey that it is ok to feel that way and still ok to speak up so long as it is done respectfully and without malice. That will get us started.

Next time we can talk about how the next few statements are handled.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Come get some Face Time on June 24

2011-05-30T22:20:00.000-07:00

We find ourselves differing with people all the time. Let’s talk about the subset of time when we feel the difference is important – maybe about how to pursue a particular business strategy or how to discipline our child. Sometime if the opposition is too strong, we will choose not to speak up.

Think of that! Here we are, differing on something you feel is very important, and you won't speak up because your counterpart has some kind of mojo that keeps you from challenging them! Maybe you worry that they will embarrass you, or will bully you, and have the kind of power over you that can make things difficult for you if you were to make them angry. So you don’t speak up.

Let’s say, though, that you DO speak up. You challenge their position. You show just how formidable you can be - and they force you into saying something you regret. All the blood drains from your face as your worst fears are realized and you wish you had never said anything. THIS is the memory that haunts many people. This is the reason they don’t speak up.

Let me retrace a few things:

1) The worry is baseless. You can conduct this conversation and manage it even if it is a very sensitive or emotional topic. The mojo you think your counterpart has is not their own.

2) You don’t have to challenge their position. You can help them formulate a new one.

3) You don’t have to show anyone how forceful or formidable you can be. You don’t have to apply force to move through these discussions.

4) You can conduct these discussions and lead them just where you want them to go. You may not always get your way, but you usually will if your way is reasonable.

5) Your counterpart will respect the way that you conduct yourself even if they disagree with your perspective. That will make subsequent discussions much easier.

One of the hardest things to do is to start saying the RIGHT THINGS to make all this happen, because you haven’t learned how to construct the RIGHT THINGS in your own voice, or even what makes them right.

I’d like to help and will be sharing some information along these lines at the June 24 PMI Breakfast event in Rancho Bernardo (info at http://www.eventbee.com/member/pmi-sd/event?eventid=832818314).
Please come out to get your questions answered.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Hats Off to PMI- SD

2011-05-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

I just want to take a couple of lines to Congratulate the Project Management Institute regarding their 2011 Conference in San Diego. The team was very well organized and I can't say enough good things about the execution of every aspect. You should spend the entire next meeting celebrating this achievement.
JOB WELL DONE!

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

What to Say When Feelings are at Stake

2011-05-15T23:14:00.000-07:00

I had several very enjoyable speaking engagements last week, and I always like to hang around afterwards to talk to anyone that has a question or would like to share an experience. I was approached by one young man who asked an excellent question and I want to share this with all of you.

He explained to me that his boss is from another culture. His boss tries very hard to understand what is said to him, but sometimes has trouble and is slow to ask for clarification, presumably for fear of appearing somehow challenged by language or cultural differences. I couldn’t help but think to myself about the scores of coworkers I have had that demonstrated the same trait without the benefit of a good reason like being from a different culture.

The young man then told me that he was concerned that he had a moderately complex issue to explain to his boss, and was concerned that there was no way to talk to him about it without things getting difficult. He couldn’t think of any way to start the conversation without it sounding like he was” dropping a bomb”, and was looking for what to do.

I want to share with you all (as I did with him) the tool of “prefacing” in these situations. That is rather than start straight into the content, preface your statement with a short and sincere statement that prepares the listener for what you are about to say.

For example, the young man I was speaking to was afraid that his boss would take his as a personal attack, so suggested he say something like:

“Boss, I need to tell you something and I don’t really know how to start without just saying it. I want you to know that I am not in any way attacking you but that I mean to be constructive. I’m willing to discuss it as long as you like until you are completely comfortable that I am saying this for our mutual benefit. Can we talk now or would it be better to do it this afternoon?”

This is not a random statement, but one that thoughtfully uses several elements of THE SCORE to make the other party feel as comfortable as possible in hearing some rough news and keep them engaged until the issue is resolved. Let’s look at it:

1) We start out tentative and humble, letting the other person know that we are doing what we think is right and have their goodwill in mind.

2) We are sincere and state the situation as simply as we can. We are respectful.

3) We address the potential for being misunderstood by using a technique called “contrasting”, meaning that, more than saying we are not attacking, we contrast the idea of attacking with what we ARE doing (which is being constructive). This is a method of “hyper-clarifying”, making it simple for our intention to register with the person that we are addressing.

4) We are engaged and committed to solving this, NOT dropping a bomb on them and willing to stay and discuss this thoroughly.

5) We close by offering a share of the control in the selection in aspects of the conversation (could be time, place, attendees – in this case, we offered control of the time). This shows respect and openness to collaboration.

When something must be said, and we don’t know how to start, admitting that and starting anyway can be the most productive and the most human thing to do.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

PMI Conference May12-14

2011-05-01T23:07:00.000-07:00

I am flattered to announce that I am speaking at the PMI Conference in San Diego on May 14 at 2:30 pm. The presentation is called: Influence and Persuasion for Project Managers: Face to Face Communication Skills and I am eager to build somne bridges between some of the important communication practices I write about. The conference has a lot of great material presented by a number of experts, so the time will be well spent.

Please see the website at:
http://conference.pmi-sd.org/
http://pmi-sd.eventbee.com/event?eid=751294384
http://conference.pmi-sd.org/tutorials/

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Big Idea, Small Package

2011-05-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

Last time we spoke about how difficult it is to get others (and ourselves) to change our minds once we have committed to a course of action, especially if we feel it will damage our reputation if we reverse field. I spoke about a few ways to help someone see that they didn’t have all the information at the time the decision was made and now, with “new” information, they can help make a more informed (if different) decision – one that better represents the new understanding.

A very small word that is very potent in these kinds of circumstances is “yet”.

When someone tells us that they really don’t understand what we are upset about, or what we are saying, or what we mean, we may feel a little twinge of upset. We may want to raise our voice, adopt body language that indicates we feel they aren’t paying attention, or try to re-explain what we have just said sloooower or LOUDER as if they were feeble-minded. As we send these signals, the other person is likely to feel our upset as an attack, and to become defensive. As all my faithful subscribers know by now, defensiveness kills communication.

An effective method of signaling that you understand that the other party does not fully understand your meaning yet is to acknowledge that there is still more to know by using the word “yet”.

I have found that saying “Oh, I don’t see how you COULD understand yet – I have only given you a fraction of the facts.” OR “I am sure my meaning will become clear in a second – I just haven’t found the perfect words to describe it yet.”

This indicates to the other party that you agree that they don’t understand and that you acknowledge that it is not their fault because you still have more to say.

This is a very helpful method for getting around a difficult problem and getting the other party to engage MORE deeply with you.

More next time.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Commitment, Consistency, Confidence, and Conviction

2011-04-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

Commitment is a very powerful and misunderstood persuasive element. We are more likely to be persuaded by someone that is committed and consistent in their message than someone that isn’t. Many of us are taught to “sound confident and sure” and to be suspicious of people that “flip-flop” or “waffle” in their opinions. It’s almost as if being committed and confident are the same as being correct.

Well, they aren’t. They are just persuasive. You can be confident, committed, consistent, and WRONG quite easily. The problem with being in that position is that many of us find it impossible to “back up”, admit we are wrong, and get back on track.

Because of this, we have to be careful in our conversations about how we ask questions about others positions and how we express our own opinions about things. Since the lessons about commitment are so powerful, we must be careful not to commit before we are ready. We must also know under what circumstances we can reverse a commitment and how to do it. Finally, we must be able to help others feel comfortable in reversing a position to which they have publicly committed.

Let’s recognize that sometimes we will behave as if we are sure when we aren’t. Later, when the weaknesses in our position are exposed, we spend a great deal of time trying to save face. Why? Because we were so committed in the first place. Had we been a bit more tentative, we may be better off.

It is a shortcut to persuade a group by saying something like “The conclusion is inescapable – we must pursue this as I have recommended” when a better expression of reality may be “to the best of my knowledge, I think I am on the right track here. I welcome any additional input on the subject”. The short cut helps us move to a conclusion faster, and if it is the wrong conclusion there is little benefit in doing that. I am not saying we should be meek in expressing our convictions, but rather that we should leave enough uncertainty in them to allow others to feel comfortable in contributing other viewpoints. Please search this blog for “THE SCORE” for more about this.

So we commit to things we feel certain about and not to those for which we still need data. Next, how do we help others to keep from committing to things for which they aren’t truly certain? First, before they start to speak publicly about their certainty, we ask them questions about what they are basing their opinions on. It is usually unnecessary to tell them that they are wrong and best if we could point out that there are other views on the subject and, even though we may have strong suspicions about the best view, we should remain open to other opinions so we don’t have to “untangle” ourselves from any rushed judgments. In other words, we help others see that there is still data on the subject that they haven’t considered and rather than rush to a conclusion, we can continue on recognizing that there is a likely outcome, but that it is not certain. Please search this blog for “THE SCORE” for more about this.

When we have committed to position and find that we need to reverse field, we need to understand that it is a good thing; the information we had put us on one path that seemed correct at the time. Now, we have better or more complete information and are on a better path. In many circles, this is called “learning” and it is seldom looked down upon.

That is also how you can help another person change their current committed opinion. You can explain to them that, based on the data they had when the opinion was formed, they had made the best possible call. Now that new information is available (and you tell them what it is and how it effects the decision), it is clear that changing their opinion is appropriate and reasonable. Note that the “new” information doesn’t need to be “new”; it may have been known when the opinion was formed. The thing that is new about it might be that now we understand the weight or significance of it, or that we now know that some of the beliefs underlying the opinion were believed to be true at the time, but now are known to be untrue (“flat earth”).
More Next Time

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Creating Relationships That Improve Organizations

2011-04-11T02:06:00.000-07:00

The central theme in business relationship is credibility; if your competence, motives, and interest are suspect then it is unlikely that you will be a “first pick” when the names are tossed around for the next plum project. And it takes even a bit more to develop the “trust” in relationships that is required to move the organization (and ourselves) into the “consistent success” zone. The two elements that build that trust are Reciprocity and Liking. I will talk about reciprocity in this context today.

Reciprocity networks are not new; they are just not widely spoken of in our American. Interestingly, Asian cultures recognize openly the network of people to whom they owe (or are owed) favors. The effects of the reciprocity network are the same whether you talk about it or not. I will take this opportunity then to talk about with you.

The persuasive and relationship power of reciprocity is attributable to the desirability of being able to call on others for help, and to help others when you can. Each time we do this, we change the balance in the relationship such that one party is indebted to the other party to some degree. As our relationship carries on over time, we find that we can count on this person for things that we need, and we can repay them in such a way that we both feel we are getting more than we are giving, making this very valuable to both parties. This allows us to develop trust in the other owing to their demonstrated willingness to trade their help for ours. Trying to short change this action by either party will attack the trust and kill the value of the relationship.

It is important to note that westerners, in their bias against acknowledging their reciprocity network, often weaken the effects of it unnecessarily. We will tell someone “not to worry about” repaying a favor, or to just “forget about it”. If you have ever been told this, you know that there is a natural desire to repay the favor and sometimes it can cause some bad feelings. It is perfectly acceptable to say something along the lines of “Your welcome. I know you’ll do the same for me if I ever need it”.

We should also note that the feeling of reciprocity has a shelf life. As time goes on, favors seem less valuable to those that received them and more valuable to those that gave them. Based on this, it is wise to anchor the value of the favor soon after it is done – preferably when the maximum benefit has just been realized. So, when you spend a few extra hours working out a new format for a report for your boss that they asked for, find out what they are using it for and when they will know how well received it was. If they are going to be showing it on Wednesday at their staff meeting, for instance, ask Thursday morning “Was that format helpful for you?” Let them speak fully about it, and let them know that you are “glad it was such a success and that you were able to contribute to it.” This action will anchor the value in the boss’ mind when it is at its perceived highest point. If it isn’t a success, you might ask them what criticism was made and how to incorporate the improvements; then DO it.

There is a great deal of wisdom in doing what you can for others, delivering value in doing so and building a reciprocity network. These actions we take for one another build trust and are what we recall when we are justifying why a certain person should be considered for something special. It is the right kind of currency to have in your relationship “bank”.

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Techniques to Steer a Conversation

2011-03-20T22:55:00.000-07:00

I received a request to describe some ways to “steer” a persuasive conversation in a specific direction. I offer the following thoughts:

1) I frequently make reference to asking questions (inquiries) aimed at examining claims. When you want to explore a statement or perspective in more depth, a great way to do that is to ask questions about it.

a. ‘That statement you made about “x”…what makes you say that?’

b. ‘Tell me more about…’

c. ‘Is what you are saying that “x”…?

2) Another kind of steering question is called a “redefine” and it looks like this:

a. After your counterpart has delivered a perspective that ends with “x”, you would The issue is not so much “x” as it is “y” – what are we going to do about “y”.

For example, your counterpart ends with “…and that’s why it is critical that save social security”; you would say “The issue is not so much saving social security as it is the quality of life for our parents generation – what can we do to see that they are well cared for?”

The power of this method is that you can change the topic pretty radically, for instance; “The issue is not so much saving social security as it is unemployment – what can we do to get people working?”

The nature of question’s format, called a “pattern” in neurolinguistic programming (NLP), leads our brain into the second topic without much trouble allowing for a lot of flexibility in steering.

3) A third steering method is another NLP pattern called an “Agreement Frame”. The agreement frame is based on the fact that people enjoy listening to us when they believe we are agreeing with them, so we use the momentum of that enjoyment to introduce our own ideas. The added impact of this is that it is difficult for them to disagree with us, because they feel that if they do, they would also be disagreeing with themselves. It looks like this:

a. “I agree, and would add…” OR

b. “I almost agree, and would add…” OR

c. I could agree, and would add…”

Example – your counterpart says “We need to take steps to assure that we preserve social security.” YOU say “I agree, and would add that we need to get people back to work as well!”

You would use the variation of “I ALMOST agree” or “I COULD agree”, if you are seeking your counterparts assent to your perspective. They will almost automatically accept the perspective you append to the pattern, because to do otherwise would make them feel they were contradicting themselves.

4) A VERY powerful steering method is to combine the two patterns:

a. “I agree, and would add that the issue is not so much saving social security as it is putting people back to work…what are we going to do to get more companies to advertise employment opportunities in the newspaper instead of online?”

As you can see, you steered the topic from social security to advertising in the newspaper, which is quite a jump.

You might say that it is unlikely that such a technique would work, and I would say I agree, but the issue is not so much about a technique working but if communications techniques in general are fully appreciated…how are we going to get people to be better communicators? Maybe they should subscribe to a newsletter.

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Persuasion Elements - Scarcity and Authority

2011-02-27T23:42:00.000-08:00

Last week, I wrote a little about two of Cialdini's six elements of Persuasion. This week i will cover two more.

Scarcity - This principle is borne out by Cialdini's research that shows we want what we can't have and that objects, ideas, and information that we believe are rare or unique hold greater apparent value than they would if we believe they are common.

This fact is powerful on its own, but is supercharged when coupled with the perspective that LOSS is the ultimate form of scarcity. That is, we may strive for something that we don't have and think is rare but we will work VERY hard to prevent losing something that we ALREADY have if we feel it will be difficult to replace. Humans are generally more motivated by fear of loss than want of gain.

Implementing this knowledge in a business situation is critical. Stop talking about what your counterpart will gain in an arrangement, and tell them about the valuable things they will lose. this is illustrated in an example in which 50% of potential customers were told that if they insulate their homes better, they could start saving a dollar a day. The other 50% were told that if they FAIL to insulate, they will continue losing a dollar a day. The sales among the customers that were given the 'losing" language was 150% of the other sales from the other customers. 50% more persuasive, even though the amount of the savings was the same! People are more mobilized into action by the idea of losing something. Combining the idea of scarcity with loss language makes for a particularly powerful argument.

Cialdini says. "You simply register what things people might be losing in an arrangement, honestly, and bring them to the surface. When people are reminded of what they stand to lose, they are more motivated to act."

The word "honestly" is important to note. Long term benefits accrue only to those that are credible.

Authority - Another element of persuasion is rooted in the idea that people will tend to obey authority figures. A person can even be persuaded to do something they wouldn't normally do if it is made clear that they will not be held responsible for their action.

The business application for this kind of persuasion is generally made when you are having a hard time convincing people to do something and you are having the hard time because they don't really believe you know what you are talking about. In other words, they do not recognize you as an authority on the subject. Citing authorities or better yet, PRODUCING an authority that will actually endorse your recommendation can help tremendously.

Sometimes, though, people will still hesitate because they are concerned with the impact to them if something goes wrong. You will encounter less resistance if you can assure the person that what you are asking for is just their indulgence to allow you to try the course of action and that you will take responsibility if there is a problem. If they are clear that they will not be held responsible in any way in the event of an issue, they will often step aside and indulge your experiment.

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Persuasion and Robert Cialdini

2011-02-21T18:56:00.000-08:00

The current series of articles is about Persuasion, and your emails tell me you have done a good job using the general principles offered so far.

• Prepare yourself by thinking through your interests.

• Ask questions to understand the other party's interests.

• Be open to modifying your position in order to satisfy everyone's interests.

• Your credibility is crucial; don't do something that could sacrifice it in order to persuade someone. It is never worth it when they find out that you did.

• The emotional elements of a given situation are enormously persuasive; avoiding regret, appearing heroic, or feeling valued and respected are many times more persuasive than pure logic. Pure logic can help you choose between options, but emotion is what makes us WANT something to the point of NEEDING it.

• Do not criticize people if it can be helped, and it almost always can.

• Pay attention to behaviors, and not individuals; process, not people. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Let's talk about some of the things that Robert Cialdini, the pioneering social psychologist, has learned are at the root of what persuades us.

Cialdini’s groundbreaking work identified six different areas in which can create persuasive advantage. I will cover two of them this week.

Reciprocity - Relationships are most comfortable when they are balanced; when neither person is beholden to the other. When they get out of balance, we are driven to 'put them back in balance'. if a person does something for us, we want to reciprocate and do something for them.

To use this persuasively is simple to understand from a "you owe me one" perspective, but that approach has limits and Cialdini discourages using those words. Instead, you would like to cause your counterpart to appreciate the value of the thing you did, and reciprocate with something of equal value. "You owe me one" doesn’t always inspire others to look at the value of what you did as much as to figure out a way to reciprocate soon.

It is also important to consider something that we already know, and studies have confirmed; after doing a favor for someone, the value of the favor tends to INCREASE in the memory of the favor GIVER and DECREASE in the memory of the favor RECEIVER. Although I know of no way to prevent this effect, Cialdini describes ways to minimize it.

You need to “cement” the value of the favor in the mind of the person for whom you did it. If you stayed late and did extra work for them, you might wait until JUST after they have received the benefit of it and ask “You know that report I did for you the other night? Did that turn out to be helpful to you?” When they say “yes, it was – and thanks very much” reply with something like “well – I am glad it turned out to be valuable for you. And I know you would do the same for me, right?”

This is 5 times as effective as saying something like “oh, that’s ok – no big deal” when it comes to making the favor seem important longer AND in ensuring the other party reciprocates with something of value.

Liking – In Cialdini’s context, this means two things: a) we are more likely to be persuaded by someone we LIKE (vs. someone we DON’T like) and, b) we are more likely to be persuaded by someone we think is LIKE us (vs. someone we think is NOT like us). This, too, is pretty intuitive so how can we use this info to be more persuasive in a working environment?

The way we dress sends a message about who we are. If we want someone to like us, we could try to appear more like the kinds of people that they tend to like. We can notice other’s interests (golf, NASCAR, woodworking, music) and if we have common interests talk to them about them OR express interest in things they seem to have developed some acumen in that you would like to know more about. In other words, without risking credibility or being insincere, express an interest in who they are as a person and indicate that you, LIKE THEM, have an interest in building ships in a bottle (or whatever).

As with reciprocation, there are things you can do to make LIKING, in either sense, stand out as more memorable to the other person. First, be genuine…there is almost NO ONE I can think of with whom I don’t have SOME shared interest. I don’t need to “invent” a mutual interest; there already is a genuine one. Also, showing your like for someone with an overt act of kindness is a great way to demonstrate your liking them AND to leverage reciprocation. The act should be genuine, appropriate, and aimed directly to them as something between you and not as if it is for show. You shouldn’t tell other people that you have done the person the kindness unless it is alright with them – THEY may tell others, but YOU shouldn’t.

ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS remember that being sincere is more important than being persuasive in the long run.

Next time, we will talk a little more about tools of persuasion.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Break Bread with Us

2011-01-16T23:00:00.000-08:00

I have a few speaking engagements in the next few weeks that are open to the public. I hope you’ll take the opportunity to visit with me and see what these organizations have to offer. As you all know, I speak often and our local professional organizations are outstanding. Don’t miss the opportunity to find out just how much you can get out being a part of them.

Jan 24 – Dinner Meeting - Speaking about "Persuasion" to the International Council of Systems Engineering (INCOSE). See this link and RSVP as indicated to jolane@usc.edu

Jan 26 – Dinner Meeting - Speaking at the Project Management Institute (PMI) on the subject of "Building and Maintaining Productive Business Relationships". See this link and RSVP as indicated at the bottom of the page.

Feb 2 – Speaking for InlandNet.org on a subject yet to be determined, and I will make it interesting. This is a great group for people engaged in an employment transition. Note that the meeting is in the morning from 8:00am to 10:30am.

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Busy New Year?

2011-01-16T01:42:00.000-08:00

CONTEST - I NEED YOUR HELP. I will be giving online and face-to-face three hour workshops starting in March. These will be on more communication tasks like "How to Repair Your Reputation with Your Boss", "How to Communicate your Strategy" or "How to Communicate with Engineers". Send me your ideas. IF I USE YOUR IDEA YOU WILL GET A FREE SEAT TO THE WORKSHOP!

Just write me at gregg@PFComm.com RIGHT NOW with something you'd like to learn how to communicate. DO IT RIGHT NOW.

I was reminded by several long time readers over the last week that I am late on the first newsletter of 2011, so I posted one this week and promise you all that I hope to be "tardy no more" this year.

The Pathfinder message is getting out and I should have figured it would - you help people communicate and they communicate about YOU!

BOY, has it been busy. I even had to hire a helper to help me get out from my backlog. Lucky me. I hope things pick up for all of you. The last two months have brought opportunity beyond my dreams.

I accepted an invitation to sit on the Business Advisory Council for UCSD extension and am looking forward to our first meeting.
I am putting together an online class for UCSD on Persuasion and Influence for Quality and Process Improvement Professionals.
I am working with a committee within the American Society for Quality at the national level to write a Body of Knowledge for Teamwork Excellence, and create a certification program for that Body of Knowledge.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Elements of Persuasion #3

2011-01-16T01:16:00.000-08:00

The persuasion techniques I have written about in the last couple of newsletters were geared towards teaching some of the “ground rules” regarding the subject. I hope you have all had an opportunity to try the techniques show. Those of you that have, no doubt are starting to see some difference in you results and would like a little more to work with. Here we go.

When you are discussing a work problem, and you are trying to persuade someone to help, go easy on the people involved. When faced with an accounting problem, for instance, don’t refer to “the dummies in accounting” or “the stubborn accounting manager”. In fact, do the opposite – the bigger the problem, the easier you go on the people.

• If you have a big accounting issue, say “I am certain that the people in accounting are doing all they can”.

• If it is a REAL problem, say “The people in accounting have been stellar in trying to help me with this, and I think we still have a lot more to do”.

• If it is a HUGE problem, say “the people in accounting are not the problem here – they are just like everyone else; doing all they can with what they have. We have to find a way to better communicate our needs and work with them to find solutions. This issue has significant impact and has to turn around before we find ourselves stopped from working on anything else”.

What I am saying is that the bigger the problem, the easier you go on the PEOPLE and the harder you get on the PROBLEM. This practice will help you win allies and make it far more likely for the people to want to help you and focus on the PROBLEM.

If you find yourself being attacked by another, recast the attack on you as an attack on the problem. For instance, let’s say you are a program manager and someone says to you “you’re just like all program managers; every one of you is ready to push us all to work more and work faster, but you have no idea how to do my job!” Do not address the attack on you. The best thing to do is to recast this as an attack on the problem. “I feel the same way. The pressure to get these jobs done is huge, and we are all so specialized that we can’t really grasp the details of each other’s job. It is a big problem, especially when it comes to budgeting time to do the work. We have set a deadline and the customer is counting on us to meet it. We need to discuss a better way to set deadlines for future jobs”

These are two ways you can keep the discussion from becoming about the people involved and focusing back on the PROBLEM you want to solve.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Elements of Persuasion #2

2010-12-06T01:02:00.000-08:00

Last week, we touched on two very important activities involved in persuasion – establishing credibility and aligning with your counterpart’s values. This week, I’d like to talk a little bit about how to help them use their own thinking to stay open to new perspectives.

A very difficult part of being persuasive is helping a person appreciate your perspective. If we could do something to make that happen, to keep the other person in a frame of mind that helps them remain receptive to the logical and emotional elements we present, we would have a much better chance of helping them understand our perspective and perhaps to adopt it. It is important to allow the person to use their own thinking process to connect with your perspective. It is not enough to tell them how to feel; it is important to help them feel it.

Here are some things to think about if you have an issue that you consider serious and are having trouble persuading others to share that feeling:

• Discussions that end up with determining a course of action usually start by discussing a symptom and moving to a problem. Usually, we start talking about a symptom of the problem first (because we see symptoms first). We might say that the company has a problem because sales are down. Then as we discuss it further, we’ll find that low sales are a symptom. The real problem is that the company isn’t profitable. That is the real problem here. “Sales are down” is not really broad enough to do much about (except sell more). The reason low sales are a problem is the effect on profit. Profitability can be addressed a few different ways. It is best to frame the problem in such a way that there are a variety of ways to solve it. Over time, I have found that framing the problem this way encourages many more ideas.

• The next thing I talk about is NOT the potential solutions, but the impact that the problem presents. I do this for several reasons, and here are two: first, it gives us an estimate of the size of the problem – the weight of it. If it has little impact on us, then it is a smaller problem. Secondly, it makes the issue fr more real to have a realistic discussion of how it harms us. Before anyone decides we aren’t going to do anything about it at this time, I like to remind them that we all said it carried a certain impact. Are we willing to live with it? Usually, if we have discussed it openly and fully (and I try to make sure we really explore impact), we look at things very carefully before moving on. Impact of not being sufficiently profitable, for instance, is that we don’t have money for training or internal research and development, or other important things.

• I then move to eventual consequence. This is the impact to us if we don’t do anything. For instance, if we don’t do anything about our profitability, and don’t train our people or do sufficient research and development, we will certainly become less competitive and will likely go out of business. I like to let everyone that can do something about the problem participate in the “Impact and Consequences” discussion so that things can be very real. This has a strong emotional charge to it.

• There is a phenomenon called “Avoidance of Regret” that is a very strong motivator. People don’t like to feel regret, that they made a bad choice and now have to suffer (or cause others that they care about to suffer) the consequences. People will usually take a proactive course IF THEY TRULY FEEL that regret is a likely consequence of taking a reactive course. The trouble is getting them to feel it. I have found that asking them to imagine how they will feel if things turn out in that regrettable state is powerful. I say straight forwardly “Before we decide, I want you to think for a moment about how you will feel if you decide to do nothing about this situation now, and in a few months the thing we believe will happen comes to pass and we find ourselves in a non-competitive position with dire consequences. How will you feel about the choice you made today to do nothing?” If I have done the above steps well, and made everything transparent to all involved, they will usually be persuaded to be proactive.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasion Fundamentals - Credibility and Alignment with Values

2010-11-22T00:03:00.000-08:00

Last week, I started a new series – this one on Persuasion. I wrote about two categories of elements for persuasion (Logical and Emotional) and this week, we’ll talk about a few of the emotional elements because those are the ones that most of us have the trouble with.

The emotional elements of an argument are the ones that are beyond the facts of the issue; they are the ones that make things “ring true”, seem right, and cause us to adopt ideas beyond (and sometimes even in spite of) plain data.

The first element of persuasion that reaches past the data is the speaker’s credibility. Credibility is so vital to all forms of business communication that I write about it often. Regular readers of this newsletter have heard me cover it many times. You can search this blog for the word “credibility” or just go here to refresh your memory.

The second element of persuasion has to do with creating an argument that aligns with your counterpart’s values, if possible. I see this as the fundamental persuasive skill because it is very difficult to persuade someone to take a course that runs counter to an existing and deeply held value. Persuading someone to do so is seldom possible unless there is no alternative, or by violating the one value in order to support one that is even more important. It becomes critical to us then to present our perspective in a way that aligns with the values of the other person. This means we must make a deeper effort to understand their interest, position, and underlying values concerning the topic. This takes practice with listening, but is not difficult.

Let’s define some terms here.

By “interest”, I mean what you (or your counterpart) want to happen.
By position, I mean how you want to accomplish it.
By underlying value, I mean the personal principle that guides your thinking.

I can best show you by example:

Pete, the Director of Quality and my boss, bursts into my office and says “You are going to have fire Jason, the software tester. That guy has totally screwed us up with XYZ, Incorporated! He passed software that had bugs in it and now they are threatening to cancel our contract.”

So far, Pete has:

1. Clearly identified his position – He wants to solve the problem by firing Jason.

2. Implied his interest – He wants to prevent this from happening again.

3. Implied the underlying value guiding his thinking – He values protecting our business.

Being a persuasive guy, I know I need to understand just what Pete is after a lot better than I do, and I think he needs to understand the more about the situation too, so I ask questions. (Note - If you are a new subscriber, start reading the blog starting in May of 2010 to catch up on how we work through this kind of conversation).

I say “Pete, clearly you’re upset and in order to help, I need to understand a little better. You are saying that some defective software was shipped to XYZ, Inc and they want to cancel the contract. Have we spoken to them about how to make it right?”

Pete says “The program manager is on the phone with them now. All I know is that we are on thin ice with them. If they don’t want to cancel the contract now, they will next time.”

I can see from this that Pete had “imagined” some of what was happening, and had been overly dramatic, maybe to make a point. Sometimes this is very persuasive, but not the way Pete just did it. I’ll talk to him about it later, but not now. Not until we hear from the program manager and know where we stand with the customer.

I need to understand what Pete wants to have done. I think I know what Pete really wants. He really wants me to assure that this doesn’t happen again. Initially, firing Jason might have seemed like a way to do that. I believe he also wants to make things right with the customer. So I will ask him about his interest.

I say “Before we hear back from the program manager, I want you to know that I am with you. I know we can’t be successful without satisfying our customers.” Pete answers “Happy customers are important, and my boss needs to know he can count on us to do our part in assuring we have them.” I say “You’re right. The bosses have to know we are capable and serious about keeping the customer satisfied.”

So Pete has two interests; happy customers, and having the trust of his boss. And I feel his underlying principle might be trust. He wants to be trusted by his customers and his boss, and he wants to know he can trust his employees.

I did a little investigating of my own and found that Jason performed the test procedure properly, but we had used a newer operating system than the customer uses. The program manager reported that the customer is indeed upset about receiving a bad shipment, and said that they need a fully corrected version ASAP. After the technical team came to understand just what the bugs were, we committed to doing it within five days, and the customer said that was fine. They never said anything about cancelling the contract.

I met with Pete and told him that the problem wasn’t one with Jason – that Jason had performed well and that the questionable part of the process was in how we selected the test platform. I told him that I would review just how the customer’s operating system was missed when selecting the test platform, and start making the necessary procedural adjustments. I also assured him that the new version would be revised and retested on an appropriate test platform. Pete didn’t bring up the idea of firing Jason again.

Summary

Until I knew what Pete’s Interest and Values were, I didn’t try to persuade him to take a different position. Why? Because if I make him defend his position, it will be harder to get him to change it later. The more staunchly a person defends a position, the more difficult it is for them to change it because it makes them appear inconsistent. So I didn’t make him tell me that firing Jason was the right thing to do over and over. I didn’t really say anything about it until I understood what had happened, understood that Pete’s saw this as a trust issue, and could advise him that we were fixing it from a “trust” perspective – that is until I could show him that he could trust Jason. I also showed him that he could NOT trust the current process, and took responsibility for “repairing” its trustworthiness. If I am credible in Pete's eyes, this should make him feel like the issue is being fully addressed

By addressing the issue from the perspective of Pete’s “interests”, he can accept that we have taken the right approach. If we had done exactly the same things without acknowledging that it was a trust problem, he may never have fully accepted that the issue was resolved in a way that was “good for him”. That’s the importance of aligning values.

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Persuasion Boot Camp

2010-11-07T22:47:00.000-08:00

This week, we’ll start a series on Persuasion. The purpose will be to help you become more persuasive at those times you need to be. There are lots of different ideas about what it means to “be persuasive”, so we’ll start with what it is and what it isn’t.

Let’s start with a definition that says to persuade is to "induce to believe by appealing to reason or understanding”. This definition indicates that if I persuade you, I am somehow using reason to do so. That’s good to remember, but not always the case. The same definition allows me to appeal to your understanding of something and use that to induce you. This needn’t be a purely logical appeal, so that means that we can use emotion as well.

Some of my clients have said that they don’t think they can be persuasive because those with authority can veto their ideas, which can make them feel powerless, and even angry or humiliated. What I can attest to is that there are different kinds of power that are used in business. There is the authoritative power about which they are talking, and there is also the power that comes from expertise. I know that many times, the power of expertise can cause someone with a great deal of authority to change their mind about something. There is also the power of charisma. We see this from informal leaders that may not have direct authority over us, and may not be experts, but they can inspire us and cause us to do things we normally wouldn’t believe that we could do. That is certainly persuasion at work!

The power to persuade combines these and can often "level the playing field" in so far as getting your ideas in play. Done right, your persuasion will create the support that you need to implement the idea ("buy-in") as you go.

Many of my clients have felt at one time or another that logic was the main force at work in business persuasion (usually early in their careers). As time goes on, they witness idea after idea, backed by impeccable logic, failing to persuade those at which the ideas are aimed. This causes great disappointment and confusion in many business people, as it did with me, but now I am glad for it because it supplies me with such a wealth of clients!

The answer is that logic is quite important in persuasion, but it isn’t enough. In fact, it is just a little more than the bare necessity. The emotional element is richer and bigger than most of us ever imagine. For our first lesson, I will cover that aspect of persuasion.

A logical argument (about which I have just finished a series of newsletters) is at its best a series of statements well-supported by sound evidence. Logic, when delivered well, is persuasive because the statements and evidence are consistent with a conclusion that we can accept. They may not, however, cause someone to change their mind about some long held belief. Nor will logic alone cause someone to act. Nor will it cause them to respond if they don't know they should care about the issue. That is where the emotional component comes in.

When I describe the “emotional” components of persuasion the first time, almost everyone gets a little distracted by the word. They start to think about someone being hysterical, or crying, or angry, storming and fuming to get their way. That is generally NOT persuasive, especially in a business setting and certainly not what I mean.

Think of these elements of persuasion that are NOT strictly “logical”:

The persuasiveness of credibility. Someone you feel is credible is more likely to be persuasive than someone you feel is not credible.

An argument that aligns with one’s values. We have all heard that we need to consider the “what’s in it for me (WIIFM)” factor when we are trying to persuade someone. That is because most people value their self-interest pretty highly. We will learn to connect with other beliefs and values as well, and get the same kind of persuasive result over the next few weeks.

An argument that is imaginatively and emotionally appealing. That is, an argument that we make to persuade someone in which we create something they can picture in their minds and anticipate the enjoyment of experiencing it.

An argument that uses language that someone finds particularly appealing and is persuaded by it based on the choice of words and the feelings they inspire.

An argument made at the right moment in time to have maximum persuasive effect.

An argument that creates in another person the desire to act in a timely manner.

As we can see, the elements of persuasion that are NOT logic based are rich and essential (and many). Yet, when we fail to be persuasive we seem to go back to examine our logic, as if a little more evidence is the only thing that would “induce someone” to accept that which we wanted them to accept. It is as if when the car fails to start, we start our diagnosis by checking the tire pressure. Maybe that’s because the only tool we have is a tire gauge!

Over the next few weeks, I will share with you those things that we find most persuasive in an effort to help you begin to help percolate better ideas thorough your company and even get others to act on them. For now, just recognize that while the facts are important, they are only a fraction of the elements important to good persuasion and be open to learning more about the emotional elements.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Final Words on Inference

2010-10-25T23:01:00.000-07:00

We have been talking about the SPIRAL model since May, and this is the last installment on that. I have to thank you all for the emails on this topic. There is a lot to it, and you have clearly been paying attention judging from your excellent and insightful questions. I urge you to ask them IN THE BLOG, which will allow me to answer them there so that all can benefit. I will always answer emails, though and they are the best way to get an answer on a sensitive subject.

This time, we will address the two last types of inferences that we will cover: Analogy and Narrative. We have been covering the inferences from strongest (most desirable) to weakest, and so far have discussed inference from Example, from Cause, and from Correlation (also called Inference from Sign).

Analogies are a kind of comparison. We use them to compare a complex or unfamiliar concept that we want the listener to understand to a concept with which they are already familiar. The hope is that the listener will come to understand the unfamiliar concept by accepting that it is comparable to the familiar one. That acceptance of comparability is how we connect the evidence to the original claim, which is the purpose of an inference. Here is a quick example:

Our claim is – Nuclear reactors are very safe.

Our evidence is – the number of nuclear accidents since the beginning of the nuclear age compared with other kinds of accidents (like household).

Our Inference – A FAR larger number of accidents happen in American homes EACH MINUTE than the number of nuclear accidents that have happened since the beginning of the nuclear age.

Here we have used an analogy without actually stating something like “We can measure safety for nuclear reactors just as we measure household safety – by the number of accidents.”

Clearly this is a bad comparison – and a bad analogy. The potential impact of a SINGLE nuclear accident is many times higher than household accidents that occur in an entire year. One kind of “accident” does not compare with another kind of “accident”, even though they are both called “accidents”.

The test for a good analogy is simple “Do essential similarities outweigh essential differences?” Are there essential differences in the things being compared (in this case, household accidents and nuclear accidents)? When you read through the example, you may have “felt” there was something wrong with the argument but couldn’t put your finger on it. It is the essential difference between the two kinds of accidents that probably made you feel that. If you DIDN’T think anything was wrong with the argument, then you can see how you can buy into a bad argument by an analogy.

Analogies are weak because, at best, they are just comparisons of resemblances between things. You cannot “see” an analogy like you can see an example. You cannot test an analogy, like you can test a causal inference. You cannot measure an analogy, like you can measure a correlation. Still they are stronger than our last inference – Narratives.

A narrative is a story. It is designed to draw the listener in and give support to a claim by offering the listener with the opportunity to accept the story as adequate support for my claim if, and only if, the story is plausible.

Let’s say your claim is that “Hard work benefits those who engage in it” – and you offered as inference a narrative. We have all heard the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper (if you haven’t, go here). It ends with the idea that “Just as the ant that works hard and doesn’t stop to play like the foolish grasshopper will be carried through lean times on the results of his hard work, you too will benefit by not resting while there is still work to be done.”

The story seems plausible – someone that works would likely be better off in hard times than someone that wouldn’t. The story is coherent. That is, all the pieces of it make sense with each other – nothing is inherently contradictory or counter-intuitive. The characterizations are consistent – the grasshopper doesn’t do anything strangely out of character, nor does the ant. And finally, the story resonates with us. It appeals to my sense of fairness that a hard-working person (or insect) should be rewarded for their effort.

And, these are the tests of a good narrative:

• Is the narrative plausible?

• Is the narrative coherent?

• Are characterizations consistent?

• Does the narrative have resonance?

You will find it very hard to convince someone of anything that is very important if all you have to offer is story. How about if I offered testimonials from a few hardworking people (or foolish grasshopper types) as examples? Or if I could demonstrate how hard work “causes” success? Or if I could show statistics indicating how hard workers do better in hard times? Or if I could compare the results of hard work and the results of leisure and draw an analogy with a relationship that you are very familiar with so that you could clearly understand it? Those inferences (again, from strongest to weakest, Example, Cause, Correlation, and Analogy) are all stronger.

If you are doing the talking, pick the strongest one you can. If you are doing the listening, test them as I have indicated. If you are refuting, use the strongest inference that you can AND ask why the other side hasn’t used stronger inferences to support THEIR side. Listeners will presume it is because there isn't any strong reason to support the other side.

Congratulations! This newsletter will be the last one on the SPIRAL model of critical discussions for a while. The topic for the NEXT series will be Persuasion. We will start on the fundamentals of persuasion next time!

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Inferences of Cause and Correlation

2010-10-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

Last time we spoke about the strongest kind of inference; one of example. The reason it is potentially the strongest is because by definition, an example exists. Sometimes we ask people to use reason alone to create an inference (that is, to connect evidence to a claim). Given the choice, evidence is more compelling if it can be viewed as something that exists to directly support the claim instead of something that can be reasoned to support the claim.

This time, we’ll talk about two more inferences; inference of Cause and inference of Correlation. Causal inference describes the instance when one thing causes another. That is one thing (like a rainstorm) causes another (like a flood) to happen. Note that many things can cause a flood, one of them being a rainstorm. Many, many times things that CAN cause others to happen are NOT the cause in a given instance. Let’s say that your sales manager says that “sales are terrible right now because of the economy.” You can look through your company information and see sales are indeed down, and you can look in the paper and see that the economy is in trouble. Both those things are happening.

However, is there any proof (valid causal inference) that the economic problems CAUSED the low sales? In our example, not yet.

In order to show that the economy is responsible for our sales dip, we would have to ask:

-Are there other things that could cause low sales?
-Have any of them happened?
-If so, how do we know it is not one of those?

If the only thing that can cause low sales is the economy AND we now that the economy is floundering, then we can accept the inference because there is nothing else that can cause the phenomenon of low sales. Intuitively, though, we know there are more things, for instance:

-Product quality issues
-Competition and Disruptive technologies
-Poor customer service
-Poor sales staff performance

Knowing that there are alternative causes doesn’t tell us that the economy isn’t the cause, but it does tell us that it COULD be something else. One would need to look at the alternative causes and analyze their contribution (if any) to the issue of low sales before one could really accept the causal inference of poor economy to low sales.
For this reason, cause is difficult to analyze thoroughly in a fast paced business environment and thorough analysis is sometimes not done in favor of dealing with the suspected cause. This is sometimes referred to as “jumping to solutions” and often can worsen the symptoms.

In our case, let’s say that the economy did affect our customers, but also a competitor had released a competing product with a few features that the customers liked and we were having a customer service problem as well. Reacting as if the problem was purely one of economics (and therefore would go away when the economy picks up) could have very serious consequences to our business. This is the fallacy of false cause.

In testing casual inferences, it is critical to determine that one thing indeed influences another, and isn’t merely being attributed. For instance, the “economy vs. sales levels” question that I raised above is too complex to be so simply explained away. Sales level rise and fall based on many things, and there most certainly are many factors that can cause price fluctuations. In fact, a strong argument can be made that sales levels frequently drop after a period when there has been too much speculation and the market needs to “normalize” in order to get healthy. So if you plan on attributing lowered sales levels to a single cause, then you need to be able to at least give some reasoning as to why the drop shouldn’t be attributed to any other reason and bring lots of evidence.

One must evaluate whether there are multiple causes and not just one. For instance, while it is true that the economy can cause sales levels to drop, so can poor customer support. If customer service was unsatisfactory to the point that customers started looking for other suppliers, it may not be the economy that caused your sales levels to go.

One must also remember that one cause can have multiple effects, for instance turning off the water main in order to stop a pipe from leaking and spilling water on the floor. It will work because there is certainly a causal relationship between the presence of water in the leaky pipe and water on the floor, but there are other effects that shutting the water main have that are perhaps unwanted.

One must evaluate whether there are common causes underlying the supposed cause and effect relationship. For example, I recently read that American babies with low birth weight tend not to grow up to go to college. Reading this, I immediately thought that a common cause underlying both conditions (low birth weight and failure to go to college) is poverty. In checking, I found that the author had misinterpreted some statistics and “bent them” to try to show why it is important for mother’s to try to achieve higher birth weights!

One must evaluate whether one is confusing temporality with causality. In other words, just because something happens BEFORE something else, doesn’t mean it is the CAUSE of it. Just because I correct someone’s work and later I start having trouble with them on the job doesn’t mean that the two events are causally
related. It could be that, once I correct them, my attitude changes about them
and they pick up my attitude. Or that the reason I am correcting them is that they are overwhelmed by the work and they would rather work somewhere else and eventually this starts to manifest as “trouble” to me.

There are many fallacies associated with causal inference. Here are two:

- The Post Hoc fallacy – (if something occurs BEFORE an event, then it means it CAUSED the event.) This fallacious thinking is used all the time. When you hear
it, question it. Just because the shack burned down after Johnny was seen near
it doesn’t mean that Johnny is guilty of burning it down. Nor does it mean he is innocent.

- Appeal from Ignorance – (Well, if the economy DIDN’T cause sales levels to drop, then what did?) This appeal is meant to put the listener in a position of either offering an alternate explanation or accepting the one offered. Remember there is a third choice – that something else caused the event and you don’t know what it is. You needn’t ever buckle to the appeal from ignorance.

Correlation differs from cause in that does NOT try to explain a relationship between two things like cause does (one thing CAUSES another). It merely
describes that two things tend to occur with each other. Correlation is called “Inference of Sign” for this reason – it says that one thing is a SIGN of another, without explaining the relationship.

My favorite example of this is the relationship of college degrees to competence. If a person has a college degree in a given subject, we accept it as a sign that they have expertise in the subject. Is it certain that they do? No. Are there other things that can account for expertise? Yes? However, when all things are considered, a college degree is a SIGN of expertise in that subject. We aren’t trying to explain the relationship. That is trying to say that college degrees CAUSE people to be competent. We are just expressing that one thing (competence) tends to accompany another (a degree) and that we can count on that relationship holding within certain limits.

How do we test correlative inference? The classic tests for Inference from Sign are:

- Does the sign usually appear with the thing signified (ex: college degree and expertise)?
- Does the sign frequently appear without the thing signified (ex: college degree and incompetence)?
- Are there countersigns (absence of college degree and expertise)?
- Could the correlation be a coincidence?
- Is it really a causal relationship?

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Inference of Example

2010-09-18T01:20:00.000-07:00

We have spent the Summer of 2010 walking through Critical Discussions. We started talking about Claims, moved on to Questioning Claims, and just finished Answering Claims with Evidence is the last newsletter.

Now we are completing the last leg of our journey on Critical Discussions; we will talk about how to evaluate evidence with respect to the claim it is supposed to support. That is, we will examine how a speaker “connects” the evidence to the claim. This is called inference, and it is a VERY important part of the discussion.

There are 6 different types of inference (from strongest “connection” to weakest):

Example
Cause
Correlation
Analogy
Narrative
Form

I will discuss each of these in turn.

EXAMPLE – When making an “Inference of Example”, the speaker makes a claim and then offers evidence that he/she describes as an EXAMPLE that supports the claim. For instance, I might make a claim of fact that say that all people from England have red hair. In order to support the claim I would show you an Englishman with red hair and say “See? There is an Englishman and he has red hair!” Obviously, this inference is fallacious because we all know that there are blonde, brunette, and bald Englishmen as well. But what if I made the claim about a swan? What if I said all swans are white? Or that all Pandas are black and white? Or that most of our customers are happy? How would you test it?

There is one characteristic to look for when testing an example; is the example described truly representative of the population it is purported to represent. Here are a few things to examine when presented with an example:

• Has the speaker rushed to a hasty generalization? That is, a case in which there are too few examples, and generalizing that to be representative of the whole class. Is the sample random? Do they represent an appropriate diversity given the range of choices within that population?

• Has the speaker offered an overwhelming exception? That is, have they said something that is true, but it is true because they have placed an excessive number of restrictions on the underlying population. For instance, "All Americans are useless at foreign languages. Ok, I'll make an exception for those who live in multi-ethnic neighborhoods, have parents who speak a foreign language, are naturally gifted in languages, have lived abroad or who went to a school with a good foreign language program, but the rest are absolutely useless at foreign languages." By restricting the population to just the few that have had no real opportunity to practice foreign language, the speaker has set up an Overwhelming Exception. The example he gives is restricted to the point that it is no longer representative of the underlying population.

• Has the speaker used misleading vividness? That is, have they constructed an example that appeals mainly because of a strong effect it has on the listener’s emotions. For instance “Golf is a very dangerous sport. I know a fellow that was golfing and was run over by a golf cart, badly breaking both legs and leaving him crippled and unable to support his poor family. He eventually was divorced and lost his mind!” In this case, the speaker has used strong, vivid terms to make it seem that golf should be considered very dangerous, as dangerous as skydiving. The experience of the unfortunate man he speaks of is not representative of a significant number of golfing experiences and doesn’t really support the definition of golf as a dangerous sport.

• Has the speaker used a special pleading? That is, an interpretation of the facts that indicates that the usual logic is somehow inappropriate and this case is somehow special. For instance, one man shoots and kills another. Our speaker says “We admit that this man shot and killed another, but he did so in self-defense.” Self-defense is a situation that we as a society have agreed serves as a special pleading for kidding – the usual logic (killing must be punished) doesn’t apply in cases of self defense. I often hear this when I claim that 15% of our recent shipments were rejected by customers and I hear the production manager’s “special pleadings” for each shipment. (“Bad info from sales; Design problem; Customer changed mind and is using production defects as an excuse”).

It is important to assure that the example is representative and that if there are counterexamples (Englishmen with BLACK hair), they are few.

Examples are the strongest type of inference because, if they are truly representative of the underlying population, they are proof as opposed to conjecture. They exist in the real world and can be examined and analyzed. This is not true of some inference types which we will examine later.

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Final Words on Making Great Evidence

2010-08-29T23:20:00.000-07:00

In the last two newsletters, we've talked about Credibility and Social Consensus as evidence to answer questions that are asked about claims made in the course of a work discussion. FINALLY we are going to talk about the third and final category of evidence. REAL evidence, that is to say Objective Evidence, means evidence that can be examined and reviewed. Something tangible like data, numbers, testimony, physical articles all qualify as objective evidence. By the way, it doesn’t mean that the evidence itself is objective in content, just that it is tangible (an object) and can be examined by more than one examiner.

Objective evidence is often meant to represent something; that is to serve as an example. Sometimes, a sample will be offered to (like a cracker with cheese on it in a supermarket) and it is offered as objective evidence that this cheese and cracker is representative of the cheese and crackers YOU’LL enjoy if you buy the product. We all know that sometimes this is true and sometimes not. Objective evidence should be subjected to tests in order to determine its validity. Tests for objective evidence are:

• Are the examples representative? OR, were they selected to show certain desirable characteristics?
• From a large enough range? OR, taken from just a few places in the population?
• Are they selected randomly? OR, do they all come from a specific place in the population?
• Is the sample size large enough? OR, were just a few samples taken?
• Are there counterexamples? THAT IS, are there a meaningful number of samples that show opposite characteristics?
• Are the statistics properly prepared? THAT IS, using standard (or logical) statistical techniques?
• Are the objects and testimony authentic? OR, are they fraudulent or modified?

So now we have covered the three kinds of evidence. Let’s talk a little more on how to weigh it. Generally, evidence reported first-hand (by an involved party) is better than second-hand (by a party that was not personally involved, but heard something from someone that was). That doesn’t mean that first-hand evidence is always right or second-hand always wrong, just that GENERALLY, one is better than the other. Also, opinions offered by an expert are GENERALLY better than those of a layperson. The six grades of evidence are as follows (lowest to highest):

1. Assertion (a personal opinion is not very strong by itself)
2. Common Knowledge or Stipulation (meaning there is social consensus regarding an opinion)
3. Lay Opinion (if a reasoned conclusion, meaning there has been some reasoned analysis and there is some credible backing)
4. Expert Opinion or Consensus of Lay Opinion (Expert opinions are backed by the expert’s credibility. A consensus of reasoned conclusions by multiple lay people is as good)
5. An Empirical Study or Consensus of Expert Opinion
6. Consensus of Studies

Now we know how to make a claim, ask the important questions, what evidence to expect to be offered, and how to test it and weight it. It is very important to know that the evidence brought to a discussion is good enough to consider.

Often though, even though the evidence is good evidence (the numbers are right and add up, or the testimony is truthful), it doesn’t actually support the claim. This is one of the biggest problems in these kinds of discussions. Someone says that “sales are down because the economy is bad” and then presents a bunch of evidence that proves the economy is bad, but never actually proves that the economy is why sales are bad.

Next we will talk about the various ways to determine how well the evidence supports the claim, and learn how to make our arguments more robust and “unbreakable”.

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Using Social Consensus as Evidence

2010-08-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last time we talked about the first of the three kinds of evidence – one’s credibility. I received lots of emails divided into two themes, so I’ll start by answering those for all of you that might have had similar questions.

Yes – credibility is technically a kind of evidence, although I agree that you would have had to take some technical communication courses in order to know that. The reason that it is counted as such is that the purpose of evidence is to support a claim, and an individual’s credibility can often do that. Many times in face to face communication, the speaker’s credibility ALONE is enough to support the claim. The engineer stands up in a meeting and describes why a particular technical approach is superior to another. If I feel his credibility is strong (based on the criteria that I wrote about last time), I may accept his solution without asking for anything else. If it is a matter of vital importance I may ask them how they arrived at their conclusion and, if their process and sources were credible to me, I may accept his conclusion with no other discussion. So credibility alone is used to support some claims and that is why it counts as evidence.

Also, while it is important to assess the credibility of others, it is also important to set the bar at the right height for the topic. The criticality of the outcome usually determines that. In a life or death situation, we need more assurance than if we were making a less serious decision, and so the level of credibility can be relaxed. Interestingly, if a group of listeners are disposed to particular point of view, and the speaker’s point of view supports them, the speaker’s credibility may go unquestioned and rated by the listeners to be very high even though it was never assessed. In other words, if he agrees with us, he must be right. Very dangerous variant on what is called “Confirmation Bias”.

This time I am going to talking about a second kind of evidence- Social Consensus. These are things that we all agree to and require no further support. They are where many conversations go bad, because there are precious few places you can go to find a list of things that we all agree to! So how do you know if a claim is acceptable by social consensus or not?

Well, the first thing we determine is if we have we agreed to it before. If the people in the discussion decided, for instance, that we would allow project managers to fulfill certain responsibilities and they have been doing it without objection then there is some social consensus that those responsibilities are theirs unless we want to question it. In other words, if someone claims that the engineers were doing something that the project managers are supposed to do and the question was “How do we know that the project managers are supposed to do that?”, our evidence could be that there has been a general consensus that it is their job.

Note that this doesn’t mean that we have to continue that way – we can come to a new agreement at any time. All we are saying is that the way we know that the task in question is to be performed by project managers is that there has been a consensus among us that we will handle things that way.

Beware of social consensus! Many things that we believe are universally accepted are NOT. Questioning these is vitally important. Some examples of claims that some may think are generally accepted and are not are:

1 – Democracy is better than non-democracy
2 – People are basically bad
3 – People are basically good
4 – The environment is more important than industry
5 – The current economy is the cause for low sales

You can make your own list by writing down those things that YOU think are generally accepted and asking your friends and coworkers if they agree or not. This is an interesting task because that is the "society" that you are likely trying to understand. If it is like my workplace, you will find that it is very diverse with people from many varying backgrounds. It brings to mind an old saying about "opinions" and their....ummmm... ubiquity.

You will find that most of the things you think are generally true in your business – the things you base your decisions on – are not always as generally accepted as you thought. Some of the most challenging and beneficial discussions are those that bring that to light.

Generally, what constitutes common knowledge are the most simple and non-controversial of facts:
24 hours in a day; seven days in a week; ‘A’ precedes ‘B’ in the alphabet; Los Angeles is in California, 2+2=4. These are all things we generally agree to and would likely never be challenged

Care needs to be taken, though, regarding accepting things that are NOT so “universally known” without some backing. The speaker’s credibility is one of those things; the other will be our topic next time – Objective Evidence

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Next Speaking Engagement

2010-07-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

I will be speaking to Tech America at their Operations Roundtable on August 11 at 7am. the event is held at:
HME (HM Electronics)
14110 Stowe Drive
Poway, CA 92064-7147

The topic is "Productive Business Communications with THE SCORE - Building Great Working Relationships"

for more info, http://www.techamerica.org/operations-roundtable

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Assessing a Speaker's Credibility

2010-07-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

What are we looking for when we question a claim during a critical conversation?

We are looking for some kind of credible backing to support the claim. We ll call it evidence, support, backing, or validation as we go through these next few newsletters, but it s all the same thing - reasons. That is why we call it "reasoning".

The first place we look for backing is with the speaker. Are they credible? In order to answer the question, let's review the elements of credibility:

Competence - are they generally capable in their areas of expertise.
Trustworthiness - do they have competing interests or opposing beliefs that could cause them to emphasize or de-emphasize important information or lead you toward or away from an objective discussion?
Good Will - are they disposed favorably to your organization?
Dynamism - a speaker's body language can indicate their engagement. Are they engaged (vs. passive)?
Eyewitness Access to information - are they relaying facts about things that they have actually seen?
Background and Training - are they adequately credentialed and knowledgeable in the topic at hand?
Good track record - do they have a history of coming to well-reasoned conclusions? Getting successful results?

In looking at these items, the uninitiated tend to believe that these are all or nothing kinds of qualifications. That is, either a person is trustworthy or not, competent or not, or has a good track record or not. I would debate that, but not here because I don't need to. All I have to remember are these two things:

We have the responsibility to determine the other party's credibility. Decisions made with credible data tend to yield better results.
It doesn t have to be perfect. In other words, we can t require expert level credibility as prerequisite to speaking on a subject.

I don't have a degree in meteorology, but I can still make a claim about tomorrow's weather. Why should you believe me when I do? Ask me! "What makes you say that?" is a simple question that can be used to inquire about my evidence.

If I say that "I heard it on the news" then you may be satisfied. I got the information from a recognized authoritative source.

If you feel that I may not be accurately reporting what I heard (for whatever reason) and it is important, you may double check. It doesn't matter if i was mistaken, or if i was trying to mislead you. Double checking will take care of the question regarding the correctness of the data.

If I say "I heard it from a friend" then the source may be less credible. If this is an important issue, then you may ask for more information like "how does your friend know?", or "Is your friend a meteorologist?"

If I say that "I am an amateur meteorologist with a weather station at home that I use to generate my own forecasts." , you may ask questions that help you understand my level of expertise and track record ("Where did you get the equipment (determine the level of commitment)?", "How long have you been doing it?", or "How accurate are you compared to the National Weather service?") .

These questions don t have to be asked in a rapid fire interviewer fashion. They can be friendly and conversational. The purpose is to come to understand where the speaker's credibility on the topic may be lacking and more information is needed. The more important the information is with respect to the discussion at hand, of course, the more rigorous this process tends to be. It is not necessary for all evidence to be "iron clad" or "air tight". the more important the issue is, and the more critical the individual evidence is to the issue, the more we may press for solid evidence.

Note that if you are the speaker, you will become recognized as credible by anticipating these kinds of questions. Being prepared for this will make your perspective more believable and adoptable because YOU are more credible.

Next time, we will discuss Social Consensus (common knowledge, shared beliefs) as a form of evidence and how to analyze it.

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Speaking July 23 in Rancho Bernardo

2010-07-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

I will be speaking at the Project Management Institute's breakfast meeting at Coco's locates at 16759 Bernardo Center Dr in Rancho Bernardo on Friday, July 23 at 7:30 am. Great bunch of people. I will be speaking on creating Bipartisanship (getting on the same page).

I make this announcement because when I fail to, I get mail indicating that people want to come see me but they never know where I am speaking. So here you go.
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Answering Questions

2010-07-12T19:31:00.001-07:00

In the last newsletters we have come to understand that, in a critical conversation, one side makes claims and the other side asks questions about the claims. The purpose for this seesaw is to generate understanding about each side’s perspective. The role of claimant and inquirer change places throughout the conversation until, ideally, there is a clear understanding of the available perspectives and a resolution is reached. Following the model I have been writing about recently will help you not only to come to understand other perspectives, but to prepare yourself before you present a new idea. Prepare you to understand what questions are likely to be put to you, and to respond with credible and solid information.

The purpose of the next few newsletters will be to help categorize the three types of supporting evidence that are used to justify claims just as we categorized the four kinds of claims that can be made. Most people, including myself, have experienced some degree of nervousness when being asked for justification of a certain point of view, but being asked for it is certainly to be expected and, in fact, to be encouraged in order to promote a full understanding of one’s perspective. By developing these evidence categories, I hope to focus the way you look at the types of responses for which you would ask for or would be asked. This will reduce the difficulty in preparing for or responding to instances when you either need to ask for clarification, or may be asked to supply it. Being prepared is an important aspect of maintaining a confident attitude.

For now I want you to adopt a certain attitude about the questions that you ask, or are asked, that relate to a critical conversation. I want you to view them as requests. They are requests for further information regarding a claim being made. They are not attacks, or tricks, or attempts ot make you look foolish (not that they can’t be, but I want you to lose the attitude that they are). Just view them as unbiased requests that are either relevant to resolving the matter at hand or not. Further, recognize that even if they answer is obvious to you, it may not be to the person asking. So give them the benefit of the doubt and answer it as if they truly need the answer to understand your perspective.

Finally, for this week, view them as requests for one of three specific kinds of information:

1) Information that you have because of your expertise and credibility

2) Information that you have because you possess some kind of tangible item (data, statistics, photographs, recordings, printed material, etc) that they don’t have and making It available to them will increase their understanding.

3) Information that is common knowledge, but that they somehow are unaware of or fail to connect with the issue at hand.

Your job is to respond to their request with one of these types of information. We will go into detail next time.

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3rd Quarter Public Speaking Engagements

2010-06-27T00:02:00.000-07:00

>I will be speaking at a 30 minute clinic at the ASQ monthly meeting on July 13 at 5pm. It is held in Sorrento Valley here. The topic is "Tips for Giving Feedback to the Boss". More information on the ASQ web site here. This meeting is FREE for all (unless you want dinner). Make sure to RSVP here.

>I will be speaking at the TechAmerica "Operations Roundtable"meeting on August 11 at 7:30 - 9:00 am. Details are here. Location is:

HM Electronics, Inc.
14110 Stowe Drive
Poway, CA 92064

>I will be at Inland Net in Poway on September 1 at 8am. Location and Details are here

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Evaluating a Proposed Course of Action

2010-06-26T23:36:00.000-07:00

This is the last posting on the topic of “what questions should I ask?”. As you may remember, I started this thread on May 23 to cover the four kinds of claims people can make in a logical conversation and the kinds of questions to ask about each kind of claim in order to logically evaluate it. The fourth kind of claim is a Claim of Policy, and is what I’ll cover today.

A Claim of Policy is made when a person is prescribing a course of action. These claims usually contain statements like “we should” or “we ought” or “we need to”. You get the idea – the claim is describing something we should do.

As usual, we always ask “is it relevant?”, “what does the claim mean?”, and once we fully understand the meaning, we again ask “is it relevant?”. If we feel we need to explore the logic of the claim, we will need to ask questions in six categories. Policy claims have the most categories because determining a course of action has more variables than the three other types of claims (fact, definition, and value).

Question #1 - What is the problem?

We need to understand why we are changing or course of action, or adopting one. Ask questions about what the problem is; what are the symptoms, what makes them problematic. Do NOT begin discussing solutions until you have agreement on what the problem is. That is a very common mistake.

Question #2 - How big is the problem?

The answers to this category of questions will help us prioritize and frame discussions on just how much resource we should spend discussing, debating, and addressing the problem. You can see that a problem that inconveniences a few people should consume less time and effort than one than could potentially stop your business from providing important services. It is therefore important to have a general agreement on the impact of the problem and its eventual consequences.

Question #3 - What is causing the problem?

Knowing what causes the problem is very helpful in knowing what to do about it. Unfortunately, many times we can’t be sure what the exact cause because causation can be very difficult to determine. In fact, there are special logical tests for determining causation, and I will discuss those in a future series. For right now, just know that you DON’T have to agree on the cause, but you should all be AWARE that you don’t agree on the cause. As many classic logical missteps can be traced back to false certainty as to doing nothing WAITING to become certain. Both need to be watched carefully.

Question #4 - What should be done to correct the problem?

At last, we are ready to talk about what to do about the problem. Note that in many conversations, this is the first question people start with. In this model it is the fourth. The three that precede it are key agreements that we must reach if we are to determine a solution.

Question #5 - How well does the proposal solve the problem?

Is the proposed solution a quick fix? A certain fix? What if we are wrong about the cause; does it still work? What contingencies should we allow for?

Question #6 - Will the action create other benefits or harm?

Here we go! What are the potential side effects of the proposed solution, both positive and negative? Will we be able to parlay this into a bigger win if we do it in a different way? Will we be exposed to a different danger if we adopt the proposed solution? How can we monitor it so that it doesn’t surprise us?

In the last month we have covered the basics of questioning claims. When claims are questioned, the next thing that should happen is that the claimant offers evidence to support the claim. This in not “courtroom” evidence, because we managers don’t argue in courtrooms (I hope!).

In the next series, I’ll discuss evidence. Specifically, I’ll discuss what kinds of evidence there are (just 3 different kinds) and how to rate their strength. You’ll find it comes in handy when people question YOUR claims, that you have already done the work to make them as bullet proof as possible.

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Speaking June 16 in San Diego

2010-06-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

See you on Wednesday June 16 here. APICS in San Diego to talk a bit about THE SCORE.
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Definitions and Value

2010-06-13T23:15:00.000-07:00

Last time, we talked about Claims of Fact and the salient issues to raise to settle them. Claims of Definition and Claims of Value (or quality) are related, so I will cover them together this week.

Definitions are very important in face-to-face communication. The easiest way to slip something by someone is to use non-standard definitions, and business is full of them. Even though we work in the same industry and even at the same company for years, we may not share the same definition for even routine activities. Document release, product launch, manufacturing plan are examples of common terms that we may not have a shared meaning for and differences can become quite significant.

A Claim of Definition is one in which the PURPOSE of the claim is to define something. In politics, we have examples that have been around for a long time. For instance, “Capital punishment is murder.” The PURPOSE of the claim is to define capital punishment. The term used as the definition has a specific meaning (the unlawful taking of a human life). If we allow the definition to go unquestioned, we are allowing that capital punishment is illegal. Another example from the political world is “A fetus is a human being”. If we allow that definition to stand, then it is logical to extend rights and privileges due every human being to every fetus. I am not trying to test your political viewpoint here; just illustrating that definitions have weight and meaning and should be clarified and shared.

When we say in our business that “a document is ready to release” or “the product is ready to launch” what constitutes readiness? What is a release? A launch? Does it matter if there are different definitions for those terms in this conversation? We ask 3 questions to evaluate a Claim of Definition.

• The first question we ask about a claim of definition is “Is it relevant if the term is defined?” If it doesn’t matter, then let it pass. If we need to know what it means, then this is a CRITICALLY important question. Don’t miss it.

• The second question we ask is “Is the definition fair?” That is, does it represent a biased point of view or not? Sometimes we might not like the definition, but if it is unbiased we need to consider it. For instance, in the case of “the product is ready to launch”, we may be listening to an engineer who means that “the design is complete” or a marketing manager describing that “the campaign is designed”. Both of these could be true, but the bias may lead us to believe that more has been done than is true

• The third question we ask is “How do we choose between competing definitions?”. You say the product is ready to launch, and I say it’s not. How do we choose? We may suggest that we defer to an authoritative source like a Systems Engineering definition, or a Project Management definition, or just a dictionary if it applies. We may agree that we need some criteria that define what “product launch” means to us. We may defer to the definition that the company president uses. Maybe we’ll ask our customers what would constitute readiness “is the training ready yet?” Whatever method we use to make the choice, the choice needs to be made.

I can’t overemphasize the importance of clear and common definitions.

A Claim of Value (aka A Claim of Quality) is one in which the claim compares two or more things with respect to their value or quality. In the political world, they sound like “Democracy is better than Socialism”, or “City government is unsatisfactory”, or “The environment is more important than industry”. These are examples in which we are comparing something to another, or attributing a quality to something. Frequently, the speaker is capitalizing on a general sentiment. You may feel city government is unsatisfactory for some reason, and I might mean something totally different. As long as I don’t get into the details, you will think we are on the same side. Similarly, someone may make the claim that "eating organic is better than not". By what measure... health? expense? status?

Business examples for this kind of claim are many; “Quality is more important than on-time delivery”, “Function is more important than form”, “Our service is very good”. These kind of claims are made regularly and are often un questioned. There are three questions for a Claim of Value.

• The first question is – “Which value should be used to evaluate the subject?” When we say Quality is more important than on-time delivery, do we mean from a financial perspective? From a customer relations perspective? From a cycle time perspective? If we can determine the point of view from which this is being evaluated, we have a good chance of simplifying the claim.

• The second question is – “What standards are used to measure competing values?” This is similar to the first question we ask in a Claim of Fact. Are we comparing this to customer needs? Industry norms? Military Standards? Our own business restrictions?

• The third question is – “Have those standards been met?” Whatever standards we settled on at the second question must be measurable to the degree that we can settle the question.

Imagine that someone says that “Our quality is good enough” and, when asked, the person means that or product always passes our own final inspection. Wouldn’t it seem that we might want another perspective before we accept the claim?

You need to ask the questions…..

Next time, we’ll talk about the last of the four claims – Claims of Policy. These are the most difficult, and the one’s we deal with most often – “What should we do….”

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Come See Me June 16th

2010-06-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

Please note that you are invites to come see me speak at the San Diego APICS meeting on June 16. Go here for more information.
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Questions That Address Claims of Fact

2010-06-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

We were talking about the inquiry model of communication, and how we use it to arrive at better decisions. I mentioned that one way this can start is with someone offering their perspective. We first ask ourselves if we see it as relevant to the topic under discussion. If we think it MIGHT be, we explore it further by asking questions about its meaning. Finally, once we are satisfied that we understand just what the other person means, we ask ourselves about its relevance AGAIN. If we find it relevant, then we move forward with more questions to understand our counterpart’s reasoning. That is, the reasons that they have for making the claim.

I mentioned the four types of claims last time (Claims of Fact, Claims of Definition, Claims of Value (or Quality), and Claims of Policy). The questions that we ask regarding our counterpart’s reasoning are specific to the type of claim they are so let’s start by learning to identify the types when we here them and then talk about the questions we develop.

Claims of Fact

This is just what it says; a speaker is claiming something is a fact. Examples in a business setting would be:

“Our sales slump seems to be over.”

“We are ready to start hiring again.”

“Despite what the competition is saying, our product is selling well and our customers are happy.”

A claim of fact may or may not end up being a fact, but we don’t know at this stage. We are going to investigate that. The defining characteristic for a claim of fact is that it is provable by fact or data. It is not an opinion, nor does it fall into any of the either 3 categories we shall discuss. These three statements are all presented as facts. The first two are very simple (more simple than most business statements) and the third has a bit more complexity.

As we mentioned, we would first determine if we thought the statement was relevant in context. Let’s say our context is this – we are trying to decide if we should postpone the expense of a new product launch and continue selling our current product, or if we should launch the new product to try to take market share from the competition. This is a complex topic, with lots of considerations. I am using it here as an example to illustrate how we would evaluate some of the claims that may come up.

We will say that all three of the above could be relevant, and will examine the “meaning” of them. I am pretty sure I understand the first one. I may ask “What do you mean by slump; was it just a minor drop off?”, but if I have been in the loop at the company I would probably already know that. I would want to be sure that those of us in the discussion had a common understanding of what the statement meant. After the speaker explains it, I would be satisfied that it is relevant and that I understand the meaning and would be ready to evaluate the logic behind the statement.

To evaluate the logic behind a Claim of Fact, the first questions one would ask would be based on “How would we know if the statement is true?” That is, what would be acceptable as data or facts to support it? I would ask a question like “What makes you say that?” indicating that I want some supporting data. The answer that comes back can vary wildly depending on many factors, but the important thing is for you to help the group come to an understanding of what they collectively are willing to accept as supporting data. Let’s say the response is “Our sales were at the forecast level until June of 2009, when they dropped off to only 85% of forecast. They have steadily risen back and have been at or above our forecast for the last quarter. I think that since we were running to forecast, dropped off but recovered, and have remained at expected values for a quarter, we can say that the slump is over.” If the speaker is credible, we may choose to accept that we have found the criteria that we all can accept and move on to the second question. But what if the response is “Our sales are tied to the economy, and the paper says the economy is turning around, so are sales will too.” This is a far more risky response, and one that not everyone might accept without further research. It borders on an opinion, pointing to some vague reference to “what the paper says”. It might not be enough for many of us, depending on the speaker’s credibility and the importance of the decision. If there are jobs on the line, I want more data.

Let’s say that the speaker’s reply is the first one – the one that described the drop and the subsequent steady increase, and that we choose to accept it as good criteria. Then it is time for the second questions, which are based on “Now that we agree on the criteria, can we agree that we have met it?” This set of questions would be posed about the forecasted values, (“Are the forecasted values we are now hitting the SAME values that were forecasted, or are we hitting some revised levels?”) and the recovery (“Is the recovery due to increased sales, or did we reduce price in order to increase volume and are now less profitable overall?).

You may be able to think of some other questions, but recognize that there are only TWO things you are trying to settle when addressing a claim of fact: 1) What criteria can we agree on to determine if the statement is true? and 2) Did we meet the criteria?

I know I said I would cover this is two parts, but I think it is going to take me 3 more.

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What Questions are used in the Inquiry Method? (Part 1 of 2)

2010-05-23T23:01:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of speaking at the International Project Management Institute Conference last week and I have to say that they are about the nicest people you could ever work with. I had a great morning there and want to thank all the many folks I worked with for making me feel so welcome.

After my talk (entitled "What Goes Wrong in Business Communication?"), a very savvy friend who shall remain nameless asked a perfect question. We had been speaking about the Inquiry method of communication, which is clearly all about asking questions. I had shown my “famous” SPIRAL model and in the interest of time did not go into any detail at all regarding the exactly how one knows what questions to ask in order to get a counterpart to substantiate a claim.

I've been trying to work out just how to explain this in the newsletter. In class it is easy; in the newsletter, we'll see.

The first part of the endeavor is to understand Claims. People make claims and, if we don't accept them, we ask questions to understand them better. We continue to ask questions until we understand them fully. That is the heart of Inquiry model. We don't make statements about claims; we ask questions. We don't say "You're wrong about that". Instead we ask "What makes you say that?” That is how we come to understand the other parties' perspective while preserving safety and trust.

For reference, let's identify the four kinds of claims: Claims of Fact, Claims of Definition, Claims of Value (or Quality), and Claims of Policy. I'll get into the details of each next time, so for now don't worry about that. Just know that there are some questions that you ask REGARDLESS of the type of claim, and some questions that are DEPENDANT on the type of claim. This week, I am focusing on the questions to ask regardless of the type of claim. There are two such questions - Relevance and Meaning.

First, before you start analyzing the data behind the claim, ask yourself if the thing being claimed is important. Is it relevant? If not - if it someone making a statement like "the red tie is prettier than the blue tie" - then don't bother. It is a temptation among my students to begin analyzing EVERYTHING once they learn how because it feels so good to get better at this new skill and I assure you that it is a quick way to become labeled as a nuisance. Don't become overly analytical just because you have started to develop the skill.

When questioning the relevance of the statement, I do so pretty directly (the method that suits me best). I remember of course to be mindful of creating safety and so I approach tentatively and humbly and say something like "I may be missing something. I am having trouble understanding how what you just said relates to the larger topic. Could you fill me in?" The risk is if the person takes it as a challenge. If they appear to, I might say something like "I don't want you to think I am challenging the relevance. I'm not. I am just trying to understand it." these methods are discussed in my blog entries containing THE SCORE. Just search the blog if you are curious about how to maintain safety in a critical discussion.

If you readily see that the statement is irrelevant, then just dismiss it as such and move on. If, however you can't dismiss a statement as irrelevant, then you need to ask the second question - what does the statement MEAN? This is not always easy, but it is always important for you and the others involved in discussing a relevant statement to share an understanding regarding its meaning.

What does the claim mean? The reason that this is so important is because MANY times, the discussion goes wrong because the listener ASSUMES that they know what the speaker means, or feels that they shouldn't question the meaning for fear of appearing either uninformed or presumptuous. Even worse, some speakers would make you feel that way specifically so you don't raise questions. Let's walk through the process for a claim of fact that may come up in a business setting. Let's say we are talking about producing a new model and someone makes the claim: "Eventually, all of our customers will switch over to our new product even if the price is a little higher."

I like to examine each key word and see if I can come to understand what the speaker means. In the sample sentence, I would ask questions like "When you say 'eventually', what kind of timeline are you suggesting? 5 years?"; "Do you think all of our customers will adopt the new product or do you mean the majority of them, as in more than half? Do you think more than 90%?"; "When you say the price will be a little higher, a little higher than what - our current price? The competition's price for an equivalent product? ; How much higher will the price be, do you think?”

I try to make sure I have a clear picture of the important aspects of their statement BEFORE I begin to analyze the underlying data. Otherwise, there is just too little to analyze. At the end of this discussion, I’d like to have a statement that is clear enough to me that I can believe we have a shared understanding. My closing question would be something like this. "So, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that you expect that - more than 90% of our existing customers will stop using our current product and begin using our new model within 2 years of its launch even if the price is 30% higher than the price of our current product and 20% higher than our competitor's price for an equivalent product. Is that what you are saying?"

Note that what I have done is as questions about each of the aspects of the original statement that I did not understand, and tried to "plug in" the speaker's definition for each of those terms. I am not analyzing ANYTHING yet; just trying to understand exactly what the speaker means by their statement. Patience yields BIG rewards here. Trying to question a claim before you have a shared understanding of the meaning frequently leads to hurt feelings, destruction of trust, embarrassment, and other problems that are all avoided by coming to a clear and mutual understanding of the statement. It is interesting to note that about 40% of the time when I feel I understand just what the speaker means and ask them to confirm my interpretation of their statement just the way I did above, they respond by saying something like "No. I am saying it may take up to 3 years for 90% of them to switch; but 50% of them will in the first year". This means that even when I have asked all the questions, remained open minded and curious, and am just seeking to understand, I am still often wrong and need more clarification! If you don't go through this process, you will SELDOM be on the same page with the speaker.

Now that you have asked the Relevance question and the Meaning question, ask the Relevance question one more time; "Now that I have a clear understanding of what the speaker means, is the statement relevant in arriving a good decision?” If, with your new clarified understanding, you no longer see it as relevant then move on. If it is relevant, move on to understanding if the statement disintegrates under logical analysis.

We will study the questions used to study the logic of the four specific types of claims next time.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Speaking Engagements

2010-05-09T23:56:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that I speak around the county regularly. Frequently I speak in “closed admittance” (university classes or company settings) to which I can’t invite anyone. I am exceptionally happy to speaking at two events in the near future to which I can invite you.

The first is on Friday, May 14 at the 7th annual Project Management Institute Conference in San Diego. I’ll be speaking from 9 am to 10 am, with other professionals on topics that are central to project management. Find out more about this fantastic conference at the PMI conference page.

Also, I will be speaking at the professional development meeting for the San Diego chapter of the APICS organization (the Association for Operations Management) on June 16 at 5:30 pm. You can find out more about this meeting and organization at the APICS meetings page their meetings page.

Both of these organizations are full of the kind of people we like to be around; people that want to improve themselves and their businesses, that strive for excellence, and get better results. I feel fortunate every time I am around them.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

The Two Minute Drill...PLUS

2010-05-08T18:14:00.000-07:00

The reaction from the Two Minute Drill was pretty dramatic. I got dozens of emails and even some phone calls from people that were surprised at the experience that they had.

It became clear that when you stop to listen and understand the other person’s perspective, without prejudging or filtering their statements through your OWN perspective, they know it. They feel as if they are heard and often that opens them to YOUR perspective. This activity sets the stage for real collaboration.

Let’s add on to the experience now. This week, do the two minute drill again – listen to the other person’s point of view for two minutes. Don’t think about your own. Pretend you are a reporter and your purpose is just to understand exactly where the other person is coming from. Ask them questions about how they arrived at any conclusions that you don’t understand. You will be saying things like “what makes you say that?”, “tell me more about…”, and “how do you know that such-and-such is true”. It is important to ask these from a position of curiosity and not argumentativeness. This is difficult for almost all of us without practice.

So…practice!

This week, add the element of openness. Try to be open to adopting their position IF (and only if) you can come to agree with it. Ask the questions you need to understand how their perspective “works” and determine if it is all that different from yours, and if the differences matter. IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND OR NOT, SO LONG AS YOU DO IT FOR THE RIGHT REASON.

When I hear new information about a subject upon which I have already taken a position, sometimes I change my mind. What do YOU do?

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

2 Minute Drill

2010-04-19T00:17:00.000-07:00

I have written over 100 articles for Pathfinder, just counting the ones that appear in the newsletter. Some of them have contained some very complex concepts.This one will be simple and straight forward. It will take two minutes of your time and will likely be the most enlightening two minutes you spend this week.

The very next time you find yourself in a situation in which you are in a disagreement with someone else, and it is NOT "life and death" that things go your way, make the choice to thoroughly investigate the other side in an unbiased way. The reason that i want you to do it the very next time is so that you will learn that you can do it EVERY time that you want to - there is no "special" conversation to do this. You can do it any time that you choose.

The way you do it is to STOP TALKING and begin listening. REALLY listen to what the other person is saying. the key is to STOP thinking about what your perspective is. Pretend that you don't have one. Pretend you are reporter and are just trying to fully understand what the OTHER person is saying. If the other person's plan isn't fully developed, ask questions about the gaps and observe how they fill them in. Are there aspects of the plan that are :"unknowable" now that they are speculating on? What do they base the speculation on? Ask them. Is there a flaw in there logic? Ask them about it.

You just need to do it for two minutes. The trick is that you can't mention your OWN point of view for those two minutes.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

I just noticed...101 Posts!

2010-04-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

Thank you all for tuning in to my newsletter. Due to some things going on in real life, I have had to forego my usual consistency with the newsletters this year. Thanks for sticking with me.

Make sure you join the Pathfinder Communicators' group at Linked In. We offer a newsfeed from Harvard Business to keep you up on all things important regarding improving your face-to-face communication skills.

Go to The Pathfinder LinkedIn Group and check the News. Then join up to get the news automatically.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

The Worst Vice

2010-04-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

There is an old saying that “the worst vice is ADvice” and if you have ever tried giving some at the wrong time then you might agree. In our quest to help others solve problems, we can often overstep what is needed or wanted at the time.

Socrates developed a system of conducting discussions using questions and inquiry that we now call the Socratic Method. Obviously, HE didn’t call it that – we named it after him. He called it (in Greek) “The Midwife Method”. He saw using questions as vital in asking a person to explore their OWN point of view more fully, and in that way he was helping “give birth” to a new perspective. Further, the person answering the questions was actually committing to the final outcome as they were developing the new perspective because it was THEIR OWN perspective. How could they not buy into it?

So, back to the point regarding giving advice, this method is very useful in that you are not TELLING someone what to do, but asking them and they are answering. Their answers bind them to the conclusion because…well, because they are THEIR answers.

“I can’t get along with any of my coworkers. I probably ought to quit!” Think of all the ways to respond when you hear that coming from a friend. You could tell them all about work being about income and not friends, or that the economy is so rough right now that it is a bad time, or that they could try X,Y, or Z to be more likeable, or that they should indeed quit. Would you be helping them to do the best thing for them, or just telling them what YOU would do?

Mediators (well versed in the Socratic Method) use methods to help the person “give birth” to a fuller perspective.

1) Asking “what makes you say that?” This simple sentence asks the person to describe a deeper level of the topic – the rezoning behind the statement. They may not be aware of certain things themselves and saying them aloud with you causes them to have to look at them in a more objective way.

2) Paraphrasing – not parroting. A good mediator will rephrase a person’s word into a question (NOT merely repeating them) in order to prompt them for amplification of the subject, It has much the same effect as asking “what makes you say that

3) Saying “tell me more”. This is not a question, but it is a request for more information just like a question is, and prompts the same response. ?” Variations on this include “so what you are saying is…..” or “if I understand you correctly, you feel that….”

One of the big breakthroughs for me was 25 years ago, using these methods. I learned that USUALLY, when I said “so what you are saying is…..” they would respond with “No... What I mean to say is…” The reason I was struck by this was that it meant I was usually WORNG in my interpretation and if I hadn’t asked for the clarification, I would have been down the wrong road. This was even in cases in which I was SURE I was right. It would follow that if I had not asked for clarification, I would have been giving advice based on my misunderstanding, not much chance in being useful.

Using the inquiry method is a proven way to improve the likelihood of being helpful and getting buy in from those with which you are advising.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

New Format

2010-03-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

Let me know if you like the new format of the newsletter; every two weeks instead of weekly and shorter articles. This is where I share what I know and it is easy for me. I want it to be easy for you, too.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Framing Problems (continued)

2010-03-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

Last time we spoke about framing a problem, and this article is a continuation of some of those ideas.
1 - If you are ever on the side of an argument in which you are promoting a position favoring material things (wealth, land, money) you will likely be shut down if the other side starts presenting their perspective as one based on values (security, dignity, control of one’s own destiny, etc.). If the other side is framing the conflict as one that is based on values, you need to make your position about rights.
Example - It is nearly impossible to gain full support with a statement like “corporate profit is more important than the environment”, but you may find there is more room for agreement with a position that says that “a person has a right to earn a living, and that right must be balanced against any effects that might be felt in the environment”.

2 – In many businesses, there sometimes exists an unspoken rule that ANY conflict is unhealthy, or abnormal. The single most important rule in an interdependent society (like the functions that make up a business) is the rule that we will speak up when things don’t seem right, and will be answered with a thoughtfully prepared response. This is the basic give-and-take that allows for improvement in organizations. It is important to know how to frame the questions so they elicit the kind of thoughtful response to which I refer. To know more about this, search this site for articles on THE SCORE, my method for conducting one’s self in those kinds of discussions.

Scoping errors are closely related to framing errors. Scoping errors are errors regarding who should be involved, what they think, and the context of the discussion. Take time up front to consider and seek input from any parties that are likely to have salient input AND those that will be affected by the outcome. This effort starts with identifying all of the things at issue in the discussion and the understanding that, as new issues are discovered in the course of discussion, one must re-examine the parties involved to assure that the right ones are added based on the new issues.

Keep a careful watch to make sure that all viable options are kept open. It is human nature to “mentally exclude” options that are not best for themselves. In doing this, you may exclude options that may be almost as good for you AND enable a plan that works for all the other participants as well. Hold off on excluding options until near the end of the solution selection process.

More on that next time.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Framing the Discussion – first in a series

2010-02-28T23:15:00.000-08:00

I am going to write the next few newsletters on the process of “framing” a conflict, it think, because it is tricky and some people underestimate the importance of it. If the frame is established properly upfront, it is easier to detect when the discussion wanders into irrelevant or unproductive territory. If all parties know the target, then all can tell when a shot goes astray.

First, for a definition, “Framing a Conflict” is the act of defining what the conflict is about and how it is being addressed. So there are two parts of the frame – the “what” part and the “how” part. Further, recognize that this is not done by just one party, but requires agreement among the interested parties involved. This factor makes it a little less of an “act” and more of a “process”. A collaborative one.

In a conversation in which the parties are seeking to resolve some sort of difference so that each can come away with something that they believe is of value (a negotiation), it is not unusual for a party to become so “anchored” to what they SAY they want, that they don’t recognize what they REALLY want.

For example – I may say that I want your commitment that you will reduce the price of the material that you sell to me by 5% for the next two years, and forget what I REALLY want is a reduction in the cost of the material you supply of 5% for the next two years.

Can you see the difference? In the first case, the only way my request can be satisfied is if you lower your price. In the second case, maybe there are more ways for you to reduce my cost of using your product (Can you warehouse it for me? Drop ship to my customers? Deliver it for free? Take over some of the forecasting for it?).

More next time…

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Defining the Purpose for a Communication

2010-01-31T22:44:00.000-08:00

A common problem for nearly everyone seeking to improve their communication skills is making assumptions about the PURPOSE of the communication at hand. Typically, we assume that our counterpart shares our understanding of the purpose for our discussion. Quite often they don't. Quite often they are curious as to what your purpose is. That curiosity can affect their perception of your objectivity. Left alone, this lack of clarity can undermine the discussion to the point that communication that WOULD have been successful is not, simply because we didn't understand the purpose. This often manifests itself with the phrase "Why are we even talking about this?", "I'm not sure what you are after here", or "Well why didn't you just SAY so!?".

The PURPOSE statement has two parts. It contains 1) the REASON for having the discussion at all AND 2) the mutual objective you and your counterpart wish to accomplish. In other words, it is a statement describing WHAT you wish to accomplish AND the mutual objective you both hope to gain via that accomplishment. The mutual objective (that which you both hope to gain) can be made explicit using the phrase "in order to".

For example, you might be discussing choices that your company faces in order to reach more customers. The purpose statement for such a discussion could be "we are discussing ways to reach more customers in order to increase revenue".

Typical phrases contained in the first part of the purpose statement focus on either 1) understanding each other's perspectives or 2) coming to an agreement or a decision and look like this:

"Exploring perspectives regarding..."
"Coming to a decision regarding...
"Resolving our differences on..."

Phrases in the second part of the purpose statement (after the "in order to" phrase) depend on the issue at hand and are best (most engaging) if they contain something specific that both parties are very interested in accomplishing.

In our example, if one party was more interested in reaching more customers as a way of building customer loyalty than increasing revenue, we may rephrase the statement to "we are discussing ways to reach more customers in order to increase customer loyalty and revenue".

The most important aspect is that all parties involved feel that they understand what specifically is to be gained in the discussion AND that it is meaningful to them. Without this, it is difficult to get buy-in, engagement, and commitment. Practice how to formulate a compelling PURPOSE statement.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Holiday Communications

2009-12-14T23:28:00.000-08:00

I am humbled and grateful to all of you for your consistent praise, support, interest, and requests for more. Even so, I have my own Holiday list things to do, so the next newsletter will be in the New Year. Pathfinder had a terriffic year and we are starting off January 2010 with a class starting on the 22nd (info here) and will be conducting corporate classes throughout 2010. Seems to grow faster than I can keep up. I will likely have a set of one-day workshops formulated that will be open to the public in the late spring. More on that next year. For now, I just want to express my gratitude. I am delighted that I can help so many achieve fantastic results by using these methods.

I have had the privelege of meeting many of you face-to-face over the years and am wishing ALL of you Happy Holidays. Be safe, enjoy your families, and think about a few things you'd are eager to improve in next year.

The holidays bring a number of face-to-face communication challenges for a lot of reasons. I think they are probably a little different for each of us, but still most of the people I know find them a little challenging. I’d like to think that those of you that take the time to read my articles, whether newspaper or online, have a leg up on others when it comes to better holiday communications.

I want you to think of just 2 elements of THE SCORE (our model for better relationships):

Empathy – Remember that when you are speaking to others during the holidays, that their side of the story is important. Remember that if you are going to share an understanding, YOU should start the sharing and you should start by listening to their story and taking the time and effort to understand it. Avoid jumping to conclusions, assuming facts that you really don’t know. Instead….listen and ask questions. Open questions that allow the other person to answer, not questions that lead them. Remember your purpose in this communication is to just to hear their side – that is all.

Respect – Be respectful of them. Remember that your judgments are yours whether or not you share them. It isn’t often constructive for you to try to change someone’s central belief system over a football game or dinner, no matter how well-intentioned you are.

As you show respect and empathy, you will find yourself learning things you didn’t know. Then you will know that the communication was successful.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

December 10, 2009 Speaking Engagement

2009-11-29T23:13:00.000-08:00

I will be speaking to the San Diego chapter of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) on Thursday, December 10. This will be my last speaking engagement for the year, and it couldn't be for better bunch of business people. The meeting is free, but you MUST RSVP to attend. Get more information at http://www.sdincose.org/index.html

Note - there is a mention on the flyer that the speaking date is on November 19. Rest assured that the correct date is December 10. All the other information on the flyer is correct. I hope to see you there!
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Hurry for January Classes

2009-11-29T22:52:00.000-08:00

To all of you that have already signed up, thanks. This is going to be an outstanding class.

To those of you that have not yet signed up and intend to have your employer pay for your "High Performance Communication" classes atarting in January, you may want to start talking to them about it! It is only 7 weeks away and you don't want to get shut out.

If you want to pay by credit card or learn more before you sign up, do so at www.PathfinderCommunication.com/services.cfm . The shopping cart is about halfway down the page.
If you want to pay by check, please write me at info@PathfinderCommunication.com and ask me to send an invoice.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Moving from Advocacy to Collaboration

2009-11-29T22:43:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last few articles talking about how the use of the “advocacy” model is difficult to apply in daily life because unless, special steps are taken to assure the ENTIRE model is preserved ( rules for the presentation of evidence, 3rd party mediation, objective evaluators of evidence) , it is easily manipulated and ceases to serve its purpose as a critical decision making activity. So, how do we drive advocacy into collaboration when we see it?

We ask questions about content. Questions about content, when asked with sincere curiosity and openness, will begin to turn the discussion immediately from an exercise in satisfying an agenda into one that seeks to test all perspectives until the best decision can be made with the information at hand. The more information, the better informed the decision will be. In order to get back on a collaborative track, begin by doing the following:

• Assure yourself that the discussion is important. Use your energy to solve the things you consider “time-worthy”.

• Make sure you understand what the controversy is about. To test this, see if you can express it in one or two simple sentences and get agreement with the other party. If you can’t, you need to work on defining it (with them) until you both agree on the basics of the controversy.

• Understand what the purpose of the discussion is for each of you. Find a mutual purpose – something you both wish to achieve by resolving the issue. If your purposes are not mutual (usually they are), then at least be able to articulate what each of you would see as an ideal outcome from the discussion.

• Seek to understand exactly what the other party’s perspective is. Be able to articulate it so that they can agree that you understand it.

• Exercise empathy to understand why the other party may feel the way they do. Recognize that you may NEVER agree with their point of view, but understanding it, understanding why they hold it, and understanding that they have the right to hold it will help you see each other as respectful and reasonable. All of us are more willing to continue trying to reach an agreement with someone that we feel is respectful and reasonable than someone we feel is not.

• Be humble enough to recognize that your own view may be flawed, and courageous enough to work through it with someone else to make a new, stronger perspective.

• Welcome those moments in which you find errors in proposed path forward; the sooner you find the defects in the logic, the sooner you can strengthen it.

• Be aware of changes in the discussion that signal a move from discussion to distance. Reduce the distance between you and your counterpart by making sure that they know that you are committed to working things through with them and achieving your mutual purpose.

You can invoke this point of view at anytime in any discussion. You can control the degree of collaborative activity in the discussion. This is communication for the strong; the weak would prefer to manipulate. As your skills improve, so will your results. I will speak in detail of some collaborative approaches in the next newsletter.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Advocacy and Inference

2009-11-15T22:49:00.000-08:00

When a statement is made in a discussion, it may raise a question from the other side. For example, if I say that the decline in my company’s stock price is due to our decline in sales, my sales manager might say “Where do you come off saying THAT!? You can’t blame the nose dive in the stock price on sales! The entire ECONOMY is tanking!”

It may not be clear to you, but the sales manager has just asked you for evidence – what is your evidence to back up the claim you made about the declining stock price being due to sales.

When evidence is presented in a discussion whether by collaborators or advocates, the evidence is expected to connect to the claim it is intended to back. That connection is called the “inference”. In my example, I would need to use some evidence and an inference of Cause to explain why flagging sales CAUSED the drop in stock price. I might use statistics to show that our stock price tracks sales and that when they drop, so does the stock price. The other side might say several things, all of which would hurt my case:

• Just because they track, doesn’t mean one causes the other. Maybe the stock drop causes people not to BUY our product.

• There are other things going on when the stock price drops; it’s not just sales

• There are other things going on that causes sales AND the stock price to drop!

Notice that the sales manager didn’t say my EVIDENCE was wrong; they said I came to the wrong conclusion or misinterpreted it. This is a very effective way to dismiss good evidence, so you must be VERY good in developing good inference

There are six types of inference of which I have listed four in the table above. When an inference is made, you should determine which of these four types it is. You should be able to describe why it works (if you are making it) and why it doesn’t (if your opposing advocate is making it).

Of course, as you know, I don’t support the general form of advocacy in a business setting and prefer collaboration in almost every case.

Next week, I will close on the topic of advocacy by showing how to change (even fiercely) advocative discussion into collaborative ones.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

January Classes

2009-11-08T23:13:00.000-08:00

There is still room in the public workshop being held starting January 22. This will be the only workshop planned for 2010 that will be open to the public so, unless your company intends to host a workshop in 2010, this is your shot.

You can learn all about the workshop series and sign up (via PayPal) here.

Don't be left out. If you prefer to pay by check, write me at

gregg.oliver@pfcomm.net

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Attacking Evidence

2009-11-08T22:57:00.000-08:00

We have been talking about advocacy and, as one good friend and past student remarked to me last week, “Just because it isn’t the preferred way to communicate doesn’t mean you shouldn’t teach it.” And of course, she is right. We need to know how deal with things as they come to us. This week, as promised, I’ll cover how you attack a case. Next week, we’ll talk a bit about how to convert Advocacy discussions into Collaborative discussions (which IS the preferred way to communicate).

First, recall that there are three parts to the SPIRAL model; 1) the claim, 2) the Evidence to support the claim and, 3) the Inference that connects the evidence to the claim. The best way to attack advocacy positions is to attack either the evidence presented, or the inference.

There are three kinds of evidence; 1) the presenter’s credibility, 2) Objective evidence (evidence that can be independently examined and reviewed) and, 3) Social Knowledge (common knowledge, stipulation, or other things that “we all know” and “go without saying”). Effective attacks can be made against any of these.

First, we can attack the presenter’s credibility. The first run should NOT be personal. We can for instance, raise doubt as to whether the presenter really has any expertise in the subject at hand, or whether they actually have any first hand access to information, or if they are simply speculating. If we choose, we can make it more personal and describe their sketchy track record of being right on the subject, or their background and training is too lightweight for them really to grasp the subject under discussion thoroughly.

You can attack Objective evidence in several ways. First, if it is statistical, it is usually easy to show that it was not gathered properly. You can find more on that here. Other kinds of objective evidence can be dismissed if you can show that the evidence could also be attributed to something else. For instance, I was once in a discussion in which an opponent mentioned that “children with low birth weights tend not to attend college”. I pointed out that there are many of reasons that certain groups tend not to attend college. One of those groups is the poor, which is also a pretty good reason for having low birth rates. I finished by saying that if they had done any research at all they would have seen how incomplete their logic was and never had made the statement. So, even though they were correct, it appeared that they hadn’t thought out their position.

Common knowledge is easy to disrupt too. You can point out other things that are supposedly common knowledge that are untrue (cashew nuts are not nuts, for instance), or things that have ONCE been common knowledge (the Earth as the center of the Universe, for instance) and describe that just because we accept certain things as true today, doesn’t make them true. Finally you can point out counterexamples in order to dismiss ideas. For instance, if someone points out a certain team is a great team and claims it is because the individuals on it possess great individual talent, you can point out teams that contain no stellar individuals but still function well as a team, OR you could point out teams populated by superstars that don’t live up to potential of the individuals because they don’t work as a team. In other words, it is usually easy to find exceptions to generalizations and most common knowledge is based on generalization.

Next time, we’ll attack a position based on inferences.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Presenting your case - in that twisted Advocacy Style

2009-10-29T22:58:00.000-07:00

Last week, we spoke about ways to lead (or mislead) an audience using the Advocacy model of communication by presenting certain kinds of evidence in a biased way. This week, I will continue with this.

Exaggerated graphs – An easy way to shade information to support your perspective is to create graphs with exaggerated scales. Let’s say that I have the following productivity data for a given operation:

Let’s say I want to paint the picture that our productivity has been consistent. I would scale the graph so the three lines land in about the same place. Mathematical proof of consistency

What if I wanted to point out how inconsistent we are, using the same data? I only need to change the scale.

This operation needs help – they are all over the place! Same data, different scale.

“All” and “Some” - The words “All” and “Some” are tricky to use, and you should avoid them when you can. If the OTHER side uses them, try to exploit their use. For example, you shouldn’t say “All of our customers are happy with our new product.” The other side only needs to find one or two that are willing to say an unflattering thing and, if they present it strongly enough, you will lose your credibility. If you use the word “Some” in the same way ( “Some of our customers are happy with our new product”) your statement invites criticism. If the other side uses it, you would CERTAINLY say “I hope we aren’t trying to build a business by making just SOME customers happy!!!” It’s best to not use “All” or “Some” and let the OTHER side make that mistake.

Slopes and Heaps – at sometime in your career, you will hear someone talk about how “first you allow this, then you accept that, and soon you will have all KINDS of trouble!” These statements are referred to as “Slippery Slopes” or “Heaps”. If your opponent uses the argument that once we allow certain things to happen, then we will be powerless to stop it, think about what they are saying. Is there REALLY no way to give a one-time allowance on something that is a small concession and good for the business? Why can’t we make an exception if it is the right thing to do? Why can’t we reserve the right to say “no” next time if THAT is appropriate? There are few slippery slopes that can’t be addressed with common sense, and there is no rule that says we can’t de-prioritize consistency if it makes sense for the business. By the way, a “Slippery Slope” is one on which once you start climbing down, you may not be able to climb back up to where you began.

The use of the word “Heap” comes from a problem of defining a Heap. For instance, if you put one grain of sand on the floor, is it a heap? Most would say no. Two grains make a heap? Again, no. 100,000 grains make a heap? You bet – and a big one. Ok, so how many grains exactly did it take to make the heap? In other words, at which exact number would one less be NOT a heap and one more BECOME a heap? This is a pretty common approach to dealing with arguments like “At what point does my attendance become significant”, “At what point does a cell cluster become a fetus”, or “At what point is a man considered bald”?

Continuum “The Golden Mean” - When faced with presenting a somewhat extreme position, it is best to find a way to make it seem more moderate. For instance, let’s say you favored prison time for first time shoplifters (I HOPE you can see that as an extreme position!). You might present it as “Some people want to just let these law breakers off with a little probation, and others want to institute capital punishment for them. I favor the more moderate position of incarceration. This is a serious problem, but those other approaches are excessive and extreme”. All you have to do is find one nut that thinks we ought to institute capital punishment for shop lifters, and you will have presented the moderate view. People LOVE the moderate view.

Next week, I'll post a few final thoughts about PRESENTING your case, and start into some ways to ATTACK the OTHER guy's case!

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Job Postings on Pathfinder Communicators

2009-10-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

I have added some job links to the Pathfinder Communicator newsfeed. Just go here and check out the communication news from Harvard or select the "Jobs" tab and visit some San Diego job boards.
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Using the Advocacy Model to Present Evidence

2009-10-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

As I have described before, the Advocacy model is what is used when a work discussion is viewed as a contest and one side is trying to “win”. I feel an obligation to insert the following statement: I think the advocacy model is what is wrong with business communication and I only bring it up here because it is as important for business people to be able to identify what is wrong as what is right. The advocacy model should almost never be used in business, but it frequently is, just because the inquiry model is not well understood by most business people. The Pathfinder Mission is to help change that.

In the advocacy model, the general rule for presenting evidence is: only present evidence that supports your position OR that undermines the opposing position. This makes perfect sense if you are viewing the discussion as a contest. So if there is evidence that would undermine your own position, you would NOT present it in an advocacy discussion, but you WOULD in a collaborative discussion because you would want to build a perspective with the least downside, so you have to include the downside in the “information pool”.

One kind of evidence that is normally presented in a discussion is statistical information. The first attribute of statistical information that you should be ready to discuss is its source. For your perspective, you should try to use information from a well-known source OR one that you can describe as a generally accepted source. Conversely, if your counterpart presents statistical information, attack the validity of the source.

You can ask questions about was the data taken from a suitable range of samples, or were the samples taken randomly. If they answer in the negative or that they don’t know, you can be dismissive of the data because it is not well-developed. Be advised that even among professional statisticians, there is disagreement upon what constitutes an adequately random sample. If they answer in the affirmative, then you can ask them how they know that because that information is rarely supplied with the data. If they prepared the data themselves, then ask if they are a degreed statistician. If they say yes, then ask them if they are a professional statistician.

You get the idea.

Another attribute of statistical data is the notion of the “Average” value. The idea of an “Average” value actually can apply to any one of three different concepts: the “arithmetic mean” (what most of us think of when we say average), the mode (the number that occurs mostly frequently in a group of numbers), and the median (the number from which half the numbers are larger and half the numbers are smaller).

Let’s say you gave the following set of numbers: 19, 25, 25, 30, 60, 80, and 95. The Mean is 47. The Mode is 25. The Median is 30. The minimum is “as few as 19”. The maximum is “as many as 95”. Which number best supports your position?

If the opposing position makes claims based on the "average", ask questions about the data set and use the answers to show how they are trying to be deceptive.

You go into an electronics store that is selling a toaster, normally priced at $30 but this week is $15. You see a television in the same store that sells in other stores for $1000. In this store it is in the same ball park at $985. Let’s say you want to advocate that store to someone. Certainly you could say “I went to the XYZ store and saw a toaster for half off. I also saw a TV at similar savings.” Certainly the $15 off the TV is similar to the $15 dollars off the toaster, right?

The key question to ask is what do they mean by similar savings: percentage-wise or dollar value? You can make differences seem smaller or larger than they really are just by expressing them as percentages or as values.

Next week, I will present more on how the advocacy model twists evidence and how to deal with it.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Advocacy and getting people on your side

2009-10-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

As promised, this week is about the communication style known as “Advocacy” (as opposed to “Inquiry”). Advocacy in this context is taken to mean a communication “contest” in which one side tries to cause their perspective to be adopted, sometimes by whatever means necessary, and not the act of acting as someone’s advocate. Obviously, one can act as an advocate in a very noble way. Advocacy as a communication style can be performed in a productive way as well, but is often not. It can often involve 1) Logical fallacy that is intended to mislead, 2) incomplete or exaggerated evidence that is meant to, in the words of Socrates, “make the weak appear strong and the strong appear weak” and, 3) use rhetoric to lead others to conclusions that are not supported by logic or evidence.

Why am I talking about this? Well, because it often practiced in the workplace just as I have described above. It is important that we recognize it and know how to compete. That is, to know when the logic is flawed and how to get it back on track; to know how to weigh and judge evidence; and to know when rhetoric is being used instead of facts and be able to steer things back to less biased state.

As I mentioned last week, Advocacy concentrates on three areas:
1) Presenting a perspective
2) Attacking a competing perspective
3) Defending your perspective

Let’s talk about presenting your perspective. Make sure you state your perspective (or that your counterpart states their perspective) in a way that can be CLEARLY evaluated. For instance, let’s say your counterpart says that “When we do things that disappoint the customer, it makes us look bad. We should try not to do those things”. You need to respond that OBVIOUSLY it is in our best interest not to disappoint the customer. The statement isn’t specific enough for us to really even discuss. What do we MEAN by disappoint? What kind of things specifically are we talking about?

If you are in the Advocacy mode and wish to stay there, then you may want to say something that implies your counterpart is a bit naïve, and that “while they seem to have a grasp on the obvious, they should think a little more about their position before bringing up something so broad.” If you wish to get out of the advocacy mode and move into inquiry (which I will always recommend), you would want to ask them questions like “What makes you think so? Tell me more about… How do you know that? Is there any data you can share?”

It is common for an Advocacy argument to start with an ‘emotional appeal’. Now, these are seldom useful if stated in some overwrought fashion, so they are generally stated as if they are common knowledge, and as such they are accepted without question. THIS IS THE MOST COMMON WAY TO GET PEOPLE ON YOUR SIDE IN AN ADVOCACY SITUATION. There are about 20 such appeals. Here are a few types:
Appeal to consequences – “If we don’t lower prices, we are going to lose customers”
Appeal to fear – “And if we stop driving SUV’s, then the terrorists have already won.”
Appeal to flattery – "Surely a man as smart as you can see this is a brilliant proposal."
Appeal to tradition – “We have always done it this way”
Appeal to novelty – “Let me show you how people are doing it now. This is the latest way to do it”
Appeal to popularity – “This is how EVERYONE is doing it”
Appeal to authority – “This is how experts do it”

You can learn more about them here.

For instance, if I wanted to use an Appeal to Consequences, my statement could be that “our customers frequently get angry when we ship late to them, and they call us to complain and threaten to find other suppliers.” This strikes most of us believable; many in the room would accept it and move to finding ways to improvement shipment performance. But is it TRUE? Does it really happen as I stated? Have there been late shipments? Have there been calls from THOSE customers? How many? When?

If you are in the Advocacy mode and wish to stay there, then you may want to counter an emotional appeal in a way that 1) undermines your opposition and 2) shows that the thing they call a problem is really a symptom of something desirable. For example, if your counterpart uses an appeal to consequences that says “if we don’t improve our shipment performance, our customers will all leave”, then you counter it with a BIGGER appeal to consequence and use it as the reason that we MUST not worry about shipping performance. You might say “If you had done your homework, you’d know that the reason for the slight delay in shipments is the result of the HUGELY SUCCESSFUL COST CUTTING PROGRAM we recently implemented. While causing minor inconvenience to a few customers, we have increased profits dramatically, without adding people or capital equipment! The profits will help fund more research and development to get MORE customers than ever. This glitch in shipments is a small price to pay for what this means to our future!” This is very much like the response that salesmen give when you say “I can’t afford it” and they say “you can’t afford NOT to have it!”

If you wish to get out of the Advocacy mode and move into inquiry (which I will always recommend), you would want to ask them questions like “What makes you think so? Tell me more about… How do you know that? Is there any data you can share?”

To move to the collaborative, “inquiry” mode all you ever need to do is to counter these emotional appeals with logical appeals – asking for and testing facts. A logical appeal, done persistently and with skill, will usually make an emotional appeal look a bit hysterical and draw support to find the facts.

We are just scratching the surface on the subject of advocacy. I will talk more about the Presenting your case. This time we talked about sizing your perspective and getting people on your side. Next time, I will talk a little about 1) Presenting facts and 2) Presenting a Strong Conclusion.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

January Classes

2009-10-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to sign up for the Next High Performance Communication class starting January 22, 2010 More information on THAT here and here. Call for more information - 858-245-9802.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Practicing Advocacy

2009-10-04T23:02:00.000-07:00

I have said many times on these pages that there are TWO types of conflict to handle during a critical discussion; Affective conflict (i.e. personality clashes or cultural conflict) and Cognitive conflict (disagreement about a topic). For example, let’s say you are involved in a discussion with someone about which sport is superior – baseball or football. You go back and forth, explaining your position on YOUR favorite sport and the other person does the same.

IF you find yourself disagreeing based on the EVIDENCE that is presented, then you are likely engaged in a COGNITIVE disagreement – that is, you are unpersuaded by the facts under discussion. If, however, you are in one of those situations in which can’t be persuaded by ANYTHING the other side says because you don’t like or can’t trust them, you are experiencing an AFFECTIVE disagreement. Your inability to accept the other point of view is based on the PRESENTER and not the facts.

You will certainly find yourself dealing with both kinds of conflict, and mastering them both is important to being a good communicator. I have dedicated many of the articles I have written to dealing with AFFECTIVE conflict, and have developed and published the model that I call THE SCORE in order to help you deal with it. There are TWO models for COGNITIVE conflict. One is a collaborative model that I call Inductive Inquiry (or “SPIRAL” model). One that I have NOT shared is a model for conducting ADVOCACY.

I have spent a lot of time writing about Advocacy vs. Collaboration, and have said that Advocacy is the model with which we are most familiar. That is one reason that I have concentrated on teaching the COLLABORATIVE model – the fact that it isn’t generally understood. The other reason is that, between the two models, the COLLABORATIVE model is generally the most appropriate in business. It is the best one for developing solutions and getting answers when the information to base good decisions on are hard to find or not well vetted.

There ARE good times to use an Advocacy model, though, and I am going to dedicate the next few newsletters to discussing them.

Advocacy means just what you think it does. You ADVOCATE a given perspective over any competing perspectives. This means you are ready to persuade people to adopt this perspective over other perspectives, and defend it from competing perspectives. It also means you will publically demonstrate that competing perspectives to be inferior in some important characteristics. This CAN be done collaboratively, but it generally is not – it is generally done as contest to see what idea gets adopted.

When would we use such a model?

- In a command and control situation when we must all conform to a given course of action and “buy-in” isn’t a big consideration.

- When there is one “expert” on the topic and other opinions are not really competitive because they are not credible (they lack expertise).

-In an emergency when something must be done immediately and there is a single person in charge.

Like I said, these situations indicate suboptimal business conditions, but I know for a fact that the Advocacy model is used frequently. Fortunately, once you are trained a little, you will be far better equipped to participate in these discussions than many who feel that Advocacy is the best model to use. In fact, students that become competent in Advocacy generally find that others are very willing to begin collaborating with them rather than just get shut down!

Over the next few weeks, I will cover all of the elements of the Advocacy model. For this week, I will describe them.

1) Presenting a perspective
     - Developing a strong perspective
     - Getting others on your side
     - Presenting facts
     - Presenting a Strong Conclusion

2) Attacking a competing perspective
     - Gauging the opinions of others in order to create a productive attack
     - Attacking the evidence
     - Attacking the conclusion

3) Defending your perspective
     - Defending evidence
     - Defending your conclusion
     - Going in for the kill
     - Saving face

As we move through the elements above over the next few weeks, you will learn how to make your perspective look like the only logical choice and expose weaknesses in any opposition. In the event that you are attacked, you learn to defend. In the case that you are overcome by a competing perspective, you will learn to save face.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Pathfinder's LinkedIn Group

2009-09-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to join our LinkedIn group Pathfinder Communicators. We have a steady stream of articles from the Harvard Business Review, a great source of information about communication and leadership.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Keep it Safe

2009-09-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

Creating safety in a conversation is critical. Once we lose safety, we need to immediately stop and try to regain it. How do we know when the safety is draining away, and how do we go about establishing it again.

One big clue is when a participant in the conversation starts to talk about something other than the TOPIC of the conversation. For instance, imagine you are talking about the difficulty in correctly scheduling resources for a given project. Your counterpart says “I don’t know what your problem is. Why do you feel the need to control every little detail?”

We aren’t talking about the project anymore, are we? We are talking about YOU.

There are several ways you can respond here. I want you to think about some that you may have heard:

- “Controlling every little detail is called ‘doing the job’. Maybe if you tried it, you wouldn’t have so many failed projects!”
- “What’s MY problem?? What’s YOUR problem?!”
- “Wow – are YOU ever defensive!”

Let’s say you responded with this:

“I hear you saying that you think I might be controlling insignificant aspects of the project. Is that what you’re saying? How do you see me doing that?”

-By NOT responding to what could obviously be interpreted as a challenge, you give the benefit of the doubt.
- By asking if you understood properly instead of reacting, you are showing that you are interested in understanding their point of view
- By asking for more information, you show that you value them.

At this point, most people will feel safe again – enough to continue to talk about the TOPIC. This is how you will learn what they see, and add it to your own perspective. Or, you could also give them one of the OTHER responses we talked about. We both know that won’t help.

Learning THE SCORE and integrating that perspective into your communication style will change the way you are perceived by others. You will be “safe to talk to”. That way, you will be recognized as someone who helps others get all the information out on the table so we can make better decisions.

That’s who you want to be. That's what you want to make happen.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Speaking Engagement Alert

2009-09-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

Please note that I will be speaking at the Society for Software Quality on September 22, 2009. The subject will be "THE SCORE" and a little about "Inductive Inquiry".

September Meeting Announcement Society for Software Quality

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Result-Killing Biases

2009-09-21T00:28:00.000-07:00

When I talk about “mastering conflict” (as opposed to avoiding it), a lot of people are initially confused by my meaning. This week I’ll explain this a little further.

Patrick Lencioni’s landmark book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” presents a hierarchy of conditions that must be met prior to achieving results. After establishing safety and trust, Lencioni’s hierarchy addresses mastering conflict. This is not AVOIDING conflict, but managing it so that it is productive. We get all of the good ideas out in the open where we can examine and compare them. If in the course of deciding on an action, the collaborators can air their differences in an honest and meaningful way, there is a good chance that they will be able to make a commitment that is meaningful.

Sometimes we avoid conflict by just “going along” with a decision, even when we think it won’t work. Projects that are dependent on too many of these kinds of “commitments” have a low likelihood of success, just because the important information that would have allowed us to make a better decision isn’t shared. It isn’t that we don’t KNOW what to do; we just don’t feel comfortable in sharing it. As you all know, that’s why Pathfinder Communication was founded; in order to teach principles necessary to help us make better decisions.

When we study the nature of decision making errors, we see that avoiding conflict is high on the list. Conflict is how we test each other’s ideas before we implement them. This testing is very easy and inexpensive at the “talking” stages of a project and gets much more difficult as we move through it. I have mentioned several times that the biggest reason that we don’t collaborate is that some of us fear that we will look weak by doing so, or that it will end badly with someone getting irreparably upset. So we are concerned about how someone will behave if we disagree.

As I have written about before, our behaviors are a product of our values and beliefs. Personality inventory tests (like Myers-Briggs for example) ask you about your behaviors and from that will derive your values and beliefs.

Below are some beliefs and values that you may encounter when you are collaborating. It is important to recognize them for what they are and understand that you need to question them if you recognize them in your statements or in the statements of others:

1 – Overconfidence bias. Sometimes, we believe we can do something just because we believe that we SHOULD be able to or because we NEED to or we WANT to. That doesn’t mean we can, and when we find ourselves projecting that we will be successful at something, we should question why we think so and assure that there is some reason to believe it.

2 – Sunk Cost effect. Sometimes, after we have put money or time or effort into an activity, it starts to become apparent that we may not succeed; that maybe we shouldn’t have started it in the first place. We may make a decision to continue to pour effort into the task even when it becomes unlikely that there will be a reasonable return. This difficulty to stop on a task we are invested in, this desire to throw “good money after bad”, is called the sunk cost effect. Remember that if during the course of a project information is revealed that indicates the project is unlikely to produce a reasonable, you need to be responsible enough to shut it down. It is a bad idea to try to “will the project” into becoming productive.

3 – Recency effect. Sometimes, when we look at data, we tend to emphasize recent events over more distant events. Sometimes this is appropriate and sometimes it isn’t. It is always appropriate to question why we think that recent patterns will continue and justify why past patterns won’t repeat.

4 – Confirmation bias. Sometimes when we conduct research, especially when we are hopeful that we will arrive at a given conclusion, we tend to gather or give undue weight to data that tends to confirm the conclusion we want. It is appropriate to gather data that is representative of the range of data available and not just that which supports our position.

5 – Anchoring bias. Sometimes when we negotiate a price may be mentioned by the other party, and we begin to think in terms of that price (instead of the value of the item to us). For instance, a car dealer would like for you to look at the manufacturer’s recommended price and negotiate in terms of that price (“I would like a 15% discount from that price” for instance). The recommended price has become the “anchor” upon which you will base the negotiation. It is appropriate to question the validity of any such anchor.

6 – Illusory Correlation. Sometimes, people represent that there are strong connections (correlations) between events for which there is actually little evidence. For instance, several books have been written about the so-called “Zero Effect” relating to the fact that every US president from 1860 to 1960 that was elected in a year ending in zero (1860, 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940, 1960) died in office. These books offer “reasons” for this pattern, but since Reagan (1980) and Bush (2000) failed to conform, it is clear that whatever reasons were given were illusory. You may laugh at this, but wait till next time someone tells you what stocks to buy based on the outcome of the Superbowl.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Curiosity

2009-09-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

When another person is presenting an idea, maintaining your curiosity sends a number of messages.

1) Genuine curiosity shows a willingness to learn from someone, and that prompts the other person to explain their perspective as fully as they can, because they can SENSE that if they do it well, they will be fully understood. We human beings work hard to be understood and will give it all we’ve got if we feel the chances are good.

2) Curiosity implies to the other person that their perspective is valued, even if it is not adopted. We appreciate being listened to, and it makes us grateful and engaged.

3) Curiosity shows the other person that our mind is not yet made up – that we are open to being influenced.

These three things create a bond between us. They make us feel safe to exchange ideas. That is the power of curiosity. So how do we show we are curious? There are lots of ways.

We speak about our own idea tentatively, to show that we haven’t made up our mind yet.
We listen to what the other person says. We fight the urge to compare their idea to ours, and just listen.
We listen with empathy. Sometimes, if we try to understand the other party’s point of view, we can see their justification for their idea right away.
We help them find better justification for their idea (while remaining authentic).
We see if we can become open to favoring their idea.
We ask questions that help us get just the amount of information we need to understand their perspective.
We ask how their idea fits with long term goals.
We ask if they feel their idea addresses the cause of the problem or the symptoms.
We try to form a hybrid idea, a new idea that combines elements of different ideas into a new one.
We ask ourselves “what would be harmed if we went with their idea”?

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Exposing Hidden Agendas

2009-09-07T16:35:00.000-07:00

When we think of the term “Hidden Agenda”, our minds tend to run to something nefarious or manipulative. A hidden agenda may be that, but it may not. A situation that I am asked about over and over again usually deals with one party having trouble with a counterpart over something that was never said. In other words, one party assumes that they understand something and move forward AS IF they are fully informed. Unfortunately, they may not be.

In many cases (most) this yields no trouble. In other cases it can be disastrous. We have all done this – been sure that we knew what the other person was saying and then suddenly find ourselves in a two person pileup!

We need to learn some prevention and some correction for these instances:

Recognize that it is difficult to know just what the other person is feels or means except in very simple circumstances. Usually it doesn’t matter, and so we may get complacent in our “seek first to understand” listening skills. If your counterpart is exhibiting signs of frustration or impatience, these are EARLY WARNINGS that you have already begun to demonstrate to them that you aren’t hearing them. If they are raising their voice or withdrawing from the conversation with clipped answers, you are likely headed for the RED zone. STOP AND CHECK to make sure you are on the same page. ASK QUESTIONS and be READY to “RE-UNDERSTAND” what may have been meant. CHECK YOUR EGO and make sure you are OPEN to hearing them as if for the first time.

Once you understand – REALLY understand – their perspective, you can ask them all about why they feel the way they do. Until you understand it, recognize that by incorrectly telling them what they REALLY mean, you are only demonstrating to them that you haven’t been listening. If you start off by stating that you need some help understanding their perspective, you will be better off UNLESS they are already frustrated. So catch them BEFORE they are “too far gone” by watching for warning signs.

These are great for “accidently hidden” agendas, but what about “deliberately hidden” agendas?

Recognize that the purpose of a deliberately hidden agenda is to manipulate you (or someone else, using you). If you suspect that this is the case, you can start using Inductive Inquiry techniques to work through these. I did a series on Inductive Inquiry last year (starting here). You can also learn them by attending the High Performance Communication class in January 2010. More information on THAT here and here.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Re-thinking Communication

2009-08-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

I want to thank you all for writing in with requests for newsletter topics. I will do it more in the future; it was really fun to see how much everyone gets out of the newsletter. A little humbling, actually.

I've included a poll at the bottom of the post. It's just one question.

One subscriber wanted to know about the application of this material to sales. Clearly, when we think of salesmen, we think of someone that persuades you. Sometimes we think of salesmen in a negative light, as someone that may try to persuade you to do something that may not be in your best interest, just to make a sale (gasp!).

At a speaking engagement I had a couple of weeks ago, an astute listener asked about using the High-Performance Communication (HPC) skills to deal with hidden agendas. I view those as a form of the insincerity or information hiding that is associated with Advocacy (as opposed to Collaboration). Sales is a widely-accepted example of a profession in which some practitioners are seeking a given outcome, even if it occurs at the expense of another – the very definition of advocacy.

I see this topic as a great opportunity to describe how to start using the material in the High Performance Communication newsletter to its fullest extent. I have been talking all along about how we can change our own perspective, and by talking to people as if they too understand this material, guide them through conversations so that we end up in a win-win situation most of the time. This week, we will think about selling interactions in a new context – as the same kind of face-to-face interactions we have at work every day.

I’ll play the part of the salesman and say I view selling as a collaborative effort and not adversarial. For the sake of this discussion, it isn’t a contest in which you ‘lose’ if you buy what I am selling and you win if resist buying. It is a collaborative effort in which we are both engaged in trying to fix some perceived issue that you are having. Maybe you need to increase your production, or cut your costs, or raise your quality – whatever it is, you have a need and I am there to help you with it.

That change in perspective alone should have you talking to me, the salesman, differently than you would if you perceived this as a contest. You now see me as a resource that should have a mutual purpose in which you and I want to accomplish the same thing. Not coincident purposes, in which what I want to accomplish and what you want to accomplish are different but mutually beneficial, but a true mutual purpose. I ONLY want to sell you something that helps you accomplish your objectives. If I don’t believe it will, then I will tell you so. For your part, you ONLY want find the best way to accomplish your objective. If you don’t believe in me to help you, you must say so.

You must examine my credibility (track record, knowledge, openness, sincerity, curiosity, etc.) to see if I can act as a resource in solving the issue. In this way, you view the salesperson as a CONSULTANT. So you can feel free to discuss this with other resources, or to discuss other resources with me because we are after the same thing and I want to be connected to a knowledgeable partner in this. One that knows what they want. That makes it much easier to match you with the right solution.

Sales is generally viewed as a four-step process:

Prospecting (or qualifying) potential customers. This step is about finding someone that may already use the widget you are selling, or may have an issue for which your widget is a candidate solution.
Interviewing qualified customers. This is where a salesperson finds out all about the important who, what, when, why, where, and how’s regarding the issues you are facing. It is also when they work though the acceptable solutions.
Presenting a solution. This is where they present their recommendations for your issue.
Closing the deal. This is where they negotiate through any differences between your desired solution and their proposed solution.

Think how easy closing would be if you had each been collaborating through the process! Then think of how you could guide this with High-Performance Communication (HPC) skills, whether you were the customer OR the salesman. Finally think that, if you WERE the salesman, how appreciative your customer would be for you acting in this way. Not just now, but in the future as well.

Remember that just because the other person has a vested interest in the outcome, doesn’t by itself mean that they are honest or dishonest. They could be either. Using HPC techniques, you will collaboratively ask for and evaluate the evidence they use to support their claims. You will evaluate their perspective based on the strength of the information, add that with what you know, and develop the best solution you can.

When I start my conversations with salespeople, I tell them (using the components of THE SCORE) that I am not sure if I need their product; I need a solution to a specific problem and while I think that their product MAY be a solution, I need their help in determining if it is the best one. I ask them if they feel they are capable of using their expertise and objectively help me find a solution. Many say yes, and as i guide them through the process, I begin to find that some really aren't that credible. Their solutions may turn out to be what I need later, but they aren't really right to help me evaluate the issues.

This is the way to approach a problem solving dialog. Viewing an interaction with a salesperson as a problem-solving session is a way to leverage HPC skills into those conversations. Basically, you are converting Advocacy into Collaboration, treating your counterpart with respect, making decisions based on facts, evidence, and sound principles – and building great business relationships. All of this promotes better communication, better decisions, better results!

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasive Words – Phrasing and Credibility

2009-08-24T00:23:00.000-07:00

This is the last article for this series on Persuasion. Even though I could write lots more on this subject, there are other subjects that are just as important and I want to get what you feel you need. After this installment, I am going to move into another topic. If you have something in particular you would like to cover regarding face-to-face communication in business, email me. This blog is about learning skills to help you influence your company to get better results, so let me know if there is something specific you are grappling with.

Checkout the Pathfinder Communicatotrs LinkedIn group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1958793) to see great NEWS articles from HarvardBusiness.org. Also, come see me at the September 22nd meeting of the Society for Software Quality. Go to (http://www.ssq.org/sd/) for meeting details.

Now on to the newsletter....

When engaged in persuasion, you can tell the winners from the losers pretty quickly. The losers are insincere, make claims they can’t back up, shade the truth to make their stories sound better, and generally lead the organization down a path. If you enter into a persuasion and someone is doing this to you, you need to ask them questions – the important questions – which we have covered in the last few weeks on this series. What evidence do they have? How do they know? Isn’t there a downside?

Listen for these words when others speak: free, proven, guaranteed, easy, or risk-free. These are very persuasive when they are true. If others are using them, ASK THEM TO EXPLAIN THE REASONING behind their use. If these words go unquestioned, and they are accepted by the listeners, you will have a HARD time changing their minds. Sometimes, we want to believe that one or more of those words apply to the software package being recommended by a colleague. If we wait to question them, even just to wait until we can ask them in private, the decision makers in the room can be swayed and could make decisions that will be hard for them to take back without losing face. It is important to plant seeds of doubt in the group if doubt is appropriate. And remember, if you question the magic words and the speaker has the right information prepared to prove their point, it goes a long way towards cementing the decision. So use these words yourself AND BE PREPARED TO DEFEND THEM with sound logic and easy-to-understand reasoning.

Persuasive language is always more persuasive when it is simple to understand. Persuasion is often telling a story in which the listener can imagine themselves involved as a character. You lead them from point to point, and by the time you reach the end, you share the same perspective – they are persuaded. It is often just explaining something in a way that is easily understood and credible. Simplicity extends to numbers as well; that is it is usually unnecessary to say that “sales were up 9.815% this year” when you could say “sales were up nearly 10%”.

Wordy sentences make listeners feel uneasy, as if you are trying to carefully craft a partial truth. Those of you that have attended classes or have read this newsletter for very long will remember that the “S” in THE SCORE is about simplicity and sincerity. They are important independently, and together have a dramatic impact on your perceived credibility. If you say “At various points throughout the fiscal reporting period, production figures were unpredictable and at other times quite steady, ending in a negative position versus forecast overall” you may sound like you are trying to avoid saying that “Production was down last year”. This can even be embarrassing when someone a listener asks “Did all of that you just said add up to production was down?” and you have to answer “Yes”. Even though you weren’t trying to hide anything, it feels as if you MIGHT have been, or that you felt you could fool the audience, or that you didn’t think anyone would notice – and that attacks your credibility.

Finally speak in a way that is positive, confident, cooperative, and credible. Be careful not to wander into arrogance or insincerity. Instead of saying “If we accept this proposal”, say “When we accept this proposal”; instead of “I guess we will need a consultant during phase 2 of the project”, say “I believe we will need a consultant during phase 2 of the project”; instead of “Your idea won’t work”, say “Let’s talk though your idea so that I understand it better”.

Give me your ideas for the next series. Otherwise, next week I will be left to my own devices.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasive Words - Describing Benefits

2009-08-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

Everyone write me and congratulate me on my 75th article in this blog! And remember that a public course is starting on Jan 22. I am taking sign-ups now. Refer to this page

Occasionally, some of my students will want me to utter some series of magic words that will hypnotize whomever I am speaking to and cause them to be putty in my hands. Yeah, right. Persuasive words don’t work like that. Manipulation sometimes does, but we don’t deal in that because it is neither a long term nor constructive strategy. I will take some time and talk about how to phrase things to make them helpful in motivating others to take action on what you are discussing if you have followed the other parts of this series.

We have talked about credibility, creating a mutual purpose, developing evidence, using emotion, and good presentation structures. Here are some thoughts for framing what we say.

Remember that the mutual purpose is something specific that we can agree that we both want, and we try to make it as concrete (as opposed to abstract) as we can. Working together “for the good of the company” or “in the interest of justice” is fine, but they are each a little abstract. “For the good of the company” is made a little more concrete and is still mutually attractive when expressed as “to be more profitable”. It becomes more concrete (but maybe not as mutual) when it becomes “to cut expenses” and VERY concrete and not mutually purposeful AT ALL when it becomes “reducing your wages”! We want to pick the most concrete purpose we can (because it is the most galvanizing) that is still mutually agreeable. This tends to be more difficult as the number of people involved gets bigger, just because finding something that a large group is each interested in is more difficult than finding a common thread amongst a smaller group.

If we can arrive at a truly interesting and functional Mutual Purpose, we then should define its benefits. When you think of benefits, think about what desirable result will accrue to your counterpart from the Mutual Purpose. As an analogy, if someone tells you the new laptop computer you are buying has a Pentium Dual Core 2 GHz processor, you have a vague idea that it is perhaps faster or more powerful than your current machine. That is not a benefit, but a feature. To express the benefit, you must express what it does for YOU. “It will start twice as fast as your current computer, handle 3 times the number of concurrent applications, and will allow your computer to download files as fast as your connection will allow” is a statement of benefit. “It will let you do more work in much less time” is another statement of benefit. A car with a small engine may not sound good, but if it is framed as a big increase in gas savings, then that benefit may outweigh an “unnoticeable” reduction in power and help persuade you to pick the car.

NOTE – I am not advocating that you EVER withhold the downside of a perspective. I am suggesting (stating, really) that describing the BENEFITS of something (like a mutual purpose) is FAR more persuasive than framing just the features.

Understanding the tangible benefits of a perspective is important to all of us when we make a decision. Recognizing that we BOTH value those benefits makes us appear more aligned and increases the likelihood that we won’t disappoint each other in our journey to attaining them. Developing a track record of persuading people to do things that in turn provide them benefits is a great way to get them to listen to you the next time.

More on persuasive words next time.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasive Evidence

2009-08-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

Last time we spoke about the various structures of persuasive presentations. These structures described how you may want to present your perspective and the ‘evidence’ or ‘backing’ that supports it. Long time readers of this newsletter have heard me speak of Advocacy vs. Inquiry as the primary methods of business communication before. Advocacy is the style in which the participants pick a perspective and maintain it throughout the evaluation. This is how trials are conducted; each side may have different perspectives regarding the degree of guilt of the defendant, and they argue those sides by presenting evidence. There are strict rules for conducting advocacy (precisely why it is usually unsuitable for work) and many of those rules extend to the introduction of evidence.

What constitutes persuasive evidence in a collaborative work environment? Let’s talk about that:
There are three types of evidence: Objective Evidence, Social Consensus, and the speaker’s Credibility are types of evidence.

Good objective evidence is not necessarily tangible, but it is verifiable. Certainly well-prepared statistics, photographs and video, interviews or testimony all serve as objective evidence.

Social Consensus are things like common knowledge, things that we are willing to stipulate as true without further discussion, and any agreements that were previously reached using an acceptable method.

When presenting evidence it is necessary to do it in a way that is most accessible by those listening. 75% of people understand things better if presented visually, so graphs are good. Keep things simple; fight the desire to complicate a chart by showing too much (or different types) of information on it. Use simple numbers (round them off). Strive to make the perspective seem simple and clear, without oversimplifying. You would know if you oversimplified if your counterparts aren’t sure how the proposal fits with the issue at hand. When it comes to being authentic, simple, and direct consider things deeply - remember that what is said is not as important as what is heard and remembered.

If the speaker is credible, their evidence is more persuasive. Seems simple enough, but what makes us credible? I say it here again because I can’t say ENOUGH how important your own credibility is to your communication: Competence, Trustworthiness, Good Will, Dynamism (speakers that move and appear to possess energy and enthusiasm are more persuasive than those that aren’t), Eyewitness access to information, Background and Training, a good track record for being right.

The idea of how access to information is acquired is an important one. Does the persuader have primary access (eyewitness, for example) evidence? Is the source of the evidence reliable? Is the access secondary (hearsay or worse)? Many “conspiracy theories” gain a startling amount of traction with NO evidence!

When we are considering opinions as evidence (which we frequently do in business) we need to consider the source. Is the source of the opinion an expert? Are they a layperson? Make sure your expert is qualified as an expert in the subject at hand. A marketing expert’s opinion on advertising deserves more weight than their design opinions (unless that is another area of expertise).

Finally, different kinds of evidence carry different weight based on how they are developed and by whom. A rule of thumb regarding the relative weight of evidence that is accepted in many circles is as follows:
1. Assertion (in my opinion…)
2. Common Knowledge or Stipulation
3. Lay Opinion (if a reasoned conclusion)
4. Expert Opinion or Consensus of Lay Opinion
5. An Empirical Study or Consensus of Expert Opinion
6. Consensus of Studies

Note that an opinion that is not a “reasoned conclusion” is listed as an assertion – a kind of “trust me” statement. Next is common knowledge precisely because we only SOMETIMES correctly identify certain knowledge as common. Frequently, what we think is common knowledge is not held by other people in our organization. A lay opinion for which there is a demonstrated logical basis is at number three. From there, it becomes a matter of experts, well prepared studies, and consensus that raises the probability that the evidence is correct. This knowledge will give you a great advantage in preparing and critiquing persuasive perspectives.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Preparation

2009-08-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

Over the past month I wrote a series on the elements of persuasion. A brief recap:

1) The persuader’s credibility and reputation gives them standing, making them a voice worth listening to.
2) The persuader’s ability to show a mutual purpose and benefit to the person being persuaded and thereby giving a basis for the parties to agree to become interdependent and work together in each other’s interest.
3) The persuader’s ability to create an “emotional acceptance” of the content of the perspective being presented. That is, presenting a perspective that is ‘likeable’ OR presenting alternatives that are somehow more ‘unpleasant’, leaving the persuader’s perspective as the most desirable course of action in achieving the mutual purpose. Cialdini’s six laws of persuasion help show how to attach an emotional element.

In closing on persuasion, I will begin a discussion of the last element – content. The content of your perspective consist of several parts:

1) The way you structure your presentation of your perspective (this week)
2) Your conclusions and justification (next week)
3) The benefits provided by your perspective (in two weeks)
4) The WAY you say things (in three weeks)

Structure - Learn a few ways to describe perspectives, and you are well on your way to being MUCH more persuasive than you are today. Experiment with these structures:

Problem and solution – Describe a problem, and then its solution. Sounds simple, but to be much more successful that you currently are, remember to help the listener make a negative emotional connection with the material. One way is to remind them of how difficult this problem makes it for them to succeed. Another is to explain what the consequences of doing nothing are. There are many other examples of making the listener ‘feel real dislike’ for the problem, too many to list. Next, describe the solution. Be realistic and truthful – you always want to maintain and protect your credibility. Help the listener ‘like’ the solution. Be vivid in your description and help the listener see themselves as not only benefitting from the solution, but benefitting by being part of its successful implementation. Their help on the team will be invaluable and you should help them imagine how grateful everyone will be. This is a good structure when the listener has not already developed an opinion.

Present both sides – In a case where there is already a controversy, it is useful present both sides. Present the opponent’s side first. You want to make sure that at the end of that part of the presentation, you have their agreement that you have presented their perspective accurately and that you have described the evidence they have to justify their perspective (statistics, facts, etc). This is key in establishing your credibility, showing your understanding of the issue, and will help them be more receptive to listening to the other perspective. When presenting the other perspective, concentrate on challenging their justifications – the facts are not as they think, or the evidence is either inaccurate or somehow suspect. Please refer to the blog posts from November 2008 for a more info on this activity. I will cover it in detail next week (conclusions and justifications). Obviously, this structure assumes that the discussion is taking place after competing perspectives have been developed.

Cause and Effect – Describe the problem, its cause, and any contributing factors. Describe how your solution fixes the problem by mitigating or removing the causes and contributors. This structure is useful when all parties agree that the best outcome is to return to some status quo and you are merely trying to agree on the means to do so, rather than changing the status quo.

Call to Action – Use this structure when most people tend to support your perspective. Start by describing a pressing common need, and describe how your perspective will satisfy that need. Make it clear how we ALL experience the need – this is a galvanizing description of a mutual purpose. You are describing what we are changing from AND why we MUST. Next, provide a clear and positive vision of the future state. After we implement this perspective, we will have tangible benefits. I will cover describing benefits in two weeks. Close this presentation with specific actions to be taken, and who will take them. Be grateful for their support.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasion and Emotion

2009-07-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks, the topic has been persuasion and how to be more persuasive. We have identified a few of the prime factors as:

Credibility – The elements by which we project trustworthiness

Mutual Purpose – Describing the common ground and shared benefits of a perspective

Laws of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini’s six “laws” that form a strategic persuasion checklist

This week, we’ll be talking about the importance of “Connecting Emotionally” with our counterpart.

Emotions play a huge role in the decision making process. This role is made more important because many of us view the best decision making as done in a “purely logical” fashion. Most business decisions are a mix of logic and emotion, which is why we can all look at the same set of facts and derive different solutions. We have different preferences due to our personal beliefs and values, which influence our emotions.

In fact, according to research first done by Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, our decision making capability is significantly impaired if we do not use emotions. He studied people who had received brain injuries that had affected them in just one way – they damaged the part of the brain where emotions are generated. In all other respects, his subjects seemed normal - they simply could no longer feel emotions.

His remarkable finding was that their ability to make decisions was seriously disrupted. They could logically describe what they should be doing, but in practice had GREAT difficulty making decisions about when to set an appointment, where to live, what to eat, etc. It seemed that those decisions that have pros and cons on both sides are ultimately sorted out by preferences, which are emotionally grounded.

The nature of business decisions are that that typically the set of facts from which we work are incomplete and they frequently have pros and cons on both sides. Therefore we NEED to understand how emotion affects decisions if we are to be persuasive.

First, the way we feel can distort our view. For example, when one is in a bad mood, one is more likely to recall negative events (Bower, 1981) and overestimate the likelihood of unfortunate occurrences (Johnson and Tversky, 1983). When one is in a good mood, we are more likely to remember positive events (Bower, 1982) and be more optimistic about their future occurrence (Wright and Bower, 1992). The implication of these findings is that if one solicits recollection or probability estimates from a person, the response is likely to be distorted by the current emotional state. It is important then to collect responses from multiple people and to compare them with any data on hand. If there are differences between the general finding and a specific finding, discuss it with the respondent. I have found that MANY times, they will modify their response to bring it more in to line with the general finding. This is consistent with Cialdini’s findings as well.

Second, we strongly consider what emotions we will feel after the decision is made as we evaluate our preferences. For instance, when faced with buying a car we may be trapped between a fast, sexy car or a plain (but very safe) car. We are trapped because the one car appeals ot our sense of adventure and the second to sense of responsibility (to our family perhaps). A primary driver of this decision will be “How will I FEEL about myself?” after I choose either car. It is important that we help people see that future state as desirable and comfortable for them if we wish to persuade them there.

We need to realize that just because WE know this, it doesn’t mean that others do. They have their own preferences in decision making and (according to Cialdini) we want to be seen as “on the same page”. This thinking also relates back to my newsletters on “THE SCORE”, but bears repeating in the context of persuasion.

Be aware that you’re communicating both CONTENT and FEELINGS and both are important.

Be calm and reasonable. It is not imperative that you reach a decision in one conversation.

Be brief and concise; not clipped and rushed, but respectful of your counterparts’ time. Don’t ramble.

Be intellectually critical and objective; not impersonal and unfriendly.

Accept decisions that may not be based on facts. Present feelings and emotions as additional facts to be weighed in a decision.

Listen. Demonstrate empathy by listening to their perspective and the impact on them. Let them talk.

Discuss the areas in which you agree. They can help you understand the areas in which you disagree.

Describe how the idea will affect people and what people’s reaction would be.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasion, part 3

2009-07-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

In this series on persuasion, we have so far covered that:
1 - Credibility is king. Build your credibility by:
-Establishing a track record for being knowledgeable in key areas and well-informed.
-Being diligent in developing supporting information for your position.
-Being open to discussing alternative perspectives.
-Being able to present your perspective in an easy-to-follow way.

2- In order to persuade someone, you need to articulate the benefit extended to them by adopting your perspective. Be able to articulate a concrete mutual objective and be able to demonstrate that your perspective is sufficient to achieve it. BE OPEN to modifying it as good ideas are presented by other parties. The idea is NOT to implement your idea without modification – the idea is to achieve an objective. The mutual objective you choose should be as concrete as possible and still be MUTUAL.

This week, I will talk a little about Robert Cialdini’s 6 laws of persuasion.

Reciprocation - When relationships are out of balance (like when one party does a favor for another), the parties tend to restore the balance to a neutral point. This is expressed many different ways, but I think you get it. If you do me a favor, I will re-pay it if I can; if you concede a few points to me in a negotiation, I’ll do the same – maybe in this negotiation, maybe in another.

Commitment and Consistency – When a person makes a commitment in some formal way (i.e., verbally, in writing, in public) they are more likely to honor that commitment. People don’t like to be seen as inconsistent, so by pointing out inconsistency (“you said you would, but now you are saying you won’t!?”) we can sometimes persuade someone to re-think a change of heart.

Social Proof – Social proof is doing something because someone else is. People will do things that they see other people are doing. If people are doing it already, then it seems less risky – just because someone else is.

Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures. This includes everything from accepting the word of someone without question because they work in management to taking endorsements from celebrities as meaningful. It doesn’t mean they are automatically right or wrong; it just means the claims need to be weighed on their own merit.

Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people that they like. They also tend to be persuaded by people that they would like to BE like.

Scarcity – People are more likely to do something if they feel that some factor out of their control may prevent them from being able to do it later. For instance, if there is a deadline to decide which option to take, people will rush to pick an option rather that considering whether they want to participate at all. If people believe that “supplies are limited” they will hurry to order something (even something they don’t really need) rather than lose the choice of having it all together when the supplies are gone.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasion - Mutual Purpose

2009-07-13T00:22:00.000-07:00

Last time, we covered a primary component of persuasion and that is Credibility. It is hard to take someone seriously unless they are credible. Once you pass the credibility test, there is still more to do if you want your counterpart to deeply and seriously consider your perspective. This week we will talk about Creating a Mutual Purpose.

It seems obvious to say, but it is very important that you and your counterpart have a CLEAR understanding of what you hope to accomplish with your proposed perspectives. If you aren’t, it is typical that you will “imagine” what each other’s purposes are and if you get it wrong, you will likely be unable to be persuasive (or persuaded) because you will be suspicious of each other’s motives. The best way to address that is to explicitly state what your purpose is.

It is a fact of life that if you are both interested in achieving the SAME result, then you are more likely to work together than if you are out to accomplish different (or even opposite) outcomes. Let’s look at an example.

The company you at which you work is seeking to increase profits. You manage the Operations Group and your two counterparts (in this example) manage the Sales Group and the Engineering group. When the discussion turns to ways to achieve this, the Sales guy might say “We can only sell more products if we can cut the cost. Operations needs to make it cheaper.” You, the Operations guy, say “We have made just about all the improvements we can. If you want to make it significantly cheaper, we need a new design.” The Engineering guy might say “The sales guys need to be more creative in finding new markets for our existing products”.

There is a mutual purpose at the beginning of the scenario – to increase profits. This is pretty general, though, and doesn't provide much direction. We want our purpose to be as SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE and still remain mutually supported. Each of the parties, however, has announced individual agendas that simplistically put the responsibility on other groups. These are TOO specific and in framing them in this way, have set themselves up to be suspicious and wary rather than open and excited in this activity. Let’s see how we can drive the process to keep things focused on mutual benefit at the optimum level of resolution.

When Sales says “operations needs to make it cheaper”, we can ask a question (refer to other newsletters about the Inquiry method) to clarify this like: “So what you are saying is we need to find a way to reduce the cost for each product sold?” Note that this is NOT the same as “operations making it cheaper”. There are MANY ways to reduce the cost per product. What if we were able to reach more customers per sales person? That would reduce the cost too. Our mutual purpose is now to reduce cost per product sold, and each of the three organizations can contribute to that.

When Engineering says “sales needs to find new markets” we can again clarify this to say “So what you are saying is that we need to sell more product?” Note that this is NOT the same as “sales finding new markets”. There are MANY ways to sell more products. What if we were to design in new features that our customer’s liked more? Or we were willing to hold stock for our customers in exchange for a slightly higher price, or for high volume customers? Those would increase our sales too. Our mutual purpose is now to increase sales, and each of the three organizations can contribute to that.

If your counterpart sees that you are working hard to find ways to accomplish the SAME GOAL AS THEY ARE, they are for more likely to work with you than if they feel you are working on something that doesn’t achieve the same goal or is even working against you. It is critical that you keep in tune so that all parties understand the MUTUAL PURPOSE.
When framing a mutual purpose, focus on a) things that you counterpart will gain that they currently lack and b) things that your counterpart can avoid losing. The second of these is especially powerful. People are far more persuaded to do things that prevent them from losing what they already have than to obtain new things that they don’t yet have.

Having a CLEAR MUTUAL PURPOSE upon which all parties agree, and weighing proposals based on how well they support that purpose makes persuasion much easier.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Persuasion

2009-07-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

I recently wrote a newspaper article in which I made the point that the most important factor in being persuasive is your personal credibility. Those of you subscribing to this newsletter for a while know that I speak of the importance of credibility often and I will just recap it here. Over the next few newsletters I will discuss the OTHER components of persuasion.

Credibility is about two things - THE PERSON (you or someone you are listening to) and THE MESSAGE. As a skilled persuader, you need to be able to separate the two and offer them for analysis so that they are easy to understand and accept. As a listener, you need to be able to decompose your counterpart’s perspective into these two categories and analyze them as to their clarity and weight.

THE PERSON
- Does the persuader have a track record for being knowledgeable and well-informed? Make sure that if you are trying to persuade someone, you make it easy for them to feel at ease with your track record. Let them know in a humble manner of your credentials, your familiarity, your history, and your access to the information that supports what you are saying.
-Is the persuader sincere? By sincere, I mean that they have put in the required diligence to arrive at their position. If they have not put in what seems like a reasonable effort, it is unlikely that the effort is deserving of much weight.
- Is the persuader open to discussing other possible perspectives? A person that is not open to being persuaded is easily cast as “argumentative” or “closed-minded” and is NOT considered as persuasive as one that openly listens to other perspectives and then can still supply facts that support their point of view. Secondly, someone that is closed-off to other’s viewpoints but can’t refute them is often viewed as having a “personal agenda” and therefore NOT supportive of a mutual goal.

Consider a statement something like this:

“I have been working with a really great team on this project for a number of months. We feel that this analysis is as complete and accurate as we can provide and feel confident in our conclusion. We were fortunate to have access to critical information that allowed us to develop such a complete analysis. I know that the work the team has done and our willingness to stand behind it will reflect well on all of our reputations.”

The statement speaks to confidence, but not to the degree of skill with which the work was done. I might ask “How was the analysis performed? Is that how it is typically done? What has been your success in the past using that method? Who on the team has done this work before? Were there a lot of unique issues on this project, or was it more ‘run-of-the-mill’? What was special about the information you needed and how did you get access?” These kinds of questions probe at the “knowledge-ability” and diligence of the speaker. How these are answered reflects a great deal on the persuasiveness of the speaker.

THE MESSAGE
- Is there sufficient evidence to support the message presented?

In order to determine sufficiency, consider the following:
*Is it easy to follow the reasoning, step by step, or does it seem convoluted or overly complex? Even the reasoning for complicated technical issues can be reduced to simple steps in most cases.
*Is there enough evidence and is it from reputable sources? Evidence is most persuasive if it is gathered firsthand, has some expert backing, and can be independently verified.

Consider that you are proposing a new customer service process, for instance. It is persuasive if you can point to a simple experiment that you conducted to prove it out in principle and get a few endorsements regarding the results from some people that are known for having expertise in customer service.

Credibility is one of four components of persuasiveness. Next time, we’ll talk about another – Demonstrating Common Ground

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Excerpt from High Performance Communication workshop guide

2009-06-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

The Workshop guide that goes along with the Public Workshop starting on July 10 is all new and really very good. It captures the important aspects from each of the subjects taught throughout the 3 day course in Outline form, as Summaries, and as full text which will be forever useful as a reference.

In the section on relationships, I explain the details of the perspective we need to adopt in order to develop really great relationships. Then, just before I give instruction on all the skills required to create amazing business relationships, I summarize the perspective we adopt towards our collaborators as follows:

In summary, our perspective in collaborating within our workgroup is:
The people with whom we collaborate are capable people with ideas about things that deserve to be heard. We are eager to understand their perspective fully. We believe that they want to hear our perspective as well and are willing to consider it if we present it in a factual manner, with a minimum of interpretation. We believe that the interpretation of the facts is best done collaboratively.

We recognize that blame is generally far less important than understanding the contribution system that leads up to a given outcome. Some systems MAY have a single point of failure with no other contributing factors, but these are rare and usually so simple that they don’t warrant much discussion. We know that other's will feel less defensive if we all can express our contribution to an outcome.

We know that the differences in our perspectives comes as a natural result of our diversity and that this is the great strength of our workgroup – that our diversity allows us to blend the best parts of our different perspectives and develop solutions that are better than any one of us would have developed alone. We have learned how to draw upon those differences and get the information out into the open and we practice it regularly.

We recognize that how we feel about ourselves and how others feel about themselves can come into question as we collaborate and we will practice methods to keep us open to all options and not “close off” into bifurcated (either/ or) thinking. We recognize that some of the ideas we hold about ourselves and others can be wrong, and that we can reconsider them at anytime using the tools we have learned.

We know that relationships are important to doing good work and that all relationships (and good decisions) have an emotional component. If feelings become an issue, we recognize that we will talk about them just as we would any other part of a problem.

We recognize that all of this takes training and practice in the methods that underlie these outcomes.

The book goes on to describe a collection of tools that make ALL of our business relationships as deep and powerful as the VERY BEST TEAMS you have been on.
Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Public Course Announcement

2009-06-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your interest in these newsletters. The negotiation series that I just finished last week earned a lot of email and I hope I answered all the questions, because I can tell you all prepared them thoughtfully.

I am giving a 3 day public course in High Performance Communication that will cover material on Influence, Relationships, Critical Discussions, Learning, Negotiation, and Persuasion topics. These are the essential elements of what employers describe as their top performer's "secret weapons". The course is intended to tie together all of the material you learn from the newsletters, plus new material, and offer face to face access to provide coaching, training, and practice. I guarantee this course will make you a better communicator.

Day one of the course is July 10. That day will cover the topics of Learning and Relationships. This is where you learn the fastest and most powerful ways to learn new skills, and how to establish amazing business relationships. There is a two-week break in which you practice what you have learned. We will stay in touch during this “mastery period” via phone, email, or the Pathfinder Communicators group on LinkedIn.com so you can address issues that come up and really use the tools that you’ve learned.

Day two of the course is July 24 and we will share our experiences from the two week break and then cover the topic of Critical Discussions and begin working on Influence. This is about gaining the skills you need to generate the best business decisions collaboratively. That class is followed by another two week mastery period.

We wrap up the course on August 7, completing Influence as well as Persuasion and Negotiation. You will learn to persuade decision makers, resolve differences, and influence your organization. After completing the High Performance Communication course, you can feel free to contact me for further instruction anytime free of charge.

The economy has pressed many of us, and I am offering the course this time for the reduced price of $325 because it is one way that I can help you attend. 'High Performance Communication' is the best value for your training dollar in San Diego! For those of you that have taken the class before and would like to again, I am offering a brand NEW course book and a “pay-what-it's-worth -refresher” discount!

There is a great deal to talk about regarding the course, and I have posted answers for your questions as follows:

If you need more information about the course and SIGN UP, Click HERE and put a course in your basket!

If you need a Course Outline for your employer, click HERE

If you have other questions, call 858-245-9802 or email me at Gregg.Oliver@pfcomm.net

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Negotiation – Last Installment

2009-06-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have (hopefully) been instructive regarding negotiations. We have talked about the two different kinds of negotiations, the appropriate planning measures to take, common problems encountered during negotiations, and some other ideas that I hope you found valuable.

For this last installment, I want to talk about a few more things that can plague an otherwise peaceful pursuit. The difficulties that arise when there appears to be personality differences in play.

1) Escalation – Either you or your counterpart is getting caught up in the heat of the moment. One of you feels like you are losing and become difficult to deal with or you find yourself in some kind of a bidding war with another individual.

The best thing to do is refer back to your BATNA and your walk awayprice. Were they set fairly? Did your team all agree with them? Can a good case be made for changing them? If not, STICK WITH IT! Walk away if things are not working out in a fair manner. These were set when things were clear JUST for this reason.

2) Bias – It seems that the other side is not being reasonable in their interpretation of the situation. They are looking at things narrowly and do not seem interested in your point of view.

Concentrate on understanding THEIR point of view. Try your best to understand it as thoroughly as they do. It may be that they are right OR it may be that once you understand it you can point out an error in their thinking, but they will be FAR more likely to listen to you if they know that you are listening to THEM! And when they do start listening, be careful to be respectful, factual, and authentic in explaining your side. Explain WHY you feel your perspective is reasonable. If you explain, for instance, that NO new widget has ever met the sales prediction in its first year of production, then your sales department might understand that an extra warehouse may not be needed.

Engage a third party for their opinion. It can be a colleague (so long as they don’t know what side you are on) or an independent third party.

Make sure that you are being realistic in your expectations.

3) Safety - I can’t over-emphasize the role that creating safety plays in a negotiation. Be humble (not arrogant) and respectful throughout. Do not offer things that YOU wouldn’t take. Don’t take it personal or make it personal. It may even BE personal, but if you act like it is, then you are on a road to nowhere.

If things get to be too much, suggest a break. If a break is impractical, suggest a moderator.

As far as last minute thoughts go:

Make sure your goals for the negotiation are aligned to the organization’s goals.

Make sure you understand your BATNA and walk away price.

Do your best to estimate what the other side has at stake.

Create safety using THE SCORE.

Conduct your negotiations in a way that ADDS to your reputation and credibility

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Negotiation Problems

2009-05-31T23:06:00.000-07:00

Problems that arise in negotiations can be many, but usually are concentrated in a few key areas. I often need to remind students that having a plan for potential issues is far more effective than figuring out how to “cross that bridge when we come to it”. There are a few problems that occur more predictably than others and today I will describe a few of them.

Trust – What should you do when you feel the other side is making promises that they don’t intend to keep, or that they are bluffing, or being dishonest in some other way?
1) A good first step is to spell out that the negotiation assumes that any information and representations are truthful and accurate, and that either party should feel free to ask for evidence at any time. This is a step to make the other side think twice.
2) Ask for documentation that can be used to verify claims and representations. Actually DOING what you said you would do (by asking for evidence) lets the other side know that you mean business.
3) Include contingencies in the deal such as security deposits, earnest money, escrow, penalties (for non-performance), or bonuses (for better-than-required performance).
4) If the other side continues to evade and avoid a straight-forward dealing style that you can cope with, indicate that you will walk away from the deal rather than get caught up in a deal with someone you can’t trust. And actually DO IT if you must; if you threaten to walk away and then don’t, they will see that you need the deal badly and at that point will know they can do anything they want.

Communication – Sometimes there are basic communication problems that are overlooked in the heat of negotiation.
1) Are you sure you understand what the other side means? Do you understand what their terms are? So you understand how they value the items at stake? Clarify all of this. Articulate clearly and concisely what you think is in play, and ask them to do the same with you. The ideal situation would be to articulate all the aspects of the deal in a series of simple sentences that you both can review.
2) Keep notes and have a “parking lot” in which you record elements of the deal as they are discussed and agreed to. It reduces the amount of remarks like “I didn’t agree to that” or “We never discussed that”.
3) Be aware of cultural differences between you and the other party. If you have followed this series, you know you should have looked into these before you started.
4) Sometimes it helps to change spokespeople. Not to change the team members necessarily, but the role of spokesperson can be rotated to see if another style of communication may help.
5) Be Empathetic. Be careful to understand the deal from the other side’s perspective. Ask an impartial third party or a colleague to make sure you are being objective. Sometimes, it helps to have a moderator.

Contestants – There are some people that see negotiations as a competition and feel they need to beat you on every term. These are usually people that are inexperienced and don’t know how to judge the value of the deal on the table.
1) Don’t treat them as you would treat someone that is really working with you. Don’t disclose information and let them know it is because they are being so overly aggressive that you really don’t feel that they value your interests at all. This would allow you to use the “trust” toolset as well (see above).
2) If you have been following the series, you’ll remember that you need to know your BATNA and your walk away price, and you need to estimate theirs. Recognize that you have a position that you can tolerate and anything beyond that position is not reasonable. Never be intimidated, just stick to your position and try to work with them to add value and make a good deal.
3) Again, make sure they know that you will walk away if you don’t believe that they, like you, are looking for a fair deal for both parties

Opposers and Resisters – There may be times when you are in a negotiation with someone that doesn’t WANT the deal to work. This happens when they have overvalued their position and can’t come to terms with the reality of the situation. I am reminded of an inventor selling their interest in an invention that they think will change the world when, in reality, there is only a modest market. They can’t be reasoned with and they feel that if all the negotiations fail, they will somehow be better able to realize their dream.
1) Find the benefits for the opposer and communicate them clearly. If you can turn their attention from what they are losing to what they are gaining, it will help put them in a better frame of mind.
2) If there are people on the other side that are not as persistent as the opposer is, try to form a coalition with them. Let them know that they could benefit if they could help the opposer see reason.
3) Since you are ALWAYS looking for ways to increase the value of the deal, and you can see that this opposer values control, you may look for a way to allow them some control or a continuing role in the project after the deal is complete. This might make the deal less difficult for them.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication

Tactics in Distributive Negotiations

2009-05-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

On April 26th, I started this short series on Negotiation, based on lessons learned from the Harvard Negotiations Project. I described two kinds of negotiations; Distributive and Integrative. Integrative are the ones in which you be very creative, and are the most likely to create win-win outcomes. Last week I discussed some basic tactics for those. Today, I am discussing tactics Distributive negotiations.

In Distributive negotiations, there is a fixed amount of value to be distributed between the negotiating parties. If you are buying (or selling) a boat for example,, there is the boat and the money. How those things get divided between the two parties is all that is involved. The person with the boat wants to get top dollar and the person with the money wants to pay the lowest price. This a potential win-lose if I overpay (or underpay) for the boat. These kinds of negotiations are usually conducted when there is no thought of a long term relationship between parties. Our interests are opposed (everything I “give up” to you, is something I lose). My motivation is individual gain.

This kind of negotiation is handled very much like an ADVOCACY argument in which you are in a competition. Winning the competition is based on getting more than you give (in your own opinion) and CAN be a win-win if, for instance, you have always wanted a boat like mine and are willing to pay a little more than market because I will transfer my dock to you at no charge so you don’t have to move it AND I am tired of my boat and would far rather have some cash to put in a pool.

Here are some tips:

Don’t tell me how you’ve ALWAYS wanted a boat like this one. Don’t tell me about how you just had a windfall and that money is “no object”. Don’t let me know anything significant about your situation.

Same tip in reverse. Find out as much as you can about my situation. Why am I selling the boat? Am I desperate for cash? Is the boat due for some expensive repairs or upgrades? Is it due for a required inspection that I don’t think it will pass? If you can learn enough to get a close estimate of my walk-away price, things will be much easier for you.

Understand the implications of an ‘anchor’. The anchor is the first price mentioned in the negotiation that both sides are willing to talk about. There is a great deal of good evidence that shows a strong correlation between the anchor and the final price in a Distributive negotiation, so be very careful NOT to entertain lowball offers from the other side (“I’d like to talk a bit more before we start talking prices”). Then talk about your interests and concerns. Try to find out more about the other side’s position. Don’t spend time talking about unreasonable anchors, and don’t get offended. That kind of offer is a sign of inexperience, and if you hang in you have a good chance of getting the right deal against an inexperienced opponent.

Be prepared with SOUND REASONING to defend your offer. My personal rule is that I try to offer just a little more than my estimate of the other side’s walk-away price AND I never offer an amount I wouldn’t accept if I was in the other side’s shoes. I have seldom seen anything sour a deal faster than one side trying to cheat the other with NO reasoning to support the offer.
Speaking of reasoning, don’t forget to ask questions. Questioning how a price is arrived out or asking “What is your basis for considering that to be a fair offer?” is perfectly acceptable. You should be able to answer the questions if they are asked of you. This is where sound reasoning and a variety of evidence (comps, list process, etc.) come in handy. Don’t come on too strong.

When you start negotiating the price, take your time. Move your price around slowly and try to move in small increments. Large swings may signal the other side that you are not taking things very seriously. Let the other side know when you are close to an acceptable price so they know that there you aren’t going to participate in too much more dealing. Add an expiration date to any offers you make to keep other side from extending things in order to find a better price elsewhere.

Write down the terms. Write down the terms. Write down the terms. Write down the terms. Do NOT leave things to memory. Write down the terms and affix your signatures to them. If they don’t express the final terms, that’s great…just make SURE that is noted on the document. When the final terms are decided, write down the terms. Write down the terms. Write down the terms.

Speak of the other party positively. Don’t brag about what a great deal you got. This leaves the other side feeling that they did the best they could and preserves your reputation as a “fair dealer” intact. That reputation will make all your future deals with others that have heard of you much easier.

I will wrap up this series within two weeks and start another topic. I am planning to do more on building great relationships. If you have anything specific that you would like me to cover, write me at gregg.oliver@PathfinderCommunication.com You can also start a NEW topic at the Pathfinder Group on LinkedIn.

Go to http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1958793&trk=hb_side_g

and start a NEW topic or comment on an existing one.

Insist on great business results! Go to Pathfinder Communication