Category: Listening

Outrage is Making us Dumber

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A steady diet of outrage and despair doesn’t just darken our mood; it diminishes our capacity to think.

I’ve been absorbing reports of the barbarism we’re witnessing in the Middle East. If you believe that people can only be oppressors or victims, you’re not just mistaken; you’ve been hoodwinked. Believing that conflicts are defined solely by the positions people take means you’re unwittingly participating in the wrong game.

Like a toddler’s tantrum, entertaining and sharing angry thoughts can temporarily dampen our fury. However, that doesn’t make these thoughts legitimate. Our brains prefer, and perhaps even need, ways to simplify reality. For our primitive ancestors, the brain’s job was akin to taking a daily multiple-choice exam about the world:

Which of the following is true about what I’m noticing?

A) It’s food; I should eat it.

B) It thinks I’m food; I should run.

C) It smells nice; I should have sex with it.

D) None of the above; I’ll take a nap.

Today, our world requires us to get comfortable with thinking about things that are not simple. Our situations are more akin to answering essay questions. Faced with a complex, ambiguous prompt, we’re required to create a well-reasoned response.

If your mind is getting flabby, here are a few simple exercises to build stamina for complexity and uncertainty:

  • Learn about Zen kōans and meditate on one.
  • Enter conversations about problems with the intention to discover rather than influence.
  • Change a simple habit to become more mindful of all the things we do without thinking (e.g., switch the order in which you put on your shoes).
  • Explain your opinion to an 8-year-old. Putting something you believe into simple language requires clarity of thought and openness to unbiased questions.
  • Check out a couple of Unstuck Minds’ Blog Posts about building a fitness regimen for your mind: The Unstuck Mind and How are you Thinking Today.

When it comes to the calamities buffeting our attention, I’m not worried about which side is right. I’m worried about our impoverished ability to think things through. If we insist on oversimplifying the world, we’ll eventually view everyone as either a winner or a loser, an ‘us’ or a ‘them.’

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

You’re not required to have an opinion on everything

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A new study shows that people who identify as democratic socialists report higher levels of satisfaction with their lives than those who identify as free-market capitalists.

If you have an itchy twitter finger (and depending on your politics) you might feel an urge to post one of the following:

The results are in… socialism is the key to a happier life

No surprises from recent study… capitalists expect more out of life than socialists

If you’re actually tempted to spread the news, I should confess that I made up the study and its conclusion.

Importantly, the fact that the statement is a fabrication probably did not prevent you from having an opinion about it.

Opinions help brains avoid uncertainty

Our brains have a variety of strategies to help us avoid feeling uncertain. We don’t like uncertainty because our brains aren’t designed to thrive in uncertain times. One of the brain’s main jobs is to make sense of what’s happening so that we can anticipate the future. One of the main ways we make sense of what’s happening is by connecting new information to what we take as already settled.

When the brain is uncertain about how to label or categorize a new piece of information, we become anxious. Imagine if butterflies escaped from the place you expected to see fruit when you peeled your morning banana. You might feel scared. You might feel delighted. Either way, your brain would start working hard to reorient itself to a newly uncertain set of conditions.

Opinions are not mindless reactions

If you eat something that disagrees with you, you don’t have much control over how your body reacts. But the brain has more options than the stomach. If you take in a disagreeable idea, you can pause and reflect before responding. Rather than belching up a reaction to an indigestible idea, chew it over in your mind.

The idea is for you to form your opinions. If you mindlessly react to information, you’re allowing your opinions to form you.

Try this

When you notice an internal reaction welling up in you to something you’ve heard or seen, consider replacing your external reaction with one of these statements:

  • I see it differently, what am I missing?
  • We could do that. How would it help us?
  • Help me understand what led you to that conclusion.
  • I can tell you feel strongly about that. What about it is important to you?
  • Before we respond, what’s another way to look at this?
  • What would happen if we adopted a different solution? What if we did nothing?
  • Whose perspective is missing from this discussion? What would they say?

social media platforms are in no hurry to protect us from poisonous information

Sure, it would be great if Facebook’s algorithm optimized for joyful connection over addictive engagement. Maybe market forces and/or regulation will remind Facebook to look after human flourishing. With great power comes great responsibility!

Meanwhile, let’s work on our own programming. Just before the eye-roll, withdrawal, snark, or unsolicited advice, take a moment, embrace uncertainty, and choose curiosity.

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

Finding Scarce Insights in Abundant Information

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Data and information are essential to solving problems well. Data and information are abundant these days. So why do we feel less able to figure things out and less confident about knowing what to do?

Too Much of a Good Thing

Part of the problem is that we have too much of a good thing. At all times and in all places, Information and data are effortlessly accessible. We are conditioned to prioritize incoming alerts and breaking news. We are awash in information, most of it unsatisfying. It’s hard to quench your thirst if you’re trying to drink from a firehose.

First, a working definition to help us differentiate data from information. Think of data as the unorganized facts and figures we detect with our various tools and measuring devices. Information is what you get when someone processes, structures, organizes, or otherwise interprets the data. 75248 is a number, it is data. When 75248 is recognized as a Zip Code, the data becomes information.

A Better Solution

One solution to the too-much-of-a-good-thing problem is to collect less data. A better solution is to learn how to transform abundant data into insightful information. Insights help you solve problems, but insights are hidden. Insightful information is better than obvious information in the same way that an x-ray image of a painful shoulder is better than a visual examination of a painful shoulder.

Better, more insightful information helps in four ways

  • It helps you avoid solving the wrong problem
  • It reduces the risk of missing something important
  • It generates unconventional options
  • It ensures that previously excluded perspectives are seen, heard, and valued

Solving problems is about changing situations. If you want to change a dissatisfying situation, you can think of your challenge as a tug-of-war between the forces holding things in place and the forces motivating change. Kurt Lewin first developed this way of thinking about problem-solving in the 1940s; he called it, “Force-field analysis.”

SCAN for Insights

At Unstuck Minds, we think of our SCAN model as a simplified version of Lewin’s force-field analysis. SCAN stands for Structures, Context, Assumptions, and Needs. Structures can be thought of as the ways we currently do things. Context can be thought of as what’s going on in the external environment. Assumptions can be thought of as our unquestioned beliefs. Needs can be thought of as the desires, concerns, and perspectives of people we should include.

To make it easier to identify the Lewin’s force-field elements, SCAN is made up of two dimensions that focus on restraining forces and two dimensions that focus on driving forces. Structures and Assumptions on the left side of the model tend to keep things stable and preserve the status quo. Context and Needs, on the right side of the model tend to introduce destabilizing changes.

How to Uncover Insights

Let’s say you’re an executive who has formed a team to tackle a thorny organizational problem. You fear that after the team has spent a lot of time researching and organizing their findings, you’ll be left with voluminous information, very few insights, and no clear point-of-view or recommended path forward.

Instead of waiting to see what the team comes up with, request that they organize their presentation based on the SCAN framework:

  1. Structures: What are we currently doing that will make it hard for us to implement an improvement?
  2. Context: What is changing in the environment that requires a response or provides an opportunity?
  3. Assumptions: What unquestioned beliefs about our situation are worth challenging?
  4. Needs: Who should we include in our thinking and planning; what matters to them and what do they think?
  5. Now What?: What insights and options emerged from your work and where should we focus our resources and efforts?

It seems counterintuitive to seek more information as a solution to the problem of information overload. But learning to form insights helps us manage the data and control the aperture of our attention. With practice, SCAN helps us see past the uninvited information to the hidden insights and options unavailable to the overwhelmed mind.

Jay G. Cone is the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do; Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos. He is the co-founder of Unstuck Minds.

What to Ask your Relative who Voted for the Other Guy

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Those of us in the United States are now moving from election season to dispute season. Tens of millions of Americans will be distressed, maybe even enraged. And some of them will soon be sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal with you.

The holidays are approaching. A time for friends and family to reunite. Does the idea of reuniting feel quaint and naive? It might be more likely that you are dreading an inevitable interaction with the outspoken lefty or righty at the table. After all, you can only talk about the kids and the weather for so long.

Here’s an early holiday gift from Unstuck Minds. There are two sets of questions below. One set of questions for progressives to ask conservatives. One set of questions for conservatives to ask progressives. The questions are designed to build shared understanding and surface insights.

Before attempting to use the conversation starters, a word of warning. There’s a big difference between an inquisitive, “What were you thinking?” and an exasperated, “What were you thinking?!” A question lives up to its potential when the person asking it learns something from the answer.

A question lives up to its potential when the person asking it learns something from the answer.

Maybe it would help if you imagine you’re a journalist from an alien world. Your species is highly intelligent and confused about reports that Earthlings aren’t getting along with each other. Your job is to explain the disparities in values and world-views among humans by interviewing a few of them. Your job is not to win an argument or score points with snarky retorts.

If you decide to “go there,” proceed with compassion and curiosity. I suggest showing people the list of questions and letting them answer the ones they find interesting.

Questions Progressives Should Ask Conservatives

  • Trump’s slogan has been, “Make America Great Again.” What are some of the great things you want America to hold on to or return to?
  • What is important to you about patriotism? What happens if people in our country become less patriotic?
  • What are some things that a federal government should and should not be in charge of?
  • What role should religion play in the decisions made by our political leaders?
  • What should citizens be free to do and where should we draw the line so that we don’t cause harm? How about businesses?
  • How do you feel about people born in other countries coming to live in the United States?
  • What should we teach our children about competitiveness and the desire to win?
  • What should we teach our children about loyalty and respect for authority?

Questions Conservatives Should Ask Progressives

  • What should those with society’s favored traits (race, gender, sexual identity, age, physical and mental attributes, etc.) understand about the experiences of those in the minority?
  • What is important to you about fairness? What happens when the rules of society or the behavior of people in power create inequities?
  • What are some things that a federal government should be and should not be involved in?
  • What are our obligations to each other as citizens of the United States?
  • How do you feel about people born in other countries coming to live in the United States?
  • What should we teach our children about fair play and making sacrifices for less fortunate people?
  • What should we teach our children about becoming independent thinkers?

If the thought of having a discussion about any of the above topics feels daunting and potentially upsetting, stick to comments about the kids and the weather. Perhaps just reading the questions might help us see others as reasonable.

A toast: Here’s to reuniting the states of America!

Influence Aikido

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Aikido is a Japanese martial art form with spiritual roots that can be traced back to Shintoism. Aikido emphasizes harmony and unity. Aikido practitioners learn to defend themselves while simultaneously protecting their attacker from injury.

Consider the difference between aikido and boxing. The purpose of Aikido is to reconcile disharmony. The purpose of boxing is to overpower your opponent. Which practice most closely matches your assumptions about influence?

In The West, we tend to think of influence as persuasion. When we equate influence with persuasion, we seek out techniques designed to make an impression and overcome objections. We develop our ability to verbally spar by learning how to jab and when to counterpunch. Advanced techniques include lowering your guard by pretending to listen when in fact you’re simply inviting your opponents to expose the weakness in their arguments.

In theory, we don’t have opponents at work; we have colleagues. In some cases, we want to influence our colleagues because we hold incompatible opinions about something. Most often, we want to influence our colleagues by being included in their thought processes. The lawyer wants to consult with decision makers before they sign a contract. The engineer wants their concerns about safety or quality to be taken seriously before promises are made to a customer. The HR business partner wants a leader to consider the implications of an organizational change on employee engagement, capability, and trust before setting the change in motion.

Setting aside structural or cultural explanations for why someone with authority might not seek out or even welcome input from an expert, what will it take for your input to become influential? If you frame your goal as persuasion, you’ll adopt techniques for packaging your point of view. If you frame your goal as reconciling disharmony, you’ll approach interactions with curiosity and empathy. I have written about “collaborative influence” in a white paper called, “How to Change a Mind; Yours and Others.” I have also proposed a thought framework that differentiates forms of influence in a blog post.

To get you started, here are three questions you can consider before attempting to influence someone at work:

  1. Under what conditions are you most open to changing your mind?
  2. Under what conditions are the people you hope to influence most open to changing their minds?
  3. How might you create the conditions everyone needs that makes mind changing easier?

Tangled up in Q: Questions that limit, misdirect and keep us stuck

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I got a Ph.D. in 2015, which means I wrote a really long paper that no one will ever read (except for the people who were paid to read it). Like a lot of doctoral candidates, I conducted a disciplined and comprehensive research study to demonstrate something most people would consider intuitively obvious. Ultimately, my research led to the conclusion: The questions people ask about a situation they want to change reveal a lot about what they’re thinking and feeling.

I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it turns out that paying attention to how people frame their questions provides a window into thinking traps that may be preventing them from getting unstuck.

When leaders pose questions reflexively about situations that are complex and stressful, they can fall prey to the Inquiry Loop. The Inquiry Loop explains how thinking traps can feel like trying to find your way out of a forest only to realize that you’ve been walking in circles.

InquiryLoopGraphicLABELSThe Inquiry Loop suggests that you won’t get any new information if you don’t change your questions. You won’t change your questions if you don’t recognize the influence your assumptions have on what you choose to learn about. Finally, you can’t alter your assumptions without new information.

One way to break free of the inquiry loop is to change the questions you’re asking. Better questions could lead to new information and new information could lead to an insight. An insight has the power to transform our assumptions. The revised assumptions make it possible to listen differently, generate different questions and surface even more information. In short, a better question can turn a vicious cycle that keeps us stuck into a virtuous cycle that opens up options.

Lately, I’ve been working with leaders to help them improve their questions. I have come to recognize distinctive patterns in their questions; patterns that undermine their desire to find comprehensive, novel and widely accepted solutions. Many of the counterproductive questions that all of us tend to ask when we feel stuck fall into one or more recognizable categories. Here are four categories of questions that often lure us into a thinking trap.

1) The lure of the veiled solution

Organizational leaders are expected to have a point of view about any and all situations. Leaders also have a bias for action. We shouldn’t be surprised that when feeling stuck or challenged by a complex situation, leaders quickly form opinions and then set about implementing their conclusions. The urge to fix things often shows up in the way we pose a question about a situation we want to change. For example, when confronted with complaints that support functions feel left out and underutilized, a leader might start with the question:

How do we improve communication between line leaders and their support functions?

The question includes a point of view about how to respond to complaints about feeling left out and underutilized, but is a lack of communication really at the heart of the matter? Maybe line leaders feel overly regulated when they involve support functions so they intentionally work around them. A lot of unproductive work gets generated when people rush off to solve the wrong problem.

2) The lure of the false dichotomy

False dichotomy questions contain “either/or” assumptions. The question gets framed to limit (sometimes intentionally) answers to one of two opposing options. The problem is that real-world options are rarely if ever, mutually exclusive. False dichotomies have rhetorical impact, but almost always contain a logical fallacy. Imagine the politician that declares, “Either vote in favor of this legislation or condemn this country to a future of lawless anarchy.”

Here’s a typical false dichotomy question that could lure us into a thinking trap:

Should we bring in someone from outside the company to head up the marketing department or promote someone from within?

Are those really the only two alternatives? What if we hire someone from the outside to become a chief of staff to an internal hire that runs the department?

3) The get-them-to-change lure

When a situation feels stressful or frustrating, it’s not uncommon to assume outside forces are preventing you from achieving your goals. Sometimes, when we feel stuck and can’t control all the variables influencing our dissatisfying situation, we assign blame. If only our suppliers would lower their prices. If only our employees would act with accountability. If only our sales people would forecast the pipeline more accurately. In some respects the “get-them-to-change lure” is a special case of the lure of the veiled solution. In this case, the solution is for the identified group or individual to change their behavior. As an example…

How do we get our customers to use the tracking feature on our website instead of calling their sales rep when they need information about their orders?

When we accept a “get-them-to-change” framing of a dilemma, we end up thinking of people as automatons. Solving our problem becomes an exercise in figuring out the programming required to alter the behaviors we find troublesome.

4) The lure of the distorted scope

The scope of a question can be too narrow or too broad. When we experience a problem in a specific way, we may arbitrarily narrow our focus. Let’s say our employee engagement survey shows a decline in the scores related to “trust in leadership.” We would be limiting ourselves by asking the too narrow question, “How do we improve our trust scores on the engagement survey?” Alternatively, we could err in the other direction by asking the question, “How do we improve trust around here?”

The first question sends us off to analyze responses to survey items. The second question gives us no place to start.

For help improving question that may be suffering from one or more of the categories described above, take a look at Four Imperatives for Crafting Better Questions and How to Fix a Bad Question

The Four Influence Modes

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People have been interested in influencing one another long before modern organizational structures blurred lines of authority. Aristotle laid out his theory of persuasion in the 4th Century BC. One of the bestselling books of all times, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People was written in 1936 and is still readily available. Today, Dale Carnegie and Associates, Inc. will sell you targeted versions of the classic like, How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age or How to Win Friends and Influence People for Teen Girls. Suffice to say; those of us schooled in Western intellectual traditions have come to believe that influence is something we do to others and the more skilled we become, the more others will be attracted to us and to our ideas.

In our organizational lives, the desire to increase agility and decrease cost challenges us to collaborate in ever more ambiguous and complex working relationships. In an attempt to move faster, organizations have removed layers of authority hoping to empower those closest to the work to make daily operating decisions without seeking permission along a chain of command. As a consequence, it is not uncommon for authority over investments, processes and the allocation of resources to be shared or unassigned.

The volatility of today’s business environment demands quick action and adaptability, but when no one can answer the question, “How will this decision get made?” the desire for agility bumps up against our preference for clarity.

When your rank, role, or status does not dictate your decision-making authority, action results from some combination of influence and cooperation. When the responsible parties cannot influence each other, decisions either get escalated to over-burdened functional executives or they tumble through an endless consensus cycle that wrings out accountability and commitment.

I want to offer for your consideration a framework that examines four modes of influence. While each mode represents a legitimate approach to influence, the distinctions among the modes may reveal hidden obstacles to moving forward. Each mode assumes a particular mindset about influence and a particular skillset to employ the mode effectively. Distinguishing among the influence modes will also surface incompatible approaches.

 

Slide2Coercive

  • Catchphrase: Do as I say
  • Source: Power imbalance
  • Strategy: Find the fear; exploit weakness

Coercive influence has limited applicability in modern organizations. It might be useful in a police interrogation or among religious fundamentalists, but influencing someone by focusing on authority or a power imbalance violates the morality of human dignity. If people respect your rank, role or status, coercive influence becomes benign compliance. When you exploit your rank, role or status to get your way, people will submit in the short run, but in the long run, they will expend their discretionary energy seeking ways to undermine or work around your demands. Coercive influence works when people have something to fear. Bob Woodward and his publishers made a very deliberate decision to call his most recent book, Fear: Trump in the White House.

When reaching conclusions or moving to action under coercive influence, there is only one acceptable option. The rules defining right and wrong are prescribed or dictated.

Slide2Persuasive

  • Catchphrase: Lend me your ear
  • Source: Rhetorical excellence
  • Strategy: Draw on credibility, emotion and logic

Persuasion is a form of influence that derives from a mechanistic model of human interaction. Person A holds belief x and uses the tools of persuasion to get person B to adopt belief x and to be willing to act on belief x. We typically think of politicians and organizational leaders as people who rely on rhetorical excellence to influence others. Persuasive influence works best when one person communicates to many people. The exact same rhetorical skill used in a more intimate setting or during a one-on-one conversation suddenly feels manipulative. People in an audience don’t expect to be heard from. People in a meeting do.

When reaching conclusions or moving to action under persuasive influence, there are only as many options as there are participants in the discussion.

Slide2Collaborative

  • Catchphrase: Better together
  • Source: Trust
  • Strategy: Build on shared interests and share responsibility for success

When we move from persuasion to collaboration, influence gets reframed. In the collaborative influence mode, influence is no longer something one person does to others. The collaborative mode and the emergent mode regard influence as change caused through interaction. In collaborative influence both parties are open to a “third way.” Collaborative influence rejects the notion that I am only influential when I convince others to see it my way. In collaborative influence, both parties explore their needs and interests and success depends on finding a way forward that meets shared needs and interests.

Under collaborative influence, multiple options emerge from an exploration of mutual interest.

Slide2Emergent

  • Catchphrase: Be here now
  • Source: Care
  • Strategy: Co-create safety for change through dialogue and improvisation

When it comes to the language of influence, it’s hard to think about influence without imagining a protagonist. Like collaborative influence, emergent influence rejects the conception of influence as something that one person does to others. Entering into emergent influence assumes that all parties care about each other’s needs and interests. In emergent influence mode, the potency of my influence is directly proportional to my openness to being influenced by others.

Under emergent influence we are only constrained by the depth of our desire to serve others.

 

Why is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?

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A couple of weeks ago, I spent time with a group of leaders in Singapore working on how to form better questions as part of a workshop on leading with agility. I returned home through Tokyo, which meant that I arrived in Dallas two hours earlier on the same day than when I departed Japan. You would think that after years of international travel, I would no longer be entertained by the idea of arriving earlier than I departed. “What happened to those two hours?” I thought when I landed in Dallas. Of course the question can’t be answered because it rests on a fundamental misunderstanding. However, asking myself the question got me thinking about nonsense, which in turn got me thinking about Lewis Carroll.

In Chapter Seven of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, after some back and forth about whether there is room at the table for Alice to join the Mad Hatter’s tea party, the Hatter poses the question, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” The precocious Alice is eager to work out the riddle, but gets caught up in the chaotic tea party conversation. Later, when the Hatter asks Alice about the riddle, she admits that she has not worked it out and asks the Hatter for the answer. He tells her that he does not have the slightest idea*.

Some nonsense questions amuse us in the same way we might be amused by the charming innocence of a child’s question. Decades before Bill Cosby shocked and disappointed a whole generation, my friends and I spent hours memorizing his routines. I can still picture the cover of his album, “Why is there Air?” Cosby’s question is elegant, simple and nonsensical. Asking, “Why is there Air?” and “What happened to the two hours I lost during my twelve hour flight?” indicate that the person asking the question is either confused or trying to be funny.

Like Lewis Carroll, I’m a fan of wordplay, puns and riddles. I pay close attention to how people express themselves looking for interesting or clever ways to interpret a turn of phrase. It turns out, not everyone delights in my attempts at wit. What I imagine to be an endearing habit quickly becomes obnoxious if I’m not careful.

The Unstuck Minds Method is based on the idea that you can tell a lot about how people think by paying attention to the questions they ask. The key to helping people explore the thinking behind their choice of question is not to place too much emphasis on their choice of words. Consultants should not engage with a philosophical or lawyerly mindset. Philosophers worship clarity. Lawyers weaponize clarity. Consultants and coaches should focus on constructing meaning, not deconstructing meaning.

Don’t focus on what the question means, focus on what the person means by asking it.

As an example, when a client frames a consulting request as, “How do we get people to be more accountable?” I need to let go of my reflex to dismiss the question as nonsense and instead, help my client clarify the unexpressed need. I might take an appreciative approach and say, “Tell me a story about someone acting with accountability to help me picture what you want more people to do.” Or, I might offer options to get the conversation moving, “When you say ‘accountable,’ is it more about keeping commitments or not blaming others or maybe it’s simply about complying with directives?”

I don’t ask questions to hear answers. I ask questions to summon insights. Answers are dead ends. Insights open doors. Sometimes people look forward to opening doors and sometimes opening a door can be scary. If the mind is stuck, then summoning an insight will be consequential. Not everyone is eager to chase a white rabbit down a hole without a companion.

 

*After the publication of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll was pestered to provide a response to the Mad Hatter’s riddle. Here’s a blog post describing Carroll’s response.

When is a Question not a Question?

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I run for exercise. I don’t go fast and I don’t go far. I just like the way I feel after 30-40 minutes of exertion, and running is a convenient exercise if you travel a lot. I’ve reached an age where my doctor sees running as a risk rather than a benefit. When I complain about aches, pains or swelling, my doctor says, “get a bicycle.”

I notice that when I’m plodding along my running path and another runner passes me, I imperceptibly pick up my pace. I’m not aware of some intention to keep up or compete; it just seems to happen. As I watch the person open up distance ahead of me, my first thought is usually, “that person is much younger than me.” Or, if the person looks to be about my age I might think, “that person trained when they were younger and has probably run competitively.” These unflattering thoughts and behaviors last for at most 20 seconds and then my body returns to a comfortable stride and my brain returns to whatever I was thinking about before someone passed me.

I’m exercising to maintain health and reduce stress, but under certain conditions, my brain and my body seem wired for a different task.

The Social Psychologist Leon Festinger coined the term “Social Comparison Theory” in 1954 to describe research into what he concluded was our inner drive to evaluate ourselves. According to Festinger, when we don’t have an objective non-social standard against which to evaluate ourselves (e.g. Did I complete today’s run faster than yesterday’s?) we make our evaluations by comparing ourselves to others.

One related and more recent research study investigated the relative happiness of Olympic medalists based on which medal they won during the 1992 Barcelona games. You might expect that gold medalists would be happier than silver medalists and that silver medalists would be happier than bronze medalists.

The researchers gathered video clips of athlete reactions at the moment they learned of their results and when they received their medals on the podium. Research participants reviewed the video clips and assigned a rating to the emotional reactions of the athletes on a 10-point scale. The study concluded that bronze medalists were noticeably happier than silver medalists when hearing the results of the competition and when receiving their medals.

The researchers viewed their study as an extension of the concept of counterfactual thinking. In counterfactual thinking, people entertain thoughts of “what might have been.” In the study of Olympic medalists, the silver medal winners compared their result to the gold medalists. The bronze medalists on the other hand compared their result to the remaining athletes who did not medal. In other words, it’s not necessarily the objective value of what we have that matters. What matters is how we feel about what we have when we evaluate what those whom we compare ourselves against have.

So, what’s all this stuff about social comparison theory have to do with the recent Congressional committee hearings to investigate the actions of Deputy Assistant FBI Director, Peter Strzok?

One of the four strategies of the Unstuck Minds Compass is Collaborative Inquiry. Collaborative inquiry makes it easier for people to take concerted action. Theoretically, an investigative hearing is called in order to explore an important issue, to learn about critical incidents so that appropriate actions can be taken.

If we want to understand the thinking and behaviors of individuals in order to align on meaningful change, we have to keep our drive for social comparison in check when we choose our questions.

Social comparisons contaminate our interactions when the need to be right, the need to win and the need to look good become more important than the need to learn.

I’m not so naïve as to be shocked that Congressional investigations are not actually conducted for the purpose of investigating. Nor is one party more or less likely to use televised hearings to ask rhetorical questions masquerading as curiosity. The word, “inquiry” and the word, “Inquisition” may share the same etymology, but they couldn’t be farther apart in practice.

In case you missed it, have a look at the clip below and marvel at the litany of masterful questions designed to learn nothing.

 

Love Encounters Suffering: Questions for being with

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The shocking deaths by suicide this week (two celebrities among the estimated 860 deaths by suicide every week in the U.S.) bring to mind Martin Buber’s powerful distinction between “experiencing” the world (the mode of I-it) and “encountering” the world (the mode of I-Thou). In the “I-it” mode, we are separate from what we experience, we operate in the realm of analyzing and judging. As a result, we inadvertently establish boundaries that separate ourselves from others. From an “I-it” frame of reference, we unconsciously presume that there is always a ‘thinker’ independent from the ‘thought of.’

 In the mode of “I-Thou,” we encounter the world by entering into relationship. We recognize the illusion of separateness; the word “other” loses its meaning. I, and that which I encounter, each become transformed through participation and relationship.

 The purpose of Unstuck Minds is to help people ask better questions so things can change. What I am learning this week, is the strength of my bias for asking questions that parse and separate. One can recognize and avoid thinking traps through questions that create useful distinctions. One can also recognize and avoid thinking traps by asking questions that remove the distinctions, which isolate and divide us.

 My daughter Bekah has spent several years learning, writing and speaking out about social anxiety, depression and suicide. I’ve invited Bekah to share her thoughts and questions. Questions that help us listen in the I-Thou mode. Ways of listening that help us understand the alchemy when love encounters suffering.

Seeing people around us suffering brings a response of uncertainty. Often, we choose to stay silent to avoid saying the wrong thing or making matters worse, but asking simple questions can foster meaningful connection in our relationships and within our communities. The power of asking questions and listening is often under-appreciated, but it is what I believe will create real change in our world.

Everyone you encounter is different, every situation is different and every story is different, but I would like to share the power of some general questions one can use to send the message of love and care.

  • How are you *really* doing? We ask people every day how they are doing, but unfortunately it has become a longer way to just say “hello.” Taking this question back to its original meaning to stop and allow someone to honestly answer is powerful.
  • What can I do to best support you? Another open ended question. This question gives insight to whether or not your goals are aligned with the person you are talking to. It is also a way for people to communicate their needs with you.
  • Have you ever felt this way? (With the follow up, what has seemed to help you in the past when things feel this way? This question gives empowerment and focuses on strength allowing someone to be reminded of all of the pain they have gotten through in the past while giving them the power to think of their own ideas.
  • You haven’t been yourself lately (give specific observations, you’ve been quieter than usual, you haven’t been eating as much, you’ve been sleeping a lot, etc.) How are you? Giving someone those observations shows that you see them, you’re paying attention and you care. Again, asking them how they are opens the door for an honest conversation.
  • Sometimes when people are feeling this way they have thoughts of ending their life. Are you having thoughts of suicide? This question can be daunting to ask, but it is so powerful. It allows you to understand their current crisis further while also sharing the message that you are comfortable talking about suicide. Asking this question does not put the idea in someone’s head and it can be life saving.

Reaching out to someone can be terrifying, but the most important thing is to show that you care and are willing to sit in that pain with them and listen. Follow their lead and allow them to drive the car. Our job is to simply be in the car with them helping to guide the way because we all need a passenger in our car sometimes.

For more information about how to help or to find support check out The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

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Bekah Cone is a Biopsychology, Cognition and Neuroscience major at the University of Michigan and a counselor with the Crisis Text Line. She is currently on sabbatical from her Second City Improv Troupe, A Bunch of Ringos.