Every few months one or more of my blogger friends writes about some new research about the effects of multitasking. Multitasking, the research invariably says, doesn’t finish the work any faster. In fact, multitasking usually makes work take longer.

I don’t think we need more research about the ill effects of multitasking. It doesn’t surprise anyone to learn that multitasking is at best ineffective and at worst dysfunctional. Everybody knows it already. I think everybody has known it all along.

If everybody already knows that multitasking slows the work, and if study after study merely confirms what everybody already knows, why do people keep multitasking?

Suppose I’m working on six different tasks that I’ve committed to six different people. If I want to complete all of the tasks as soon as possible, I will prioritize them and do them one at a time in priority order. Then I can tell Andy, whose task I’m working on first, that I’ll finish his task today. And I’ll finish it today. Andy will be very happy.

But what will I tell Bonnie, whose task I have given second priority? I’ll have to tell her that I haven’t made progress on her task yet. I’ll have to tell her that I won’t even start her task until tomorrow. Bonnie won’t like that. And I won’t like that Bonnie won’t like that.

And what about Francis, whose task I have prioritized sixth and won’t start until some time next week? Francis will be very unhappy. Francis will be furious. And Francis knows ways to make me very unhappy. This will not do.

So what’s a harried worker to do? Multitask! If I split my time among all six tasks, I get to tell all six people every day that I’m making progress on their important tasks. And I get to be sincere about that. And I get to avoid Bonnie’s unhappiness and Francis’s fury. Never mind that nobody will be satisfied until late next week. I’ll deal with that next week. For now, multitasking gives me a way to placate all of the people who are making demands of me. Multitasking delays the day of reckoning.

This explains how multitasking can remain so popular even though everybody knows it slows the work. The real purpose of multitasking is not to finish work faster. The real purpose of multitasking is to avoid conflict.

And that’s a tragedy, because multitasking does a lousy job of avoiding conflict. For one thing, our expectation of conflict is probably overblown. People are often more reasonable than we fear, as long as we keep them apprised of our priorities and plans. We reach for multitasking to solve a problem that often doesn’t need solving. For another thing, multitasking doesn’t avoid conflict but at best merely delays it. And by delaying everyone’s satisfaction, multitasking often exacerbates conflict rather than reducing it.

If conflict is the problem, multitasking is a poor solution. A better solution would be twofold. First, improve your skill in negotiating expectations and commitments. This reduces the likelihood of conflict. Second, improve your skill in resolving conflicts. This reduces the cost of the conflicts you can’t avoid. These are both enormous topics. But even a little improvement in these skills pays off far more than the ineffective and dysfunctional practice of multitasking.

A few weeks ago, Esther Derby, inspired by a Fast Company article about Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey, wrote a short article about appreciation.

Esther says, “Some people are uncomfortable expressing appreciation.” I know something about that. When I first learned about Temperature Reading, at Weinberg & Weinberg’s week-long Problem Solving Leadership workshop in 1992, I felt very uncomfortable expressing appreciation. We held several Temperature Readings during the week, and at each I expressed my appreciation to several people for things they had done. Each time, as I opened my mouth to speak, my throat tightened and my eyes teared up. I was puzzled about that, and I made a mental note to think about what was going on for me in those moments. Why would it be so difficult to express something as wonderful as appreciation?

Over the next several months I experimented with expressing appreciation to people at work. Slowly I noticed what made it hard for me. Whenever I expressed my appreciation, I was reminding myself (unconsciously) that I, too, yearn for appreciation, and that I wasn’t experiencing the appreciation I wanted from others. And I was reminding myself (again unconsciously) that I often left my own appreciation unexpressed.

Once I was aware of my yearning, I found ways to satisfy it. The most important way was to remember to express appreciation for myself. When I began to do that, I found that I was more able to appreciate others, and that I didn’t feel such a strong need for other people to appreciate me. I’m sure that affected the way I related to people, because they began to express their appreciation for me.

In a comment on Esther’s article, Robert Watkins suggests that “This is one of those new age ideas which can be nice in theory, but in practice often just results in fake sincerity.” When I’m facilitating a session of appreciations, I do a few things that encourage sincerity. First, I invite appreciations. I don’t require them. It’s possible that people may feel some internal pressure (”I should …”) to say nice things when others around them are saying nice things to each other. I haven’t noticed a problem with that. Sometimes I see a chain reaction, in which the people who receive appreciation immediately want to offer appreciations of their own. However it happens, the appreciations that people express seem sincere to me.

Second, I encourage the person giving the appreciation to describe specifically what the receiver did, and what need that fulfilled for the giver. The main reason I encourage this is that the specifics make appreciation more meaningful, both to the giver and to the receiver. Sincerity is just a bonus, a nice side effect. It’s hard to be both insincere and specific about what someone has done and what need that has served for you.

In another comment, Jason Yip says, “I’m wondering if it’s useful, if doing it in public is a bit too ‘New Age’, whether it would be appropriate to start out with individuals doing it privately by themselves.”

I think it is wonderful for individuals to start by offering appreciations in private. It’s also wonderful to start in public. Here’s an example.

My friend Joe managed a team of a dozen software developers. He wanted his team, one of the more effective teams in the organization, to become even more cohesive than they already were, and asked me to help with that. One of Joe’s concerns was that the people on the team may not be reviewing each other’s code as often or as eagerly as he would like. We talked more about the situation, and decided that I would facilitate a Temperature Reading for the team.

A Temperature Reading is an activity that gives a team important information about itself and its members. The first phase of a Temperature Reading is appreciations. I offered people an opportunity to express appreciation to their colleagues for things they had done.

The people in the room—hardcore geeks all—had no trouble offering appreciations to each other. They offered dozens. And my impression was that about half of the appreciations were about code reviews. “John, I appreciate that you found that null pointer bug in my code.”

Joe noticed, over the next few weeks, that people were more eager to review each other’s code, and more eager to express appreciation to each other in the moment.

Starting privately is good. Starting publicly is good. When it comes to expressing appreciation, whatever will get you started is the right way to start.

Speaking of getting started, I started to write this article two weeks ago, inspired by Esther’s earlier article. Then I set it aside. Today Esther offers another look at appreciation, this time as a form of recognition. And I was inspired again.

Esther, I appreciate your two articles about appreciation. The first inspired me to remember some of the wonderful things I’ve learned about appreciation, and to start writing this article. The second inspired me to finish what I’d started.

Robert and Jason, I appreciate your expressing your concerns. Your comments to Esther inspired me to write about my experience doing Temperature Readings with technical people, many of whom may share your concerns.

Jack Vinson, in a recent article expanding on my thoughts about automation, lamented, “Now if we could just convince Dale to provide a full web feed [in his RSS feeds] instead of the brief teasers.”

Someone else (I forget who) gave me a similar nudge many months ago. That makes two nudges in 17 months of blogging.

I publish only the excerpts in my RSS feeds because that helps me to “see” all of you, to know that you’re out there reading what I write. My web server logs what pages people visit. When your feed reader tells you that I’ve posted a new article and you click the link to read it, my web server notes that. Every day I look at the logs to learn what pages are being visited. I don’t know who is visiting, but I know how many people are visiting each page. I care about that little bit of information. It helps me to “make contact” with you, if only in a very small way.

If I were to publish the full articles in my RSS feeds, I would lose information in two ways. First, my RSS feed is a single page that includes my ten most recent blog articles. When your feed reader reads the feed, my web server logs a visit to that single page. That would give me little information about what entries you read.

Second, feed readers are automatic. They read my feed once per day, or several times per day, or once per hour. If I were to notice a jump in the number of visits to my RSS feed, that might mean that a whole bunch of people subscribed. Or it might mean that one of you configured your reader to check my feed once per hour instead of once per day. The visit count for my RSS feed tells me very little about how many real people are out there.

So my “excerpt only” feeds give me a teeny tiny bit of information. And that information is important to me, because it gives me a teeny tiny connection with all of you. I’d miss that if I didn’t have it.

I’m aware that by publishing only excerpts, I make things less convenient for those of you who subscribe to my RSS feed. And I care about that.

I try to make sure that the excerpts are not mere teasers. but are themselves informative. Most of the time I try put the main point into the excerpts, to help you decide whether you’re interested in reading the full article.

I revisit this issue from time to time, especially when someone nudges me. Consider me nudged.

As I was reading Robert C. Solomon and Fernando Flores’s book
Building Trust
today, I created this thought experiment about trust, disappointment and choice.

Part One: Imagine a relationship in which you trust the other person in many, many ways, and the person always fulfills your trust. Whatever trust you give, the person never disappoints your trust. What thoughts do you have about this relationship? What feelings?

Now set those thoughts and feelings aside.

Part Two: Imagine a relationship in which you choose to trust the other person only when you see no possibility that the person will disappoint your trust. Whenever you see the slightest possibility of disappointment, you choose to withhold your trust. What thoughts do you have about this relationship? What feelings?

Part Three: Now compare your thoughts and feelings about these two imaginary relationships. Compare these imagined relationships to your real-life relationships. What do your comparisons tell you about trust? What does the possibility of disappointment have to do with trust? What does choice have to do with trust?

I’d love to hear your comments about this.

Listening is a crucial skill. You’ve heard that so often that it has become a platitude. I’m sad about that because… well… because listening is a crucial skill.

Crucial for what? If you want to unstick a stuck conversation, you will need to listen well enough to understand what the other person is saying. If you want to respond to resistance, or to resolve a conflict that involves a significant emotional component — and nearly all conflicts do — you will need to listen for the other person’s motivations. If you want to maintain or strengthen or repair a relationship, you will need to listen for the other person’s feelings and needs.

Okay, listening is crucial. That’s still a platitude unless we put some details behind it. If listening is so important, what are some practical steps we can take to improve? I’ve found a number of tests that help me sharpen my listening.

In any situation in which listening is especially important, my first goal is to make sure I am prepared to listen. To test how well I am prepared to listen, I ask myself, “To what extent am I willing to be changed?” If I enter a conversation intent on persuading the other person to my point of view, unwilling to change my own point of view, I limit my ability to listen.

This is just a test, not an admonition. I’m not recommending that you go into each conversation prepared to abandon your most cherished beliefs and values. Into each conversation you bring a suite of plans, intentions, conclusions, interpretations, judgments, beliefs, and values. You may be willing to change some of these things, and inflexible about others. The key is not to put all of these up for negotiation, but to be mindful of what you’re holding onto, and mindful that inflexibility may limit your ability to hear what other people are saying. Are the things you’re holding onto more important than listening fully? That depends on the specifics of the situation. My way of sorting out the specifics is to notice what I’m holding onto and to remind myself of my choices. I ask myself, “What am I holding tightly to in this conversation? Is this more important to me than listening with empathy to what others are saying?” If so, fine. If not, I’ll want to relax my grip so that I can listen.

The first test is about being prepared to listen. The next test tells me whether I am understanding what another person is saying. To test for understanding, I say what meaning I’m making of the other person’s words, then ask “Is that what you mean?” If the person replies, “Yes, that’s what I mean,” I’ve understood. If not, I haven’t.

In most cases, if I didn’t understand well the other person will point out the parts I misunderstood or rephrase them in some way. Every now and again I have to prompt for clarification by asking, “What parts did I misunderstand?” After the person clarifies, I can test again for whether I understand.

This is a test of understanding, not of agreement. I may understand perfectly well, to the other person’s satisfaction, and still disagree.

The second test tells me whether I have heard a piece of what another person is saying. Now I want to know whether I’ve understood all of what the person wants to say. To test whether I have listened fully, I ask, “Is there more that you want to say?”

Sometimes the person has more to say, and says it. I use the “test for understanding” to make sure I’ve understood the new information and how it fits with what the person said earlier. Then I ask again, “Is there more?” When the person says, “No, there’s no more I want to say,” I’ve listened fully.

The second and third tests tell me whether I’ve fully understood the person’s meaning. Sometimes I want to go further, to empathize to make sure I’ve understood the feelings and needs behind what the person is saying. To test my empathy, I ask, “Are you feeling            because you are needing           ?” And I fill in the blanks with whatever feelings and needs I think the person is experiencing.

How do I know what the other person is feeling and needing? Sometimes the person expresses feelings directly: “I’m angry” or “I’m disappointed” or “I’m really looking forward to this.” Sometimes the need is clearly expressed: “I’m worried about losing my job.”

Sometimes the signs are less direct — shouting, a crack in the voice, changes in gestures, body position, facial expressions, or skin tone. I never know for sure what these mean. Sometimes, especially when I notice a sudden change in one of these signals, I ask, “What’s going on for you? What just happened?” Other times, I take the advice that Kelly Bryson offers in his book
Don’t Be Nice, Be Real
: guess! As Bryson says:

You do not have to guess right. Just guess human. Just imagine a human feeling and need that might be behind their words. Guessing feelings and needs at least puts us in the camp of humanness, instead of judgment.

The best way I know to build skill in understanding other people’s feelings and needs is to learn more about my own. As I learn to distinguish my feelings and needs more accurately, and to empathize with them, I am better able to imagine what others may be feeling and needing. The Center for Nonviolent Communication web site includes helpful lists of human feelings and needs.

Whew! That’s a lot of work! Is all of this squishy, touchy-feelie stuff necessary? Sometimes no. Sometimes yes. Empathy is important whenever the conversation involves strong feelings that may interfere with communication. And empathy is important whenever I want to maintain, strengthen, or repair a relationship. That is, whenever I care about the person and our relationship, and I want to show that I care.

References: I learned the “willing to be changed” test from Amy Schwab, who learned it from David Schmaltz, who learned it from Sharon Bennett. The “test for understanding” and “test for listening fully” come from Harville Hendrix’s audio book
Keeping the Love You Find
. Though much of this book is specific to love relationships, Hendrix’s techniques and exercises about listening apply equally well to other kinds of relationships. The “test for empathy” comes from Marshall Rosenberg’s
Nonviolent Communication
and Kelly Bryson’s
Don’t Be Nice, Be Real
.

If you look at my list of favorite books of 2003, you’ll notice that over the past year I’ve been a student of conversation and relationships. I’ve been especially interested in how we can make our conversations more rewarding for ourselves, for others, and for our relationships.

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High

by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler helped me to make a big leap in that direction, and that’s why it is my favorite book of 2003.

A few years ago my friend Kay Pentecost, knowing of my deep interest in communication and relationships, recommended Crucial Conversations very highly. I bought the book a few months later, and finally read it in September, 2003. Of the ton of helpful ideas in Crucial Conversations, I found four most helpful: starting with heart, filling the pool of shared meaning, safety, and stories.

Starting with heart means clarifying your purpose in the conversation. Before starting the conversation, ask yourself, What do I really want for myself? What do I really want for others? What do I really want for the relationship? If a conversation becomes difficult, return to your purpose by asking the questions again, and by asking, How would I behave if I really wanted these results?

Filling the pool of shared meaning. The authors define dialogue as the free flow of meaning between two or more people. We each enter a conversation with a personal “pool of meaning”, the combination of our opinions, feelings, theories, and experiences about the topic. “People who are skilled at dialogue,” the authors say, “do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool.”

Safety. What makes safety important? “At the core of every successful conversation lies the free flow of relevant information.” When people feel unsafe in conversation, that flow is blocked. “As people begin to feel unsafe, they start to move down one of two unhealthy paths. They move either to silence (withholding meaning from the pool) or to violence (trying to force meaning in the pool).”

Crucial Conversations offers many ways to test and maintain safety. One key idea is that if we want to maintain safety, we must attend to two “safety conditions.” The first is mutual purpose. We can maintain mutual purpose partly by “starting with heart.” The second safety condition is mutual respect. “In essence, feelings of disrespect often come when we dwell on how others are different from ourselves. We can counteract these feelings by looking for ways we are similar.” The authors say that in many cases, “If you simply realize that your challenge is to make it safer, nine out of ten times you’ll intuitively do something that helps.”

Stories. Like several other books I read in 2003, Crucial Conversations emphasizes the importance of stories in our communications and relationships. “Just after we observe what others do and just before we feel some emotion about it, we tell ourselves a story. That is, we add meaning to the action we observed. To the simple behavior we add motive. Why were they doing that? We also add judgment—is that good or bad?”

This sequence is very similar to Virginia Satir’s Ingredients of an Interaction, the model of communication that I describe in my article “Untangling Communication.” I like the author’s use of the word story here, because it gives me a richer, more dynamic way to talk about how we make meaning.

My review has only scratched the surface. I highly recommend Crucial Conversations.
And Kay, thank you so much for recommending this book so strongly.

Over the past few years, I’ve been learning to express my judgments in a way that I like better than my old way.

By judgment, I mean a statement that some person, event, or condition is good or bad, or morally right or wrong. For example, “John is lazy” is a judgment, a statement that John is bad in a particular way.

I’ve found that beneath every judgment lies a feeling, and beneath every feeling lies a need. Every judgment I make comes not from the person, event, or condition I’m judging, but ultimately from my needs, and from how I feel about my needs being either met or unmet. A “positive” judgment means that my needs are satisfied. A “negative” judgment means that my needs are unmet.

“John is lazy.” What needs and feelings lie behind that statement? The need could be nearly any need. Maybe I’m needing some companionship, and I’ve asked John to go to a football game with me. When John says that he doesn’t feel like going out today, my need for companionship isn’t met. I feel lonely, and attribute my loneliness to John. I see John as the reason that I don’t have the companionship I’m needing. I judge him to be lazy.

Judgments leave the most important information unsaid. “John is lazy” says nothing about my need for companionship or the loneliness I feel when my need isn’t met. My loneliness comes not from John’s actions, but from my need for companionship. If I had other people to be with, I wouldn’t feel lonely in response to John not wanting to go to the game. And my need for companionship is about me. It has nothing to do with John.

Judgments deflect attention away from my responsibility. “John is lazy” seems to be a statement about John. Though I’m the one making the statement, the content of the statement says nothing about me. It says nothing about my needs or about my feeling about my needs being unsatisfied. My needs and feelings are my creations, and therefore entirely my responsibility. By talking only about John, I distract your attention, and more importantly my attention, away from my responsibility.

Judgments are ineffective ways to satisfy needs. I believe that every judgment is an attempt to satisfy the need that gave rise to the judgment. But judging makes it less likely that I will satisfy my need. By judging John as lazy deflects responsibility for my feelings from me to John, and gives away my power. It makes John responsible for meeting my need. And given that John is not meeting my need, I’m stuck with my loneliness.

I’ve learned a more effective way to meet my needs: Express my needs and feelings directly. I might tell John, “I’m feeling lonely because I’m needing some companionship.” (I first learned of this phrasing from Marshall Rosenberg’s book
Nonviolent Communication
. The earlier first edition of Nonviolent Communication was my favorite book of 2001. Thanks to my friend Bill Pardee for recommending it!)

I see two main advantages in expressing myself this way. First, by expressing my need clearly and directly, this gives me a chance to find other ways to meet my need. And it gives John a chance to offer ideas if he chooses. Maybe he will invite me to his house to play chess.

Second, directly expressing my needs and feelings draws my attention (and John’s) to my responsibility. My need is my need. My feeling is my response to my need. If John chooses not to satisfy my need for companionship, I can seek other companions, or simply accept that I don’t have the companionship I need. In any case, I am now owning my need, and owning my feelings.

I’m still working on this. I’m often tempted to say “That was a great movie” instead of “I loved that movie.” Exploring the needs and feelings that give rise to my judgments is sometimes a lot of work. But I’m much happier with the results.

Here is an example of how
our stories affect our potential as agents of organizational change.

Susan, the Director of Human Resources at a large paper company, was leading a project to implement self-directed work teams in her organization. She was bumping into some resistance, and asked me to help.

“Most people are really excited about what we’re doing,” she said. “But then there are the resisters.” They don’t want anything to do with teams. Mostly, the resisters are people who have been here more than twenty years. Every time they come to a meeting, I already know what they are going to say.” As she said this she made a motion of pushing away with her hands.

I said, “Instead of calling these folks ‘resisters,’ suppose you think of them as people who are resisting this change at this time.”

She considered this in silence for minute, then looked at me and said, “Wow. That makes a big difference. When I think of them as resisters, it’s as if I have them all figured out, that they’re just resistant to change. When I think of them as resisting this change at this time, I see them more as people. Maybe they have reasons for resisting.”

I said, “Now, instead of thinking of them as resisting the change, what if you think of them as responding to it?”

Again she went silent. After a moment, she said, “Thank you! Now I know what I need to do!”

I talked with Susan several months later. She had met several times with the “resisters,” and focused on listening carefully to what they had to say. After a few long discussions, together they came up with an idea that worked for everyone: These company veterans would become mentors. When new people joined the organization, the mentors would help them to learn “how we work in teams around here.”

Experiment: Think about Susan’s role in her initial story, the story about “resisters.” If you were to name Susan’s role, what would you call it? What about the company veterans’ role? What would you call that?

Experiment: In Susan’s later story, the story about meeting several times with the company veterans, what role did Susan play? What role did the veterans play?

Experiment: Notice that there is another story being told here: my story. What role did Susan play in my story? What was my role? What role, if any, did the company veterans play?

Experiment: Notice that by telling you this story, I am enacting yet another story: my ongoing story about you and me. What does my publishing this story, and my offering all of these experiments, tell you about the story I’m creating about you and me?

Experiment: What story are you creating about all of this?

A relationship is a story. I don’t mean that as a metaphor. I mean it literally: A relationship is a story. In particular, a relationship is a story about two people responding to each other and with each other over time.

Like all stories, the story of a relationship is told from a particular point of view — some person’s point of view. The nature of the story, the nature of the relationship, depends a great deal on who is telling the story.

If you want to influence others, relationships matter. Of the four factors that affect the way people respond to your proposals and requests — expectations, communication, relationship, and environment — relationship may be the most important to nurture. Every time you talk with someone, your relationship enters the conversation before you do. You each bring a story into the room, a story that carries your history and expectations, providing the structure that integrates this conversation with your past and your future, and the context within which you attach meaning and significance to each other’s words and behaviors. As you interact, your story guides your experience — perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors — even as you weave your experience back into the ongoing, unfolding story.

I’ve been thinking about this idea, about relationships as stories, for a few weeks. It feels like a rich vein for me — every thought leads to three more thoughts. I struggled for days to start this article because I didn’t know where to begin. I struggled for hours to write it because I didn’t know where to stop.

I’ll stop here for now, having set out only the basic idea, and leave you (and me) with a few thought experiments.

Experiment: Think of a relationship that you are enjoying. If you were to tell an empathetic listener about this relationship, what would you say? What story or stories would you tell? How did the relationship begin? What events or patterns of events stand out for you as being especially important to you? What happened? What meaning did you make of those events? How did you feel? What role do you play in the story? How do you describe yourself? What role does the other person play? How do you describe the other person? What do you think will happen in the relationship over time? How does all of this affect the way you interact with the person? How does it affect the way you think and talk about the person when you’re apart?

Experiment: Think of a relationship in which you are feeling some stress or pain or frustration. Answer the same questions as above.

Experiment: Compare the two relationships from above. What similarities do you see? What differences?

Experiment: How would the other person in each relationship answer these questions?

Before you try to measure something as complex as people’s performance, make sure you can make simple measurements reliably. Length, for example. The length of the coast of Maine.

How long is the coast of Maine? If you draw a straight line from one end of the coast to the other and measure the length of the line, it’s about 220 miles. That’s one measurement.

Now measure a different way. Take a string that’s ten miles long. Hold one end of it at the southern end of the coast. Stretch the string straight and find where the other end of the string touches the coast. Continue measuring these ten-mile lengths and add them up. The length of the coast is maybe 400 miles.

Next, use a one-mile string, then 1000 feet, then 100 feet. The shorter the string, the longer the coast.

If you use a very short string, say one foot, it is difficult to decide even where the coast is, or whether “coast” means anything at all. Where does the land end and the ocean begin? How do you measure around the mouth of the Penobscot River? What about all of those islands? Do you measure around those or not? And when you measure at such a small scale, the coast is moving as you measure it. Should you measure at high tide or at low tide?

As you measure at still smaller scales, say the width of an oxygen molecule, “coast” becomes even less meaningful. At a small enough scale, the “coast” is discontinuous. At that point, even if “coast” meant something, the notion of “length” may no longer apply.

Many sources claim that the coast of Maine is more than 3000 miles long. What does that mean? The number is nearly meaningless if you don’t know how it was measured.

The length of the coast of Maine depends almost entirely on how you measure it. Why would measuring people be any different?