In a fascinating TED Talk, Laurie Santos shows that monkeys make the same kinds of economic errors as humans do. Another way to say this: Humans make some of the same kinds of economic errors as monkeys do.

Early in the video, Santos asked a question that caught my attention: “How is a species that’s as smart as we are capable of such bad and consistent errors?”

What I find most interesting about Santos’s question is a presupposition: The question tacitly posits “as smart as we are” as the standard of judgment. Why do I say “tacitly,” when she clearly states the standard in her question? Though the standard is explicit, what’s tacit is taking that standard as a given.

To demonstrate, I’ll ask a different question: “For a species that consistently makes such bad errors, how is it that we are as smart as we are?” My question posits a different baseline for evaluating our behavior: Our consistent errors.

In my tweets on this subject, I called Santos’s question a “foreground/background error.” That was a mistake. Rather, Santos makes a foreground/background choice. Her question and mine differ in the choice of background and foreground. Her question places human smartness in the background and consistent errors in the foreground. My question reverses the foreground and background.

We humans often ask such questions, which make an implicit choice of what to place in the foreground and what in the background.

For example, people ask, “Why do we sleep?” The question (tacitly) takes awakeness as background. I think it’s probably more reasonable and fruitful to ask, “Why are we ever wake?” The vast majority of living things are never awake. We and other animals do sometimes wake. How does that happen? I think it’s miraculous.

Another example, which I hear a lot: “Why do we miscommunicate so much?” Flip the foreground and background: “How is it that we are ever able to communicate at all?” Communication is a freaking miracle, and our oft-uttered question takes it for granted.

Matt Heusser tweeted another example from a forum on communication between managers and doers: “Why is there so much friction between managers and doers?” Matt flipped the question: “With so much conflict inherent in our systems, isn’t it a miracle that we ever get anything done?”

We could state our observations relatively neutrally, with equal emphasis: We’re as smart as we are; we consistently make bad errors. But typically we don’t do that. We place one observation in the background, and apply it as a standard against which to judge the other observation.

What fascinates me is that our questions typically place the more “perfect” standard in the background, even though the evidence suggests that humans don’t live up to the standard. What’s more, we typically ask such questions directly in response to noticing that we don’t live up to the standard. We take as given a standard that we know we don’t meet. We humans seem to have a bias toward judging ourselves against standards of perfection.

This is not an idle topic for me. It’s at the heart of my coaching. My clients often lament that they fall short of some standard they have set for themselves. As we explore the standard, we often find that the standard is very difficult to meet, and sometimes beyond human capability. And yet clients make great effort to continue to hold onto their standards, even after agreeing that the standards are unreasonable.

How come we so often choose as background a standard that we clearly do not meet? What would happen if we more often made a different choice, to take our typical experience as the standard, and ask how we are sometimes able to be better than that?

What if how actually we observe ourselves to be were okay, even as we yearn to be “better”?

Of course, my entire post implicitly posits its own standard of perfection: A standard of not judging ourselves against standards that we demonstrably fail to live up to.

Maybe I can soften my own error this way: When we notice that we are holding ourselves and each other to some standard of perfection, we have an opportunity to make the standard explicit, ask whether and how it serves us, and explore other standards that may serve us better.

A few weeks ago, at Agile Development Practices West 2010 conference in Las Vegas, my friend and colleague Bob Payne hosted me for an episode of his Agile Toolkit podcast. I invite you to listen to our half-hour conversation and to other episodes about all things Agile.

Bob’s podcasts are always conversational—the conversation wanders where it will, but seldom strays far from the topic du jour. Our wanderings touched on:

• Resistance is mutual
• Bridging the gap between hamsters and wolverines
• Solving the deeper problem is sometimes easier than solving the surface problem
• Ineffective patterns of coping with stress (blaming, placating, distracting)
• Joe diffuses the boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s blaming
• The power of aggregation
• The power of giving yourself choices
• Payson Hall’s terrific keynote about the dilemmas of risk management
• Dale fails to grok space and time
• Three definitions of resistance
• Overcoming resistance (boo!) versus resolving resistance (yay!)
• Resistance is feedback
• To encourage change, start by meeting people where they are
• Two styles of Agile adoption: “By the book” and evolutionary
• From balance to differentiation—from “how much” to “which”
• My upcoming Resistance as a Resource workshop at Agilistry Studio, July 14–15

Only in retrospect could I name the central topic of our chat: social challenges at work. In further retrospect, that central topic is nearly inevitable, given my interests.

Problems and Problem Statements

In Are Your Lights On?, Don Gause and Jerry Weinberg offer this useful definition of problem:

A problem is a difference between things as perceived and things as desired.

I like this definition because it highlights three important elements of any problem: things as perceived, things as desired, and a difference between the two.

There’s another important element of any problem: The person who is perceiving and desiring things. In order for the difference between things as perceived and things as desired to be a problem, the perceiver and the desirer must be the same person.

A problem statement is a model of the problem, a simplification designed to aid in solving the problem. Like any model, a problem statement differs from the thing being modeled. A good model highlights features that are most relevant to the modeler’s purpose and hides details that are less relevant. A good problem statement highlights problem elements that help solve the problem, and hides details that distract.

Problem Statement Smells

A problem statement smell is any element of a problem statement that makes the problem harder to solve. Some smells attract your attention toward conditions that are inessential to the problem, or that are beyond your influence. Some smells divert your attention away from an essential element of the problem.

Problem statement smells commonly take three forms: additions, deletions, and distortions. Some problem statements combine several smells.

Additions

Some problem statements introduce claims and ideas that are not present in the problem itself. These additions can confuse problem solvers, lead to wild goose chases, or otherwise distract from the problem.

Conclusions expressed as facts. I need to give my boss the test results for third-party authorization, but Jeff isn’t done testing it yet. How do you know Jeff isn’t done? What did you see or hear that led to that conclusion? Perhaps Jeff is already done, and is writing up his report right now.

Mindreading. Jeff is just trying to protect his own turf. You have no direct access to Jeff’s thoughts and intentions. What did you see or hear that led to that conclusion? What are two other possible meanings of what you saw and heard?

Solution probleming. The problem is that we don’t have a Wiki for test status. This is a solution in search of a problem. What’s the problem? If you had a Wiki, what would that do for you? Often, the “problem behind the problem” is easier to solve.

Missing standard. Jeff tests too slowly. Too slowly for what? What would be fast enough? How do you assess how fast he tests?

Deletions

Many problem statements omit important elements of the problem. These omissions can make it harder to envision what a solution would look like.

Missing desire. The problem is that Jeff is only halfway finished testing third-party authorization. That’s the perceived state. What’s the desired state?

Missing perception. The problem is that I need Jeff to finish testing third-party authorization by Monday. That’s the desired state. What’s the perceived state?

Missing problem stater. The problem is that Jeff is supposed to be done testing third-party authorization, and he isn’t done yet. The person who stated the problem is mentioned nowhere in the problem statement. Who is doing the supposing? Whose problem is this?

Missing actor. Some of the items on the backlog seem to have no owner. Rephrase to add an actor: I cannot identify the owner for some of the backlog items.

Distortions

Many problem statements amplify problem elements, or dampen them, or interpret them in distorted ways. Such distortions, if we take them as truths, limit the kinds of solutions we will consider.

“Can’t.” I can’t ask for a bigger budget. Try: “I choose not to ask for a bigger budget because I want _____.” (Fill in the blank.) What stops you from asking for a bigger budget? What would happen if you asked for a bigger budget?

“Have to.” I have to work this weekend. Try: “I choose to work this weekend because I want _____.” (Fill in the blank.) What would happen if you didn’t work this weekend?

Inanimate agent. The problem is that our backlog just keeps growing. Backlogs can’t just grow of their own accord. Somebody is growing it. Who? How?

Lullaby language. No problem. We should just work weekends until we ship. Words and phrases such as should, no problem, and just tend to minimize the complexity of the problem, directing attention away from important details. Question each use of these “lullaby words” to surface the hidden assumptions. See Jerry Weinberg’s More Secrets of Consulting for further examples of lullaby language.

Combinations

Sometimes a single problem statement will include a combination of additions, deletions, and distortions.

Judgment. The problem is that Jeff has no initiative. One smell: mindreading. What do you see and hear that leads you to this conclusion? Another smell: missing desire. What do you want from Jeff? A third smell: tacit causation. Even if Jeff had tons of initiative, he might apply it elsewhere, and still not do what you need.

Tacit causation. Customers expect me to remember all of their requests, so I add them to the backlog, and the backlog just keeps getting bigger. The little word “so” suggests causation, but the link between cause and effect is neither obvious nor stated. But there is no law of the universe that says “if customers expect you to remember their requests, you must add them to the backlog.” That’s one way to respond to the expectation. What are some other ways?

Other time or place. Jeff didn’t finish testing third-party authorization. That’s in the past, and you can’t alter that. What problem are you experiencing right now? What need is currently unfulfilled?

Your Turn

Experiment: What other problem statement smells can you identify? How might you remedy each?

Experiment: In my description of each problem statement smell, I describe or hint at some of the problems caused by the smell. My problem statements have smells. What smells can you identify?

Loopy conversations.  Over the years I’ve seen people and teams go round and round in loopy conversations trying to determine whether some goal is a what or a how, a how or a why, a means or an end.  The reason such conversations spin is that end and means (etc.) are not attributes inherent in any particular goal.  Instead, they express relationships among goals.  In order to sort out means and ends, you have to consider the relationships among goals.

Example.  Suppose I want to buy a plane ticket to Toronto.  Is this goal a means or an end?  There’s nothing about buying a ticket per se that makes it one or the other.  But suppose I want to buy a ticket so that I can attend the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto.  Buying the ticket is a means to the end of attending the conference.

So attending the conference is itself an end, right?  Well, not quite.  At least, not in and of itself.  I want to attend the conference in order to confer with Agile colleagues.  Attending the conference is itself a means to the further end of conferring with Agile colleagues.

Now, hold on.  Just two paragraphs ago I said that attending the conference was “the end.”  Now I’m saying that it’s a means.  What’s going on?

Chain of goals.  One thing that’s going on is that, like any goal, my goal of attending the conference exists in a chain of goals, each instrumental to achieving some deeper goal.  I want each thing in order to achieve some more important thing, some deeper goal.  I want to buy a plane ticket in order to attend the conference.  I want to attend the conference in order to confer with colleagues.  The chain (or this part of the chain, at least) looks like this:

buy plane ticket -> attend conference -> confer with colleagues

So… is conferring with colleagues the end?  Again: not in and of itself.  I want to confer with colleagues in order to (among other things) build relationships with them.  That is, conferring with colleagues is a means to the end of building relationships.  Now the chain is:

buy plane ticket -> attend conference -> confer with colleagues -> build relationships

We could keep going.  I want to build relationships in order to …  And so on.  I leave it as an exercise to the reader to discover whether the chain ends and (if so) where.

We can also extend the chain in the other direction.  In order to buy a plane ticket, I will have to (say) call United on the phone.  And in order to call them, I’ll have to look up their phone number.  And in order to look up their phone number, I’ll have to …  (Another exercise for the reader.)

Relationships among goals.  Okay, so our goals form a chain.  Each goal in the chain is a means with respect to the goals later in the chain and an end with respect to the goals earlier in the chain.  Similar for how versus what, or how versus why.  With respect to conferring with colleagues, attending the conference is a means, a how.  With respect to buying the plane ticket, attending the conference is a what, a why, an end.  Means and end thus express relationships among goals.

Distinguishing means and ends.  Okay, so how does this help untangle a tangled conversation?  In any moment, in any conversation (loopy or otherwise), what makes a given goal a means or an end?

The answer:  Your attention.  No kidding.  The only thing that makes a goal an end is that you’ve decided, however momentarily, to focus on that goal in particular, to hold that goal in your mind as the goal.  That’s it.  If you choose to focus on the goal of attending the conference, your focus (temporarily) makes attending the conference the end, and each goals earlier in the chain a means to that end.  Whichever goal you hold in your mind as the one to focus on, that goal becomes (temporarily) the end, and all the earlier goals become means to that end.

Unwinding the conversation.  If you find yourself stuck in a conversation about means and ends, pause the conversation long enough to draw the chain of goals on a flip chart or whiteboard.  Or scratch it into the wall with a nail.  Show that the chain can extend in either direction.  Then with that picture visible to everyone, get back to whatever you were doing before you got wrapped around that axle.

A further complication: Design versus requirements.  A further complication comes into play when people argue about whether a given choice is a design choice or a requirement.  The distinction is not in the choice itself, but in your choice of which system you are discussing at the moment.  Every requirement for a given system is itself a design choice for some larger system.  Every design choice for a given system creates requirements for one or more subsystems.

Whether a give choice is a design choice or a requirement is not an inherent quality of the choice itself.  The distinction between design and requirement depends entirely on your point of view, in particular on your choice of which system you are talking about.

So if you’re in a loopy conversation about whether some choice is a requirement or a design choice, stop the looping and take some time to identify as well as you can which specific system you are talking about.  That sometimes helps.

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.

Here’s an old saw: “Studies show that only seven percent of our communication comes from words. The rest comes from nonverbal cues—38 percent from vocal cues such as tone of voice, and 55 percent from body language.” I’ve heard that hundreds of times, but until yesterday I’d never seen a source for those figures.

I learned yesterday, through an online forum about training and coaching, that the “seven percent” claim is a misrepresentation of studies conducted by Albert Mehrabian. I decided to find out what Mehrabian himself had to say. I searched the web and found that in the few cases where people give a source for the claim, they cite Mehrabian’s book
Silent Messages
. I hopped into my car and drove to the CSUS library, near where I live, to research this.

In Silent Messages, Mehrabian gives the following equation:

Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking

Next, he briefly describes related research by other people about other communication and feelings. Based on that, he generalizes from liking to “all feelings”:

Total Feeling = 7% Verbal Feeling + 38% Vocal Feeling + 55% Facial Feeling

In Silent Messages, Mehrabian refers to more detailed descriptions of his research in another book,
Nonverbal Communication
.

Nonverbal Communication describes Mehrabian’s research. He constructed a number of inconsistent messages about feelings. Each message included three specific components: specific words, specific vocal qualities, and specific facial expressions. Each component was designed to convey a specific attitude (positive or negative) and a specific strength (e.g. strong liking or mild disliking). Mehrabian constructed inconsistent messages by combining components of differing strengths and attitudes.

Mehrabian observed people giving and receiving these mixed messages, and assessed the receiver’s perception of the sender’s feeling. From this information, Mehrabian performed a linear regression to assess the extent to which each component contributed to the receiver’s perception of the sender’s feeling. That’s where the percentages come from.

Mehrabian is very careful in these books not to generalize beyond the specific context of his research: He studied only messages about feelings, specifically inconsistent messages about feelings. Also, he notes that his generalization from liking to general feelings is unverified, and that the specific percentages in the formula are probably not exact. He does seem confident that for mixed messages about feelings, facial messages carry more weight than vocal messages, which in turn carry more weight than verbal messages.

Mehrabian describes his research results briefly on his web site, and offers this admonition:

Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.

Language Log is one of my favorite blogs. Today Geoffrey K. Pullum posted “Get Your Boyfriend to Move It,” a marvelous case study of communication gone awry. Read it now, before reading my analysis below.

When I teach communication, I use Virginia Satir’s
Ingredients of an Interaction
as my foundational model. The Ingredients model describes the process by which we receive messages and respond to them. First we take in information through our five senses (the Intake step). Next we make meaning of the information we receive (the Meaning step). Then we gauge the significance of the message (the Significance step). Finally, we respond outwardly (the Response step).

Pullam’s “boyfriend” story is a wonderful example of what can happen when we make mistakes in one of the steps.

Early in the phone call, the animal rescue officer makes a mistake in Intake: she hears “feline” instead of “sea lion.” The subsequent conversation, which I’m sure seemed bizarre to each of the women as it was happening, validates a key principle of communication: If you get the Intake wrong, you’re certain to get the Meaning wrong.

When the animal rescue officer suggests that the resident ask her boyfriend to move the animal, the resident interprets that as sexism and lack of concern. That seems like a reasonable interpretation to me, given the conversation up to that point. Reasonable, but mistaken, and the mistake exacerbates the confusion.

When the officer suggests that the resident ask her father for help, the resident, even more puzzled than before, says, “Umm, my father?” It’s possible that the resident is testing whether she heard the officer’s words correctly, but I suspect that this is more a test of Meaning than of Intake. Not, “Did you say, father?” but, “What does my father have to do with this?”

The officer explains her meaning, and the conversation continues, each person working from a mistaken interpretation of what the other is talking about. This exemplifies another principle of communication: If you get the Meaning wrong, you’re certain to get the Significance wrong. The resident increasingly believes that the animal rescue officer doesn’t care about her plight, or even understand it. The significance is that she fears that she will not get the help she needs. She expresses her incredulity through her increasingly annoyed tone of voice.

Eventually the resident says that the animal weighs three or four hundred pounds. Well, clearly, pussy cats do not weigh three or four hundred pounds, so the officer can’t make sense of this. What she’s hearing is so nonsensical that she knows she’s getting the meaning wrong. So she checks her Intake by repeating the non-sequiturial phrase, adding emphasis to express her confusion. “Three or four hundred pounds?”

Yep, she heard right. Then the resident repeats the words that the officer misheard the first time: “sea lion.”

It’s challenging to notice these communication errors. It’s challenging to notice Intake and Meaning errors before they’ve escalated into feelings and Significance. How can we notice these errors in our own conversations?

What were the clues in this story that something was going wrong? The strongest clue is confusion. Each woman, at several points in the conversation, is stunned. Being stunned is a darned good clue that communication has gone off the rails somewhere. And that’s a good time to stop, step back, take a breath, and walk slowly through the Ingredients of an Interaction one step at a time.

Upon being stunned by the officer’s initial suggestion, the resident could check her Intake. “Did you say that my boyfriend could move it for me?”

When the officer confirms that she indeed said that, the resident might then check the Meaning she’s making. She might say something like, “Do you mean that this seems like a small problem, and that you do not want to help me?”

That may or may not clear things up. If not, the resident (the only one who knows, at this point, that the communication is tangled), might check the officer’s Intake. “What did you hear me say?”

The resident may also choose to express her confusion. “I don’t understand why you would suggest that I ask my boyfriend (if I had one) to help me move a dead sea lion.”

Any of these ideas might help to untangle the communication. None of these ideas is hard to do. What’s hard, for me at least, and perhaps for these two women, is to notice the confusion rather than simply acting out of confusion. When I’m stunned in a conversation, I’m as likely as the next person to continue as if it all makes some sort of sense, and to stumble from one non-sequitur to the next, utterly failing to notice that confusion is important information about the quality of our communication.

I’ve been thinking about a number of “flows” within organizations — the flow of authority, the flow of value, and the flow of communication — and how they interact. I have a few ideas and a lot of questions today. No answers.

The flow of authority is defined by the organization’s formal hierarchy. Authority is the organization’s permission to allocate its resources. People higher in the hierarchy have greater authority. That is, they have permission to allocate more resources.

The flow of value is the circulatory system of the organization. The organization functions by arranging the flow of value within and across its boundaries. Across the organization’s boundaries, products and services flow out to customers; and money flows in. Profits flow out to investors; investment capital flows in. Money flows out to suppliers; materials and tools and services flow in. As long as each flow creates value for each person who participates in the flow, the organization sustains itself.

Within the organization, value flows from group to group. Each group acts as internal investors, customers, and suppliers for others. As long as each flow creates value for each group, the organization thrives.

Here are some questions I’m pondering: How do these flows relate to each other? How do they interact? What are the effects of different ways of relating and interacting? What kinds of interactions lead to a healthy organization? What kinds lead to organizational illness and death?

Communication flows along both kinds of channels. It flows up and down the hierarchy, and it flows through the networks of internal and external investors and customers and suppliers. It flows from one channel to the other, allowing the flow of value and the flow of authority to inform each other.

What happens when communication flows less readily along each path? One kind of blockage is when communication flows more readily within a group, but not across the group’s boundaries to related groups. This is the familiar stovepipe or silo problem.

What other kinds of communication blockage are there? Are there organizations, for example, in which the people in each group communicate readily with their internal customers and suppliers, but not up and down the authority hierarchy? What do those organizations look like?

What other kinds of flow are there? How do they relate to the flows of value, authority, and communication, and to each other? What are the characteristic symptoms of blockage in each flow?

I suspect that thinking about flows can help us identify ways to increase an organization’s health.

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.