Influence in Action

by Craig Weber

  • Smart Thinking by Art Markman

  • Surely You are Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman

  • Teaching Thinking by Edward De Bono

  • The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan

  • Thinking Critically by John Chaffee

  • Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

  • What Do You Care What Other People Think by Richard Feynman

  • Reread Chapter 6: “Conversational Capacity and the Value of Conflict” in my book Conversational Capacity

  Testing Practices

  Testing your views of “reality” is the first and, in some ways, the most important, curiosity skill. It’s a form of mental discipline by which you refuse to thoughtlessly accept the picture of reality that your brain hands you. Conversational capacity, in fact, can be defined as the ability to hold your perspectives hypothetically under pressure. Your ability to treat your view skeptically is a barometer of your focus on learning; it’s the essence of putting your workshop mindset into action. But building the discipline to do this takes practice. Here are several ways you can adopt and strengthen this powerful competence.

  Watch for Where You Are Wrong

  Pay attention to when a view you hold is proven wrong. Feel it. Notice it. Relish it. It’s a gift. That discomfort you feel is the sensation of a closed mind being forced to open. “I wonder where my perspective is wrong?” is a priceless question to ask if you are interested in finding the inevitable disconnects between your worldview and actual events on the ground. Why? Because if you’re going to make the goal of expanding and improving your thinking, your North Star, the first step is to get in close touch with the limitations of your mind.

  Keep an “Indianapolis Journal”

  I was driving to the airport in Los Angeles early one morning, listening to the news, when the traffic report noted two major accidents on the 405 freeway. “I’m going to miss my flight,” I thought to myself. Sure enough, when I reached the 405 it was a parking lot. I finally arrived at LAX 90 minutes late, raced to the terminal, and got in the security line. As I approached the agent, I nervously glanced at my watch and thought, “It’s going to be close, but I might just make the flight.” But my optimism was dashed when, after handing the agent my boarding pass, he looked at me, chuckled, and said, “You’re at the wrong airport. You’re supposed to be at Burbank.”

  “Dammit! That’s right,” I thought. It was yet another “Indianapolis moment.”

  I’ve found that keeping an “Indianapolis Journal,” a practice I first described in Chapter 9, is one of the most powerful (and humorous) ways to build your ability to hold your views more gingerly. I strongly suggest you not just notice when you’re hilariously (or not so hilariously) wrong—write those moments down.

  To reinforce the value of this exercise, let me share something a client sent me recently:

  Wayne Dyer came home from school one day and asked his mum, “What’s a scurvy elephant?” She told him she’d never heard of one and asked where he’d heard it. “From my teacher; he said I was a scurvy elephant.” Bewildered, his mother called the teacher and asked what he had meant. The teacher responded, “As usual Wayne got it wrong. I didn’t say he was a scurvy elephant; I said he was a disturbing element!”

  I love this story because it reminds me of my childhood and the mistakes I used to make. How many times did I mishear something and jumped to a wrong conclusion? Sometimes I have constructed whole alternative explanations for things and incorporated them into my reality, only to learn much later that I have got it wrong, and the misconception has collapsed. It is part of growing up and reevaluating what is happening around you. You learn from your mistakes and grow as a person. However, I wonder how many other things I have misheard or misunderstood and built into a false reality, but not yet learned the error of my ways.1

  Adopt New Self-Talk

  Given the wide range of cognitive biases that distort your views and the natural limitations of your brain, assuming that your view is always wrong to some degree is a very safe assumption. To boost your anti-confirmation bias, I again suggest you regularly ask yourself a basic question: “What’s wrong with my view?” Being more skeptical of your own thinking not only makes it more likely you’ll hold your views hypothetically; it also increases your curiosity and your humility. It’s hard to be arrogant when you know your views are off-kilter in ways you can’t even see. To that end, here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help maintain a healthy distance from the views of the world that your brain presents to you. (Put them in front of you in meetings or conversations, if you have to.):

  • Where am I wrong?

  • Is there a better way to look at this?

  • Who sees things differently and how can I get them to respond to my view?

  • Do other people see it differently, and if so, how did they go up the ladder?

  • What are the gaps or blind spots in my way of looking at this situation?

  Use a Different Test Every Time

  Too much repetition can be construed as inauthentic. Years ago, I worked with a colleague who would use the same test over and over: “How does that seem to you?” Her heart was in the right place, but her repeated use of the same phrase—which isn’t a great test to begin with—came across as forced and fake, and people took her less seriously. So, mix it up by never using the same test twice in a meeting or conversation.

  Come Up with a Few of Your Own

  To keep it fresh, review the sample tests I provide in this book and in Conversational Capacity (pages 87–90), and then come up with a few of your own. (To make this easier, I’ve compiled a list of these tests at https://www.weberconsultinggroup.net/dojo-item/a-great-big-list-of-stests/.) Better yet, come up with a new test every day for a couple of weeks and keep a record of your expanding list. Be creative, and more important, make sure that the tests are authentic and heartfelt, and that they sound like you. A good test not included in my previous samples, for example, is this: “While I am wedded to solving this problem, I’m not wedded to solving it the way I just described. So, if you have better ideas, or see problems with mine, I’d love to explore them with you.”

  Read A Mind of Its Own

  When I coach someone with a strong “win” tendency I always suggest they read Cordelia Fine’s book A Mind of Its Own. It provides an engaging overview of the plethora of reasons we should not trust our brains.

  Best Test

  If you have a full team using the skills, you can adopt this approach. At the end of a meeting, vote on who used the “best test” and explore why. Be sure to evaluate not just the caliber of the test, but how well it was employed: the person’s tone, demeanor, and sincerity.

  Leave the Room

  This is especially useful if you’re in a position of authority and people are less likely to push back on your thinking rigorously, even when you invite them to do so. The CEO of a small engineering firm in Silicon Valley found that even when he started testing his perspectives in engineering staff meetings, his engineers were averse to challenging his thinking for three big reasons: He owned the company; he was an MIT-trained engineer with an intimidating intellect; and he had a strong “win” tendency and didn’t like to be wrong.

  “I was really excited when I learned about this idea of testing my views, so I was really disappointed when it didn’t work at first. I realized that if I was going to convince my engineers I was serious I’d need to start with ‘training wheels.’” When I asked what he meant, he said, “I purposefully went to a meeting with a big decision. I explained it to my team in detail, and then said, “Before I make this decision, I want you to help me improve how I’m looking at it. To help you do that, here is what I’m going to do: I’m going to leave the room for 30 minutes. When I come back in half an hour I’d like at least three concerns put up on a flip chart and we’ll work through them together.” He then got up and left. He
gave his engineering team time alone to wrestle with the decision so his presence wouldn’t get in the way of their conversation. I thought the flip chart was a particularly good idea. It’s more neutral territory.

  “When I came back to the meeting,” he said, “rather than sit at my customary place at the head of the room, I pulled up a chair at the far corner of the table and said, ‘So, what did you come up with?’ I listened. I asked questions. I took a ton of notes. I could not believe how valuable that was. My next thought was ‘Damn it. Is this what I’ve been missing?’ I was hooked. So, I began doing this as a matter of course. Anytime I had a big decision to make, I’d ask my team for input and leave the room. It was working like a charm,” he said. “I actually started looking forward to my weekly engineering staff meetings because I was getting so much more value out of them. I did this for several weeks,” he said, “and then something funny happened. I got up to leave the room one day and one of my engineers said out loud, ‘Look, we talked about this as a team and you can stay if you want. You don’t have to leave the room.’”

  That is culture change. It’s a powerful sign that trust—and the conversational capacity of the team—is going up in a dramatic way. And it happened because the CEO was sending a strong and consistent signal that he not only accepted critical feedback from his engineering team, he valued it.

  Disinvite Agreement

  Ask for counterarguments first. This is especially useful if you’re in a position of authority and people are less likely to push back on your thinking rigorously, no matter how strongly you test them. “I already know what I think. So, if you agree with me, I’d like you to hold off for a few minutes. To expand and improve my thinking, I first want to hear from a few people who see this differently than I do.” Then, after you’ve listened to people who disagree with you, go back around to explore what people like about your idea.

  Thank People Who Challenge Your Thinking

  Thank people who push back on your thinking. “Thanks for challenging me there. That was extremely helpful.”

  Readings

  Here are a few great books that will help you loosen your tight hold on the delusion that the way you “perceive” things is the way things really are. Beyond Cordelia Fine’s book, A Mind of Its Own, I’d also suggest these:

  • Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

  • Don’t Believe Everything You by Thomas E. Kida

  • Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson

  • On Being Certain by Robert Burton

  • The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan

  Inquiry Practices

  Genuine inquiry helps you sharpen your own thinking by leveraging the views of others. Here are a few practices to help you hone this potent but underused skill.

  Bring Others Down Their Ladder

  An effective inquiry asks people to share their “ladder of inference”—how they’ve made sense of a situation or issue. When someone makes a claim, states a position, or declares a point of view, imagine people up on the “ladder of inference” and then ask questions to help you see how they got up there.

  In a meeting, if a colleague blurts out: “That idea doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of working,” you might bring him down the ladder by asking a question such as: “Can you take a couple of minutes and tell the group what leads you to see it that way?” or “Help me out here. What have you seen or heard that leads you to think that’s the case?” If the person you’re talking with understands the concept of “the ladder of inference,” you can simply inquire into the person’s view by saying: “Can you bring that down the ladder for me?”

  Inquire in Four Ways

  In every conversation or meeting, look for at least one opportunity to use inquiry in each of these ways:

  1. Listen for someone with an unexplained or only partially explained position, and then inquire into their thinking to help get their full perspective into the discussion.

  2. Watch for people not participating and invite them to share their views.

  3. Notice colleagues who haven’t stated a clear position on an issue and invite them to clarify it.

  4. Ask a question that expands the conversation:

  • What might we all be missing?

  • Do we have a collective blind spot?

  • What might be an unintended consequence of this decision?

  • What person or group would likely see this issue differently than we do and what would be their argument?

  • What would our worst critic say about how we’re approaching this problem?

  Lean into Frustration

  “Behind every frustration,” says Robert Kegan, “is something cared about.”2 With this in mind, I encourage you to practice getting curious about behavior that would normally put you off. When people get angry, defensive, aggressive, belligerent, or emotional, ask yourself: “What do they care about here?” Then inquire into their view to help them express what’s behind their frustrations or concerns: “Isaac, you just called me a dipstick for stating that I liked the decision. You obviously have some strong feelings about this, and I’d like to understand what’s behind them. What about this decision upsets you so much?”

  Focus Your Beam on the Ideas of Others

  Using your disciplined awareness, practice keeping your beam of attention locked onto the views of others. In every meeting, see how long you can stay focused on listening to others without drifting off. Get in the habit of periodically reflecting on how curious you’re being in the moment.

  In the meeting, periodically ask yourself this question: “Am I actively working to understand how others view things?” If the answer is yes, keep it up. If the answer is no, deliberately shift gears and listen, in a more disciplined way, to how others are making sense of things. Pay attention, in other words, to how curious you’re being in the moment. The surprising difficulty of doing this well is what makes it such a great practice. (This is also a great example of a multi-solving practice: It helps you build your awareness, humility, patience, curiosity, and mental agility simultaneously.)

  Reflect

  Reflect on your conversations and meetings. Use your travel time, perhaps, to consider questions such as these:

  • How often did I inquire into the views of others?

  • How curious was I in the meeting today?

  • Were there things I put forward without testing?

  • Why? What triggered me to push my view so hard?

  • How can I become more aware of this the next time it happens?

  • What was I feeling?

  • What were the signs that I was sliding toward the “win” side of the sweet spot and losing my curiosity about the views of others?

  • Next time I notice this happening, what is a more productive way to respond?

  Keep Score

  Measure it. Have a colleague keep score of how many times you inquire into the view of another person during a meeting and track your progress.

  Come Up with Your Own

  As with the testing practice, come up with one new inquiry per day. This will help you build up a repertoire of ways you can curiously delve into the views of others.

  Seek Feedback

  When you trigger a reaction in someone that you don’t expect (someone gets upset, shuts down, acts nervous, or feigns agreement), inquire into the reaction and how you might have contributed to it:

  • I’m inferring you’re uncomfortable about discussing this. (Explain.) Is there something about the issue or how I’m talking about it that’s contributing to that? Or am I just misinterpreting things?

  • Is there anything about the way I raised the issue that triggered your reaction?

  • How can I bring up an issue like this again and NOT trigger the same defensive reaction?

  Readings

  Here are a few readings that reinforce this important skill:

  • Appreciative Inquiry by David Cooperrider and Diana
Whitney

  • Humble Inquiry by Edgar H. Schein

  • Reread Chapter 6 in Conversational Capacity, “Conversational Capacity and the Value of Conflict,” which explores the value of conflicting perspectives.

  Want to Learn More?

  For a regularly updated list of practices, readings, and other resources, visit conversationalcapacity.com.

  * My work is heavily influenced by Chris Argyris, a research-practitioner who placed a superordinate value on conducting actionable research. If you can’t put the research to use, after all, what’s the point?

  MOVING FORWARD

  Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn’t.

  —RICHARD BACH

  PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

  Building Your Skills While Doing Meaningful Work

  We can change the world and make it a better place. It is in our hands to make a difference.

  —NELSON MANDELA

  Conversational capacity is a skill-based competence and building it requires practice. (If you don’t need practice to acquire an ability, then it isn’t a skill.) To that end, it’s now time to put what you’ve learned to work.

  As I said in the Introduction, the purpose of this book is twofold: