Published on 03 Mar 2020 in agile
Problems are left unsolved and opportunities untouched when we fail to get past our own judgements and assumptions.
How many times have you been in a meeting where there’s been criticism of a team or an individual?
“Joe’s always late”. “They’re not aligned”. “Those guys aren’t team players, they never give us what we need”.
All of the above are judgements. They might be correct, but I’ve seen them made far too often without presenting data in the form of observable behaviours or facts.
We’re human. It’s hard not to rush to judgment and often it comes with emotion (usually anger).
I’m as guilty of this as anyone else. What’s worse is that judgements are contagious. If I tell you not to think of pink elephants, you can’t help but picture a pink elephant. If a loud and assertive individual makes a statement like “team A are useless”, even though they haven’t presented facts to back the view up, it will influence other people in the room.
This often results in bad decisions and toxic environments where the loudest voice has the most influence and wrong conclusions are allowed to spread unchallenged.
How can we avoid this?
Recognising when someone is making a judgement is a great start. We shouldn’t settle with the conclusion unless we understand the steps in their thinking. This is as applicable to your own thinking as to someone else, and you don’t need to disagree with them, just ask for more information. You might say: You could be right - but can you help me understand your thinking? What makes you say that? Can you provide some examples? We don’t have time to get into it? Ok, let’s meet up after to discuss and work out how to improve the situation.
A really useful model is Chris Argyris’ Ladder of Inference. It describes how you move from a piece of data to a conclusion. Our subconscious is wonderful at picking out the things we think are relevant (see rung 2 on the ladder), processing in terms of our own past experience (rungs 3 and 4) and giving us a conclusion which we take action on (rung 6). It’s a very useful evolutionary tool when you’re in the stone age and need an immediate fight or flight response. But when you’re working in a large organisation it’s unlikely that your gut is going to give you the right answer without your having considered the data - and forgoing the facts is grossly unfair to those you’re commenting on, as well as being unprofessional.
Chris Argyris’ Ladder of Inference describes how you move from a piece of data to a conclusion. Image source: The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
So next time you feel yourself making a judgement, or hear one from someone else, consider the following: Don’t accept your/their conclusions as self evident facts. Remember that they are based on a subset of data and have assumptions and inferences baked in. Unpack what led you to the conclusion. Explain the steps in your thinking, using examples, outlining the data you’re selecting. Ask others if they see gaps. If your thought process holds up, then take action. Using this process you’ll achieve a better understanding of what’s going on, arrive at better decisions that target underlying issues and most importantly you’ll be in a strong position to create positive change based on observable behaviours, data and other evidence for constructive feedback.