Life is complicated. Cultures are complicated. Traditions are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Conversations are complicated. We are participants in all these arenas, and many more besides and we are bound to get it wrong – a lot. The interesting question here though is what is ‘wrong’?

As children growing up in a complex world we labour constantly, often without knowing it, to work out what is going on around us. What does that frown mean? What do I say when someone says that? How do I stop the shouting? Why am I getting peas again?

So we guess. We develop ‘rules of thumb’ so that we don’t have to work things out from scratch every time. Much of this rule-making is done by the time we reach pre-school age or soon after, although our accumulated expertise might not always be evident because, at that stage, we often lack the words to describe our insights to our carers. But let us be clear, this expertise is just based on really good guesses and personal interpretation. Fact-checking features very little at this stage.

And then the tricky stuff really begins. From the first days in contact with other children it begins to dawn upon us that we don’t all think alike, or to be more precise, we don’t all believe alike. Each of us has by now developed a subtly different set of rules from everyone else in the group and here we face an even tougher challenge than before – deciding which of the competing rules is ‘right’.

Much of the time our need for an instant decision in tandem with a need for comfort leads us to one of the binary conclusions: either you’re wrong and I am right or you are right and it’s me who is wrong. It is this decisional dead-end that opens the opportunity for ‘mistakes’. Of course, mostly, there is no mistake, there’s a mismatch.

If there is a mistake it is one that we seem to often miss the lesson on – even as we grow into adults. The mistake in a given situation is not made when I fail to match your rule or you fail to match mine but when we both fail to notice that there is a rule. Or to be more precise, two. The follow-on error is to for each person to promptly decide that the other person is wrong/bad/thoughtless/horrible (add your own judgements here).

So, is the remedy simply rule recognition – noticing that we are just believing something different rather than being different, right or wrong? Partly. But first an example:

I am writing this sitting on the train to London. 10 minutes ago, as the train filled up with passengers a man drew level with the seat across the table from me and slammed his orange drink down as if to say “Mine! This is my seat – anyone got a problem with that?!” Now his version… “Oh no, I don’t think I’m going to be popular, three people at the table already and it’s very quiet. I hate asking ‘is this anyone’s seat? Instead, I’ll just put my drink down here and they will hopefully get the message that I’d like to sit down and if there’s a problem it won’t be so embarrassing as actually sitting down or asking the stupid question which often gets a negative reply…”

Of course I don’t know what he was thinking, I’m making it all up, his version and mine. The point is, which version of events do I need to believe to bring about the better outcome? Do I make the juice man nicer by treating him badly? Of course not. Do I make myself nicer by treating him badly after guessing nasty things about him? Definitely not.

Which brings me to the second part of the remedy:

Stop guessing like a child or guess something nice.

What hidden forces really operate behind organisational decisions? Politics? Empire- building? Shareholder pressure? I would have to say “all and none of the above”. All of those are the evidence; the things that we see people doing. In reality, it’s the drivers of those things that we should be interested in: emotion. What we actually see are the disguises that people adopt to communicate their feelings about how things are going. We resort to political manoeuvring when they have run out of ideas for how to ask for something. We build empires when we are worried about getting lost in the machine and shareholders express their feelings by buying, selling and voting.

And all of these are proxies for proper emotional expression. But before I tell you about the more useful alternatives let me explain what I mean by ‘proper emotional expression’ because you may already be thinking: “oh-ho, getting emotional is ‘not me’ or at least it’s not done where I work.” I bet you’re right if we are talking about people putting on major displays of emotion (ranting, stomping about, going red in the face, bursting into tears, going quiet and moody etc.). What I am talking about is giving a clear, rational explanation of how I am feeling so that people know what is going on and can make an informed decision about what to do next.

Right, practical details next; how do you do it yourself or help others to do it if they are struggling? Three ways for you to experiment with:

Listen and mention – don’t just blunder on when you are talking with someone who is becoming unreasonable. Be brave – give them the chance to express how they are feeling – you don’t have to ask them outright – you don’t even need to mention the word ‘feeling’ (the f-word). Instead, try: “You sound/look/seem…” [the name of the feeling] and then pause to let them acknowledge your observation and to continue with their point. My guess is that they will become more open as you encourage them to be clear about what is driving their point (how they feel). You may need to do this repeatedly as they express their various views. Be patient – your time will come!

Notice and declare – if you notice yourself getting stuck in a particular position and sense that you are being taken over by your opinion (emotions, actually) give yourself the chance to be explicit about how you are feeling. Again, you don’t have to mention that f-word.

Try: “I’m getting worried/annoyed/frustrated about where this conversation is going/the change in plan/the loss of momentum… because…”

What’s left unsaid – we frequently leave difficult conversations half finished, or at least with important things left unsaid. This is often because someone has purposefully or accidentally shut the dialogue down prematurely. To make sure that it’s not you, you can say: “Before we finish I want to ask a question of us both – “what’s left unsaid?” You might think this is completely artificial, too off the wall. This way of talking is certainly unusual because it does not follow convention but it does give us access to immense opportunities to clear up bad feeling and thus make progress on issues that most of us can get for ever stuck on. Deal with the unspoken and the rest will sort itself out.

If we want to keep emotion in its proper place in our lives, and not least of all in our businesses, then we need to learn how to deal with them. Properly managed, emotions help us to make great decisions, to be worth living with and drive us to do amazing things. But left to run riot by lack of acknowledgement they can make things truly miserable. Emotions for business people are like water for a plumber; if we don’t channel them properly we will forever be plugging the leaks – occasionally getting flooded out without warning.

You have recently noticed that your line manager has been paying more attention than usual to your work, tasks and projects. Up until now Annette, the Country Manager, has always left you largely alone to get on with things. This has not always been the case with your VP colleagues but you assumed that she would leave you alone as long as she trusted you. Having said that, you have just taken on a global initiative that requires you to network with the Main Board and all the other Country Managers. Whilst this is interesting for you, and means a much higher profile across the organisation, you can’t help feeling rather crowded out by your boss’s attentions. What is she up to? Is she jealous? Worried? Has she stopped trusting you? Is she at some point going to start making your life harder locally so that you can’t focus on the global initiative?

What do you do next?

A. “These things happen”, you tell yourself. Annette is bound to feel anxious about being overtaken – it’s quite natural. You are just going to have to tough it out and stay out of her way and hope that she doesn’t overload you with other tasks so that you fail in the global project.
B. You ask for a meeting with Annette to probe her on what has changed in your relationship. This is one opportunity that you can’t afford to have scuppered by a jealous boss. You need to find out what is going on.
C. You decide that Annette needs to be persuaded to trust you with this massively high-profile task. On the basis that she is out to protect her reputation, and maybe even yours, you are going to keep her well fed with information, updates and little bits of HQ gossip and reassurance until she realises that she can loosen her grip on your schedule.
D. You conclude that 1. You really are not prepared to put up with being micromanaged and that 2. You really don’t know what is going on. You decide that you need to have a very frank discussion with Annette about where she is with the project and to find out what she is most worried about. Hopeful you will then be able to sort out a game plan for how to make the most of the opportunity without having to worry about being stabbed in the back.

I’ll publish my chosen option here on Monday afternoon. Let me know yours as soon as you like.

I confess at the outset of this post that I’ve never much been into the ‘cultural differences’ stuff – empathic communication and its breakdowns are my first love. And to tell you the truth, until last week I simply hadn’t been that interested in the topic.

The facts are that I like people from all over the place, I like traveling and I find different cultures, ways, foods, places etc. all fascinating. Full stop. I had of course failed to grasp how someone’s place of birth and the culture of their upbringing might impact on their interactions with other people other than because of differences in their accent, incomplete vocabulary and a quite natural suspicion of British food. A conversation last week has unearthed, for me, a more intriguing subtlety in this cultural difference malarkey.

I imagine that it is generally assumed (well, it was by me) that when a person, for whom English is not the mother tongue, sets out to express an opinion in conversation, any faltering on their part might be explained by a hole in their grammar or vocabulary and/or a misplaced unease about making themselves look daft by using the wrong phrase. According to the one person with whom I have had my only proper conversation about all this (not a large sample I grant you – bear with me) what invariably holds him back from expressing himself more transparently can more accurately be described as a strong dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of the second language and not any lack of his grasp of it.

So, it is not embarrassment that ‘le mot juste’ is, at that moment, beyond his reach but a deep-seated conviction that people from the culture in which he is the visitor would not get to grips with the essence of what he was trying to express, no matter what words he chose. He finds himself thinking: If I can’t get them to connect or empathize with this sentiment then I would prefer to leave the whole thing out. This barrier to expression therefore is not about a hole in idiomatic sharing as much as wider gap in cultural reference points such as what is funny, familiar or foul. The problem is only compounded when a person speaking their second language is skillful to the point that their colleagues believe that none of these problems exist. In such instances, it is possible that untimely failures to speak up might be misinterpreted as examples of ‘not joining in’ and therefore as signs of aloofness.

The conversation last week also shed light on something closer to home. I gave up speaking Italian to our first daughter, Vianne, after more than a year of persevering. I found that I was simply unable to express the subtleties of my feelings for her during the day-to-day ups and downs in a way that did justice to what was going on in my head – and heart. Although I had done my three Rs in Italian, and had been fluent in both English and Italian from first words, I was starting to feel cut off from Vianne. I should not have been surprised. I had, after all, only really been exposed to parent-child language in English and had thus acquired the subtleties of my own parenting vocabulary in that language rather than in Italian.

It seems that linguistic proficiency is only one superficial cultural bridge. The invisibility of other barriers should make us more wary about jumping to negative conclusions about the social faults that we find in acquaintances from other cultures. However, a question remains: In future, will I be quick enough to notice my lack of cultural empathy before they do?

PS. Thanks again to Robert for his excellent cartoon strip. www.robertthompsoncartoons.com

What would you do next?

She’s done it again. The Marketing Director, Jane Shaw has just taken credit for another one of your ideas. It first happened soon after you arrived in your post as Head of Sales.  On that occasion you decided to take it as a compliment, a way of currying favour with your new boss and an opportunity to build up brownie points with someone who would probably turn out to be your ally for the radical agenda that you were hired to execute on – to increase individual client spend. But in the last nine months it has happened again and again. Today it was during a Board meeting when she essentially trotted out the outline of an idea that you had floated past her just a couple of days before as part of a strategy for achieving your objectives. Having said that, there was no denying that Jane sounded incredibly plausible and actually added usefully to the idea with her own input – she really knew how to get John on Board!

Would you…?

Would you confront her with an assertive statement ? Would you let it go and just have more good ideas? Would you communicate empathy with her position as a Marketing Director under pressure? Or would you stop telling her your ideas and go to the MD first? There is certainly more than one right answer – each of us can carry different things off by force of personality, choice of words and by moral conviction.

Different strategies carry different levels of short and long term risk. What would you do next? Let me know with a reply or go to www.originalsoftskills.com for some options and the answer.

You don’t know it but you have been eagerly awaiting this tool. Don’t choke – yes, I’ve designed a tool.

I know, I’m allergic to measurement but this is not a psychometric. This is not a straight ability or personality test. This is about helping someone to understand to what degree they can notice and name emotions in voices. But unlike with psychometrics, this is definitely a START POINT and not a dead-ended, reductionist, deterministic statement of who someone is what what they are destined to do from here on in. It’s a nudge, if they want it, to remember what it is to pay attention to people’s feelings. A reminder. A wake up call. The start point in a piece of re-learning or remembering.

So give it a go – we go live with the Beta version around the 20th September.

So, where do I find this thing? Here

Listen hard and have fun.