I just finished reading a mind-opening book, Think Again by Adam Grant. It got me thinking again on many subjects. Here I will highlight a few:
1. Choose “task conflict”; not "relationship conflict". To avoid that it’s essential we develop trust-based relationships. We have to know one another. Find common bonds. That’s the place to start. I haven’t done that as well as I should have, looking back, in some instances. This doesn’t mean we just surround ourselves with “agreeable people.”
It is vital to avoid defend-attack spirals. Need to focus on the substance of the disagreement.
2. The most likely person to change your point of view is you. That’s most likely to happen when you’re asking questions, raising things you would like to jointly consider with another person.
It’s important to view argument not as a war but as a choreograph, a dance.
It’s vital to have these conversations in person.
3. The importance of influential listening. Approaching the other person with a confident humility and appropriate sense of doubt.
I like what E.M. Forster wrote, “How can I tell what I think till I see what I say.” As one of his biographers wrote: “To speak with him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest and best self.”
4. We need to avoid the binary bias. On almost every issue, we act like there are just two sides: believers and non-believers. This applies to abortion, gun regulations, immigration. We should come to recognize complexity as a sign of credibility.
5. One of the best ways to learn is to teach.
6. There is no way of overestimating the importance of revising our drafts and skills to achieve deep learning.
7. In a study distinguishing high performance teams, the most important differentiator wasn’t who was on the team or even how meaningful their work was. What mattered most was psychological safety. That’s not a matter of relaxing standards or making people comfortable or being nice and agreeable or giving unconditional praise. It grew from a climate of respect, trust and openness in which people can raise concerns and make suggestions without fear of reprisal. It’s the foundation of a learning culture.
These are the same characteristics I’ve always attached to having a positive “smell of the place.”
Creating psychological safety starts with modeling the values we want to promote, identifying and praising others who exemplify them, and building a coalition of colleagues who are committed to making the change.
8. Admitting one’s own imperfections out loud normalizes vulnerability and makes teams more comfortable opening up about their own struggles. It takes confident humility to admit that we are a work in progress.
9. We have to be wary of falling victim to what psychologists call identity foreclosure. I have had that for better and, yes, in some ways for worse throughout my life. I probably still do now.
10. Pursuing happiness for its own sake is a blind alley. As John Stuart Mill wrote, “Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of the others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way.”
I have lived my life in accord with this counsel: “At work and in life, the best we can do is plan for what we want to learn and contribute over the next year or two and stay open to what might come next.” Adapting an analogy from E.L. Doctorow, writing out a plan for your life “is like driving at night in a fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
No comments:
Post a Comment