Employing Differences

Employing Differences, Episode 110: Who disagrees?

June 21, 2022 Karen Gimnig & Paul Tevis
Employing Differences
Employing Differences, Episode 110: Who disagrees?
Show Notes Transcript

"If I'm having trouble being curious, I should get really interested in why. Why am I so attached that I can't be curious about what these other people that I'm working with are wanting and needing and showing up with?"

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Karen:

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Paul:

I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen:

And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul:

Each episode we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Who disagrees?"

Karen:

So often we take on a question because we are wanting to answer it. And this week actually, the question is one we are proposing you might want to ask. Which is, who disagrees with whatever it is that looks like it's moving forward, or who disagrees with the thing that I think. And we're proposing this as a very different approach than what most of us have experienced in mainstream American culture decision-making. If you look at our political system, if you look at most of my experience with decision making, that the approach is, I think about it, I maybe even listen to some people, I decide what I think is going to be best for the community, for the company, for the project, whatever group I'm in, and then I advocate for the thing that I think will be best. And if nobody voices any disagreement, fabulous. And it turns out that it's not actually so fabulous, because the absence of a voice of disagreement is not the same thing as an absence of disagreement. So what we're wanting to play with in this episode is why it's so important to really invite dissent, to go looking for disagreement, and also how to go about doing it.

Paul:

It really is about inviting it and going looking for it, because it's almost certainly there. And, as you point out, there are strong reasons why we often don't give voice to our disagreement, to our dissent. Often, because we're socialized not to, and we're probably getting very strong messages from the group, from the facilitator, from the leader, that they'd really rather just move on. That we'd really just get rather get through this. And that's a disservice to the group. So so what I tend to do is make explicit opportunities – particularly early in working with a group – for people to express disagreement. For example, in most of my training workshops, very early in the first day – these are usually multiday sorts of things – I have a proposed facilitator and learning agreement. And so it's got some ground rules for interacting that that I generally like to start with. I find that they're fairly useful, and also, the group needs to agree to that. And so I've been– unsurprisingly, over the last couple of years, I've been doing this a lot online – and so one of the things that I ask people to do is I say, read this page over, take a look at this, and then I would love to hear any changes or additions that you would like to make. Anything on here that you would like to change, or anything you'd like to add to it. And just go ahead and put those in into the chat in the online function that we're using. And if you don't have any, then go ahead and just put in put an "N" in the chat. And so I kind of do two things there. One is I explicitly ask for additions. I don't say, "Is everybody okay with this?" I default to, "I want to know what doesn't work about this for you." And also, I give you the option to say that you're good with it, but I need you to explicitly give assent to it. If there's nothing that you want to add, I need to know that. And then usually we debrief that whole thing, and I talk about exactly this with them. And I say we can't assume that because nobody says something doesn't mean that they don't have anything. And so I need to explicitly hear that you don't have anything. So those are just two things that I like to do. And again, I do this on day one, and we're probably 20 minutes into the 16+ hours we're going to be spending together on stuff. So I like to start with building an explicit interface for those sorts of things, defaulting to hearing from people who have objections or disagreements, and not assuming that silence is approval.

Karen:

And I want to call that last phrase out that you used which is silence is approval, or I've often heard silence is assent. Because I've actually seen that as a ground rule and consensus groups. And the premise behind it is that each person individually has some responsibility to speak up if they disagree. And I agree that this is a good idea. If you're saying, "When I disagree, should I say something?" "Yes, absolutely." The problem with making it a ground rule is that, in fact, I don't think it's usually true. Just because nobody is speaking dissent, that doesn't mean everyone is agreeing, that everyone is supporting, that everybody's on board with it. That sort of rule really strongly favors people who are comfortable speaking up. It favors people who are comfortable in conflict situations. It favors people who are comfortable with debate and feel safe in debate situations. And in my experience, that's maybe half of the population, that is comfortable with that, and if you are in a consensus or the cohousing group, like the clients I work with, 20 to 30% are in that comfortable group. It is a long way from a majority, certainly a long way from everybody that actually has the sort of skills and comfort and sense of safety. And I don't mean that the group didn't provide it. I mean, people arrive with, as you say, socially normed, family norms around, "Don't be the one who speaks dissent." It doesn't feel safe. And so putting rules in place that favor only the voices that are already most easily heard really encourages an assumption that if nobody's saying anything, that means we're all on board. It's functioning from false information. It's creating power dynamics that you don't really want. And it actually makes consensus harder to get in the long run. Because what happens then is people don't speak but then at the end of the day will block a consensus decision, or will let a decision go through and then not support it. And sabotage it in some other way later. So I really want to call out this idea that silence equals assent is a very dangerous idea.

Paul:

And the thing you just said there is the reason why we want to be asking who disagrees and we want to be asking as early as possible. We don't want to get to the case where either we get to the end of our decision process and it turns out that people have objections that we just didn't hear about earlier and so couldn't work with or that we all agree, we decide we have sufficient level of support to move forward with this, and then as it turns out, our assessment of that level of support was incorrect. That people don't support the implementation. That is what you want to avoid, which is why you need to make space and you want to invite disagreement and dissent earlier, when you still have time to deal with it. I think there is a timing piece around this. When I'm working with a group, and I know that they've got some some pressure, some time set aside to make the decision, I think as we get closer and closer to that time, I might be inviting a little bit less dissent. But I want to be inviting it super early, so we can get it out on the table when we can still work with it. And that's where we it feels like,"Oh, I don't want to open up the can of worms." Open the can of worms when you still have time to put them back in, when you have time to deal with them. It's when you get near the end, that "Okay, now we've worked together a little more, and so maybe I might feel more comfortable doing it," you actually want to do it sooner than that, to avoid the implementation problems. To avoid the we actually aren't able to move forward with this like we thought we were gonna. Because those issues were there. We just didn't look at them. We didn't pick up the rock and look under it to see what was there. And so to circle back to the thing you said, I think it is important that we create enough of a sense of safety, and we created an expectation from people that, "Yes, if you have an objection, we want to hear about it, give voice to it." And also build into your process, explicit calls for dissent, and explicit ways to do that. So you've got both. It becomes both individual and collective to bring those things up and to bring them up sooner, when you still can work with them.

Karen:

I think one strategy for that that's really important – we're saying that there are people who will naturally voice their dissent. You're not gonna have to work too hard to hear that from them. So I'm more interested in how do we get folks who are less inclined to speak dissent to do that. And two strategies come to mind that I like a lot. One is a spectrum activity where people can respond non verbally. Hopefully that will follow them with some verbal discussion about it. But if you're in a room, you can frame different ways of looking at the issue. You probably want three or four different kinds of questions around it. But essentially, if you strongly agree, go to the right, and if you strongly disagree, go to the left, and if you're somewhere in the middle, like put yourself in the middle. And you can do this– I use Google Slides a lot for this, where everybody's initials on a line – you can do it digitally as well, if you're online. But letting people move to demonstrate where they are. It also lets lots of people weigh in, so everybody is getting their voice in the room without having to speak in words, without having to raise their hand or put themselves out there or even answer a question. So that that's one way that you shift that power differential so people who are less comfortable are more likely to speak up. Another way that I like is to frame it differently than, "Who disagrees?" Which is to say,"We're making two lists. We're making the list of why this is fabulous and why this is terrible." Or what's great about this and what's problematic about this, or what's concerning about this. You don't have to frame it in total opposites, but sort of the pros and cons kind of list. And we're gonna invite both of those. So we're not saying who disagrees with a proposal, because that triggers that discomfort for people for whom it does – not everybody, but some. But we're just saying we're gathering the pros and cons. And that creates a safety around both the pros and cons. And I'll do that either as a whole group, I'll also often pair people off, and have them each name these are all the pros I can think of, these are all the cons I can think of. And I've had people say, "But wait, I don't think there are any cons. This is the thing I want." And I'm like, "Then I want you to pause and really get curious and interested about what cons might other people be seeing that you're not." So if each person has named both sides of it, the ability to hold the various perspective increases. And I will say, getting people to do that I find more effective in a pair than to have to say in front of the whole group support for an idea they don't actually agree with. So it gives people a chance to explore that. So just trying to frame it in ways that feel less contentious or less adversarial will help the folks who won't step into adversarial places still participate in the discussion.

Paul:

And what both of those do is they give the group access to more information. Because in the spectrum exercise – which a thing that I love to do – everybody can now see where we are as a group. So now that's more information that everybody in the group has access to, and that they weren't aware of before necessarily. They may have known where they were about this. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes you get surprised by where you put yourself on the spectrum. But now I understand way more about what's going on with the group and not just my own perspective. And the the"what's fabulous and what's terrible exercise" – particularly when you start to think about what are other people's perspectives about it – that's also more information that the group now has. Because the whole reason for me for inviting dissent is to uncover new things that we need to address. To get new information to the group so that the group can come up with a more robust way of addressing all of the things that may be hidden. Until the group has those things, until the group knows those things, it's hard to do that. And it also does the thing that you kind of started off this episode talking about. It helps move us out of that place of"Here's what I want." Here's the things that I think are important. It's not just important that I know that someone disagrees with it. I need to understand what is it about this that someone else objects to? Because that's something that needs to be accounted for in whatever it is that we're trying to. Because I might go, "Wow, this proposal as it stands, if it could be implemented, would get exactly what it is that I want. But I now understand from listening to other people how this has no chance of flying, because nobody would actually work to support it, to implement it." And so now I need to start to see okay, what are the other concerns that I wasn't aware of before that need to be addressed in order to give all of us a chance of actually getting what we need out of this?

Karen:

And I'm going to put the word on that that we bring up very often which is curiosity. And and I really want to point to how we've talked about some structural things, some things a

facilitator can do:

You can ask a question, you can have a spectrum exercise, you can put in a certain process. But at the end of the day, the thing that makes this work is actual genuine curiosity. It's not about, "Well, I did all the stuff I was supposed to do. I checked all the boxes. I asked if there was any disagreement. I gave people an opportunity to speak up." Those are good things. But what actually makes the decision-making process really robust and work is if – especially the facilitator – but really everyone in the room is genuinely curious and interested about, "What am I not seeing? What am I not aware of? What's going on and meaningful for the people who are in disagreement? What's behind the objections, even if people wouldn't block it necessarily? What is behind their concern?" If I can genuinely be curious about that the relationships in the group are going to be served. The safety and sharing different opinions is going to be served. And so I just want to get to that deeper level. It's one thing to structurally ask the questions or invite the input – which is great. The graduate-level, best practice is the genuine actual curiosity. And if I'm having trouble being curious, I should get really interested in why. Why am I so attached that I can't be curious about what these other people that I'm working with are wanting and needing and showing up with?

Paul:

One of the guidelines for that that I have posted on the wall in my office here comes from the Human Systems Dynamics Institute. They talk about"Standing in inquiry. One of the guidelines for that is"transforming disagreement into mutual exploration." And that's what you're really talking about here. First, we have to uncover that there is disagreement, and then how can we explore it together? How can we engage our mutual curiosity around it, and see it not as something that necessarily has to divide us. It's something that lives in that space between, so how can we explore it together?

Karen:

So we started with a question that this week is a question we're hoping you will be asking, which is "Who disagrees?" And then how do they disagree? And what do they disagree about? But who disagrees? What dissent exists? And we're really suggesting that it's essential if we're going to maintain trust, and have support and make really solid decisions that will then be implemented, and have the results that we're looking for. We've got to get all of that information in the room, and so looking for the descent side really broadens the information we have to work with and gives us the opportunity for better results. We suggested some ways to do that, aome structures we can use. Just actually asking. When we ask ask people not only if they have objections, but if they don't have objections to positively state that so that everybody's responding. Using nonverbal things like spectrums, using less contentious-feeling frames like pros and cons lists. So lots of structural ways to go about it. And that in the end, what's going to be really the solid foundation you need is genuine curiosity. Genuine interest in what information don't I have? What's going on for other people? What needs are in or around this and in the system that I may not be aware of? And if we can do all of that, while we may have to do a little more processing to get to the point of a decision, the decisions that we have will end up much stronger and less likely to come back as fights later on.

Paul:

Exactly. That's gonna do it for us for today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen:

And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.