Employing Differences, Episode 68: Why not both?

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

I'm Paul Tevis.

And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Each episode we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Why not both?"

So this is a question that comes up a lot in consensus-type spaces, where people have different ideas, and everybody's very nice and polite and generous. You know, we don't want to take away somebody else's opportunity to do what they want to do just because of what we want to do, and so we tend to not tell anybody, "no," and instead to say, "yes" to everybody, because that feels great. And one of those kinds of examples is coming up in lots of places about now, which is: There are people who are really excited to get back to meeting in person and want to be doing their meetings in person, and there are other people who are saying for various reasons that they really want to keep meeting online, whether it's for geography or for disability reasons, or any number of other things, maybe just preference. We all moaned and groaned about,"Now we've got to do it online," when COVID started. Now, COVID is loosened up, in-person becomes an option, and all of a sudden we realize we have learned a lot about how to make really good use of online meetings. And there's things about them that work really well and we're wanting to hold on. So why not both? Let's just do a hybrid meeting. How about that, Paul?

So this is timely for me in a couple of ways. We're recording this on a Thursday, and on Sunday, I'm going to be attending in-person, my first hybrid meeting, since since things started, which is going to be fascinating. I'll be curious to see how it works. So the other thing that's interesting to me is that you talked about how in consensus spaces, there's really this tendency to say, "Sure, we'll say yes, to you, and yes to you, and yes to you." And my experience a lot in the corporate world is actually it's like pulling teeth to get people to consider the "both-and" the solution. They're so used to thinking, well, we have to choose between A and B. That oftentimes there is a sense that there is no possibility even looking for a solution that includes both. And so what's fascinating is both of those tendencies have their failure modes. The "we never look for an inclusive solution" and then I think the other failure mode that we're kind of talking about here is when we always say yes to everything. I tend to feel like we can end up in a situation where we don't actually get both. And hybrid meetings in particular, it's a case where this is neither fish nor fowl. Where we're not getting the both. We're getting this weird conglomeration mashed together of the two things that doesn't actually satisfy the both. But unless we step back and look at what's actually happening, we may not notice that. What you kind of pointed to a little bit and what you're talking about is, I think it is really useful to consider how do we satisfy both sets of needs or multiple different sets of needs? The reasons why people are asking for these things. That I think is a really useful way of thinking about it. I think it's less useful to just say yes to the specific request to say, "Oh, yeah, we can add that, we can add that, we can add, that we can add that." In NVC terms, this would be this the strategies for getting the needs met. When we just say yes to all these strategies, it's possible that nobody gets their needs met. But you end up with something like a hybrid meeting that actually contains the worst pieces of both forms of meetings. And yes, I absolutely have a point of view about how those things work. So I think that, "Why not both?" I think part of the answer to that is, because by doing both, you might get neither.

Yeah, I think some serious discernment about what are the costs of trying to do both? I can think of other examples. Oh, we want to meet on Tuesdays while somebody else wants to meet on Fridays for a book club or something. Well, what if we met both? Well, you're gonna have two really small book clubs. And you're not going to have the same thing that you would have had if the group agreed to one night and that was where we put our energy together. So I think there are a lot of examples where you can, to your point, sometimes come up with really creative ways to do both things, to meet both sets of needs, especially when you get to talking about what are the needs that are trying to be met. But also, in the case of hybrid meetings, I think you very quickly get to where the sort of warm, congenial, easy exchange, you got body language going all that stuff that people want when they say let's meet in person again is really dumbed down, when you also have an online presence. Better tech makes it better. I'm not sure it totally fixes it. And better tech is really pricey. And inevitably, a couple of the people who are at that meeting are now distracted by paying attention to making sure that the people who are on the remote technology are being heard and managing the technology, and"Oh, wait, I can't hear the microphone got in the wrong place." And there's slow clutter around that. And then for the folks who are remote, particularly if they were remote, because well couldn't see everybody in person or I couldn't hear everybody well in person. When I got one camera showing 10 people, they have the same problem. That didn't meet their need at all. Or you know that the microphones are not well distributed, or they're not well placed for each speaker. So half the time they can't hear a speaker anyway, same problem they had when they were in person. So depending on what are those needs, that you're trying to meet, an awful lot of the time, you don't. It's not actually going to work. Now, having said that, if it's a largely presentation meeting, for example, if you're gathering to hear someone speak, that's actually pretty easy tech to manage. You can get one person who's in front of the room, and you can get a camera and a microphone in front of them and get them broadcast remotely. So a lot of it is, what is it that we're actually trying to do? And what are the challenges of doing that in the various ways? And what are the advantages? And how do we balance the best needs of all of those things?

Yeah, and I mean, that fundamental process that you've laid out, I think it works for I mean, in some ways, this is no different than kind of any other decision that we need to make, where we're having to notice that there are competing sets of interests here, and that there's no easy, simple answer. We have to go into that space of deciding, "Well, okay, how much energy are we going to commit to making this decision? Who gets to matter? Who do we listen to? How do we do these sorts of things? Anytime there are differences and in a group, when there are differences between preferences, when there are differences between sort of needs and accessibility and all those sorts of things. So how we meet is, in some ways, just the current example of this kind of challenge. And I will also point out that, I think that the way that these decisions get made, when you watch whose needs get prioritized, whose preferences get prioritized, and things like that can reveal a lot about the dynamics of the group. Because they're usually reflective of those power dynamics that are already at play. And oftentimes, that is one of the reasons why, even when there are possible good both-and inclusive solutions, why they often get overlooked. And I think this is actually going back to the difference between sort of consensus-based groups and hierarchical groups. Why not both? Well, because the person in power, the person in authority, or the groups in power and authority, aren't interested in solutions that are harder for them, that don't meet their needs any better. They can basically say, well, we don't need to do both. We don't need to consider those things, because we can just make this decision. Whereas in consensus-based groups, in order to get the consensus that you need, you often have to get the support from everybody, and so you have to put everything in there. I think that's one of the things that this kind of thing reveals is how do groups make decisions, and whose needs to they prioritize and sort of what comes up there? And you can see how this is just reflective of any other patterns, in your grou or in your organizat on with regards to those kinds o considerations?

Yeah, I think that really kind of sums up where we are, which is, when you're trying to decide, "Could we just do both" you really got to look at wou d it be both or would it b neither? And what's happenin with power dynamics in you group? And really, what are th needs that are wanting to be me by each one? And how do they ge met in the hybrid or combine option? And how do they not ge met? And then it's a har conversatio. Then it's just what at the end of the day do we value most as a group? And as much as some of us may not like to sort of say, "Well, som values are higher than others" t the end of the day, doing b th because you don't want an one to lose may mean that ev ryone loses. So really being th ughtful about what is the be t choice, knowing that both mi ht be choice C, but it's not oft n both A and B.

Yeah, I think that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

And I'm Karen Gimnig, nd this has been Employing ifferences.