[00:00:00] Karen: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:09] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:11] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:12] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is what are my choices? 

[00:00:19] Karen: So this is an example of a question that we are encouraging us all to ask of ourselves.

[00:00:26] Karen: And it comes up a lot. I mean, I think there's lots of times when it's good to outline your choices, but we're particularly thinking about a time when we tend to get a little tunnel vision on choices. So, that particular thought here is moments of conflict. So, when we are unhappy with somebody else, when we have been in open conflict with somebody else, but a lot of times it shows up way at the beginning of this.

[00:00:52] Karen: I walk in, I see a thing that makes me unhappy, I think it's somebody's fault, I'm grumpy with them, whatever. And in that moment, I think it's super useful to stop and ask myself a series of questions actually, and I do a bit of this in workshops I give sometimes. But the first question is, why does it matter to me?

[00:01:11] Karen: Right? I'm upset, I'm happy, but why? Because somebody else seeing it would probably be less upset than me. So what is it about this that has me upset? And the second question is, what are my values? So if I walk in and somebody else has made a mess in the break room, say my first thought about values might be for cleanliness and order and fairness and that kind of thing.

[00:01:33] Karen: But if I dig a little deeper, maybe also office harmony and the relationship I have with whoever I think left the mess. And some of those things might be values as well. So getting kind of a moment's look into what are all of my own values about this. And then we get to our question of the day, which is what are my choices?

[00:01:55] Karen: And we'll talk more about that. And then what outcome, what I predict is most likely given each of my choices. And then lastly, which choice is the best choice for me. So I think it's those last three that we're going to explore on the episode today. 

[00:02:10] Paul: And I think it's often hard, particularly when we are cognitively impaired by a fraught situation.

[00:02:17] Paul: We've talked about before that when we're in conflict, when we're in anxious situations, we are not at our best thinking selves. We don't show up as smart as we would otherwise, when we're in a situation like that, it can be really hard to see that we have any choices. Oftentimes we are being driven by sort of our pattern, right?

[00:02:37] Paul: Of like, we respond instinctively to this sort of thing. We respond without thinking, and then we go, well, that's just the thing that we have to do. So we often don't even realize we have choices. And I think I agree with you that like stepping back and really laying out on the table, what choices we have is really important.

[00:02:53] Paul: There is a bit of wisdom from Virginia Satir that I was exposed to years and years ago, which she called the rule of three. She was a family systems therapist, and she said one choice is a trap. Two is a dilemma. Three is where real choices begin, because now we're really start to be able to see like, well, what could we really do?

[00:03:15] Paul: Like the fourth option often appears very quickly after the third, because when we've only got the one thing in front of us, we kind of go, well, I have to do it or not. And sometimes even not doesn't pop up to us. When we've got two choices, we have to this or that, and I don't like either of them.

[00:03:31] Paul: Now I'm in a dilemma. So starting that process of being able to go, let's get some more choices out on the table. What else might I do, I think is a really key moment to expanding our options beyond that sort of tunnel vision that we're trapped in, in that difficult situation. 

[00:03:49] Karen: Yeah. And I think one of the things to pay attention to is that in that moment, we're in our old habits where we're partly triggered, where our unconscious and our conscious brains are not talking to each other very well, and the unconscious is driving the boat, even though we don't necessarily realize that like all of that's going on and what we go back to are like oldest deepest patterns, which for a lot of us, I think are about fairness or about holding on to the rules and whether you followed the rules or not and consequences if you don't follow the rules, because this is a lot of the language of childhood. 

[00:04:25] Karen: This is a lot of what we came up with in school and what's familiar and it may even have been the experience that we had through college and, you know, that kind of thing so that I'm making the right and fair choice like that. My choice is to do the right and fair thing just seems so right. It seems so obvious and we get caught there. 

[00:04:45] Paul: And often, and this also is from Satira it's one of the first places I was exposed to this notion of like, where are these patterns that we got stuck in are. We don't think we have a choice because we have what she calls sort of internal rules that keep us safe.

[00:05:00] Paul: That's like, I must always keep harmony. I must always defer to the boss. I must always like, there are these rules that we have created for ourselves that we often don't realize and creating choices about going I can choose to defer to the boss. I can choose to honor harmony. That's often a big step, like getting from that.

[00:05:26] Paul: I must always to I can choose to is a big leap for people. And so I understand, I mean, I've, I've done a lot of this work with myself. I see where he can feel like you don't have a choice and then you talk with a friend, you talk with a coach, you talk with a neutral third party and they go, well, I, you know, you could do this other thing.

[00:05:45] Paul: And you're like, no, I couldn't possibly like, you don't even see that as a viable choice. So like, again, recognizing we will often think we don't have a choice. When in reality we do. 

[00:05:57] Karen: And a lot of that don't have a choice. What happens is it puts us in a place where we feel very victimy and helpless, which leads to resentment and anger.

[00:06:09] Karen: So, the same scenario, you walk into the break room and there's coffee mess all over, whatever. And there are at least two possibilities of what I might do. One might be that I clean up the mess thinking I don't have any choice. I have to clean it up. These other people didn't do their clean up like they were supposed to.

[00:06:29] Karen: And now they are making me do this and that feels lousy and I'm probably angry and resentful and I probably carry it forward to other days, right? Like that's really messy. And if we've done this exercise and said, what are my choices? There probably are other choices, but say I decide the best one is to clean it up, but I go into it saying, I've looked at what my options are and I've decided that the thing that's going to work best for me selfishly, I may still not like it that they left the mess, but I decided that my best choice is to clean it up and I chose to do that.

[00:07:05] Karen: And I may feel self righteous or I may feel, you know, very virtuous, or I may feel a lot of things, but I'm not nearly as likely to feel resentful. And that's a big deal. That idea that we have agency, we have choice changes how we engage, and if it turns out that I just spend five minutes cleaning up the coffee room every day, not fair, but you know, I don't really mind cleaning up the coffee room and maybe I have a little more time than other people and turns out to be my job.

[00:07:34] Karen: Okay, like, that's so different than I have to do it again. Because of what other people did or whatever.

[00:07:43] Paul: The reframe out of have to, to choose to sometimes not even all the way to get to, Ooh, I get to clean the kitchen. I get to put things where I want them, you know, but just even that reframe, it makes a big difference in the way that we show up, particularly in the way that we show up in relationship.

[00:08:01] Paul: Right. Because it does mean we're much less likely to hold that resentment. You know, we can also say, okay, so I chose to clean the kitchen. And I do this because I go, I could just leave it the way it is. And now I need to deal with a messy kitchen and I don't want that. Or I could go, now I'm going to go yell at my coworkers around this.

[00:08:18] Paul: Well, I don't, do I really think that's actually going to get them to clean the kitchen? Have I worked with them long enough to realize that like, that expression of self righteous anger, is going to go make no difference to the actual outcome. There are times when we've talked about this before, whether sometimes we recognize there are these idiosyncrasies.

[00:08:40] Paul: There are things working with other people or things in relationship where they're not our favorite things in the world. And wow, would it be really nice if the other person didn't do them. And we come to realize the chance they're not going to do them is minuscule. And so we can choose, we can say, look I'm going to choose to tolerate that and choosing is the important part there, right? 

[00:09:02] Paul: To be able to say, I value being in relationship, working with this person, whatever it is enough that I'm willing to take on dealing with this thing that, wow, do I wish I didn't have to. But when I look at it that way, I go, alright, this is the cost of admission.

[00:09:17] Paul: I'm willing to pay it. 

[00:09:19] Karen: Yeah, and what you're talking about there is looking at possible outcomes. So I could clean it up. I could ignore it and work around it. I could go yell at them and try to get them to do it. I could throw everybody else's stuff in the trash. I mean, like, right, I have probably a lot of options.

[00:09:37] Karen: I could throw up my hands and go buy coffee down the street. So I have a lot of options. And for each one of those, it's useful to pause and say, not, how do I feel about cleaning it up, or how do I feel about ignoring it, or how do I feel about going out for coffee, the question that I think we miss is, how am I going to feel, how is it going to come out if I do that thing?

[00:10:05] Karen: So if I go yell at my coworkers. I might feel better. Maybe even they will go clean up because I told them to, but they're going to be ticked or their work is going to be interrupted and the project that we're all working on is going to be slowed down or who knows what all those things might be.

[00:10:21] Karen: But this idea that, okay, I thought through that one seems not good and I could ignore it and just work around the mess and leave it for somebody else. But I don't want to do that because I'm going to end up taking longer. It'll take me longer to do that than it would if I just cleaned it up myself, right?

[00:10:40] Karen: Like thinking through all of that. And my point isn't that you always get to cleaning up the mess. You may not. I think it's totally legit that you may decide to go talk to your coworkers about it. You probably not yell at them. It's hard to imagine you're going to be happy with the results of yelling at someone, but maybe if you consider the outcomes and that's the one.

[00:10:59] Karen: Because part of the point here is that this isn't a should. There is no moral judgment. There is no value here except your own. And that's the final piece is choose the thing that's going to work best for you. It's very pragmatic. And very outside the realm of should and morality and rules and all of that stuff that we sort of get inundated with.

[00:11:23] Karen: That if I'm clear that I'm doing the thing that's going to work out best for me, and my selfish best interest is in the mix. I can still be grumpy that I live with people who don't clean up their own coffee mess. That can still be not pleasant for me, but I am at least acting in the way that works best for me and not martyring myself and thinking I'm going to get appreciation that's not coming or being unrealistic.

[00:11:48] Karen: I'm not making it worse. By making a choice that doesn't give me the best outcome I can have. 

[00:11:54] Paul: Yeah. You're getting out of your own way in a lot of ways to get into a better outcome. It goes back to that notion of you have to see that you have choices about what to do. But yeah, the idea that we really need, I just love the question of, and what do I think is likely to occur if I do that?

[00:12:12] Paul: Because as you have pointed out to me, that's rarely how we choose, you know, what to do instead we choose between the doings we go, you know, it's really easy to just go yell at these guys. 

[00:12:24] Karen: But it feels good to.

[00:12:25] Paul: Oh, so good, you know, for a very brief period of time sort of thing, but like really just stepping back and just going, what do I think is likely to result? And which of those seems like good outcomes for me? You know, and none of them are likely to be perfect because of course, that's why you're stuck in this situation to begin with, right?

[00:12:43] Paul: Obviously, I do this because it gets me what I want and is effortless and doesn't require me to do any hard work or be vulnerable or any of those things. If there were an option like that, you would have taken it in a heartbeat. 

[00:12:56] Karen: Yes. 

[00:12:57] Paul: And so instead you have to decide what are you up for right now?

[00:13:01] Paul: Like taking into account, where do I think this is likely to go and what resources do I have to draw on right now? And it may be I'm not going to go have the conversation with my coworkers about why this keeps bothering me right now, because I can't like, I'm just, I don't have the energy to do that, but I might go, all right, how can I do something in the future so that I can have the conversation about them at a time when they're better able to hear it?

[00:13:27] Paul: And I'm better able to say it kind of thing. But yeah, just really thinking through, like, how do I think this is going to play out because I think we so rarely run to the end of that sort of line of thought when we're trying to decide what to do. 

[00:13:41] Karen: We get sidetracked with they deserve it. This is right. If they left a mess you know, like they left their stuff out.

[00:13:48] Karen: I threw it in the trash that they know better than to leave their stuff out. Whatever the thing is like, we get caught in the quote unquote right thing to do and it stops us from working on our own self interest. It stops us from seeing the choices and seeing the power we have. To live in the world that's the closest to the one we want.

[00:14:08] Karen: As you say, the perfect one's not gonna happen. But we can get closer. By making choices that consider the outcomes.

[00:14:15] Paul: There's a thing that comes up often with executives that I work with, and it's about getting their leadership team to understand what the strategic direction is or what the change is coming in, like what they need to do to support it.

[00:14:28] Paul: And inevitably, these execs under communicate that whole thing, right? And they don't listen to response and things like that. And, you know, I'm talking with them. And I go, well, have you had this dialogue? Have you listened for their concerns? If you repeated it and it's like, I've had to say that I shouldn't have to say it so many times.

[00:14:46] Paul: And that's the moment where I go. Okay, so if you continue to not communicate it, what do you think is likely to happen? Would you rather again have that feeling of it's like, look, I get that you don't want to. I get that you wish you didn't need to. And are you going to actually do it? Because that's going to give you the result you want, or are you going to stay in that place of, well, I shouldn't have to, so I'm not going to.

[00:15:10] Paul: So I'm going to pretty much guarantee that this change fails. 

[00:15:14] Karen: I think that phrase shouldn't have to might be the number one sign that you want to go through this process. I shouldn't have to do this. And you don't have to, but maybe you choose to. 

[00:15:27] Paul: And it's really the like, if you keep not doing it, I think you're likely to keep getting the results you're getting.

[00:15:33] Karen: Right, exactly. So tracking where we're covering today is when we're in times of conflict or possibly other strategic moments in life. It's really useful to stop and think about why the situation matters to me, what I value about it and what are my choices. And at that point, pause and give yourself another couple, however many choices you thought you had.

[00:15:57] Karen: Look for 1 or 2 more. Including the ones that seem unfair and unrealistic and outside the norm and different than anything you ever would have thought you would do, like, put those on the table and then think about, for each choice that I have, what is the likely outcome? To the best of my knowledge and the best of my ability to guess, what outcomes do I have to choose from?

[00:16:22] Karen: And then taking into account the outcomes and also what each one costs and how difficult it is to do it and all that stuff and where I am in my life today and all the relevant things, but definitely including the outcomes. Answer the question. What choice is best for me? Where is my self interest in this?

[00:16:39] Karen: Where do I get the most of what I want? And that's quite possibly in a place where it's also true in my thinking that I shouldn't have to do that and I hope that I shouldn't have to do that and it's still the choice that's going to work out best for me. So I am going to choose it and be at peace with choosing it and not tell myself that others are making me do it, but just settle into, I don't love it, but it is the best choice that I have.

[00:17:07] Karen: It is the best path to the closest world to the one I really want to live in, and I can do it peacefully and without resentment. 

[00:17:15] Paul: Well, that's going to do it for us today until next time. I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:17:19] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.