Introduction to Employing Differences
[00:00:03] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:08] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:10] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:11] Karen: Each episode we start with a question and see where it takes us. 

The Challenge of Selling the Least Bad Option
[00:00:15] Karen: This week's question is, how do I sell the least bad option?

[00:00:21] Paul: That's a mouthful, but it's a thing that comes up more often than you might think. Particularly if you work in an organization and you're a manager of some sort, or you are a volunteer in a community group, and particularly if you've been in a committee that's been sent off to try and figure out what are we gonna do about something?

[00:00:40] Paul: There are very often times when you might find yourself having to bring not just bad news to a group, but bad news where, you know, there in theory are some choices, but there's one that seems the least bad. You'd really like to help the group to catch up to where you are in your thinking and your process on this.

[00:01:01] Paul: Because one of the things that happens is that you've had more time to deal with it, to think about it. Maybe it's gonna affect you differently than it's gonna affect them. Like these are differences that show up in that space between that can drive wedges between us. Karen and I were talking about this today.

[00:01:18] Paul: And Karen introduced me to a way of thinking about this that I hadn't encountered before and that I wanted to explore with her. And so we figured, well, why not do it on the show? So, Karen, what's your approach when you have to sell the least bad option to a group? 

[00:01:33] Karen: So I use three words that actually were taught to me by my friend Haley Hoffman, who does a good bit of therapy in couples workshops. And you should look her up if you're wanting help in that realm. And she does a lot of work through polyvagal stuff, and I think this is where this comes from. But the idea is that if we want people to be grounded, to stay in a nervous system state, if we want their nervous system to be available to take in information and be available for relationship and be available for collaboration.

[00:02:02] Karen: All those things that we want. If we wanna be in that good productive nervous system state, there are things we can do to help them get there. 

Understanding the Importance of Context
[00:02:12] Karen: And here's the magic code, context, choice, and connection. So when I have this situation, and I have sometimes actually been the voice of a group, so I am, I'm not part of the group necessarily, but I am, as my role as consultant, I bring the message because that's a thing I think I'm pretty good at.

[00:02:32] Karen: And what I look for is, okay, so there's a thing we want them to do that they don't wanna do. There's a decision that we want them to make that they don't wanna make because it's not a good thing. Like the option's not a good option. Nobody thinks it's a good option, but it's the least bad option we have.

[00:02:51] Karen: And in order to move forward with whatever it is we're trying to get done and move forward as a group and function ongoing as a group. We can't just stay stuck. We can't just not decide anything. And of the choices we have, this is the least bad. We don't have good options. This is the least bad.

Setting the Stage with a Shared Story
[00:03:07] Karen: And so I start with context setting. And what I mean by that is I'm gonna tell a story and the story's gonna start at a place where everybody has a shared experience. That is, you know, we don't have disagreement about it. We're not uncertain about it. Like we all agree that's the thing that happened and probably I'm gonna start in a place that was at least hopeful.

[00:03:32] Karen: Maybe had some positive feel about it. There were good reasons why we did the things that we did. You know, I wanna start in a fairly happy, grounded, settled kind of place and tell the story from there.

[00:03:45] Paul: And the thing that I love about that is that this thing that is happening, that we don't like, doesn't happen in a vacuum, but oftentimes we can be surprised by it in some ways, and I think our nervous systems can get surprised by it. Right? We can get into that, but wait, but how do we get here?

[00:04:02] Paul: Like, this doesn't make any sense. Right? And part of the way that our brands work as narrative constructing creatures is that if we have that narrative that we can see how this fits into it, that I imagine does calm us down a bit, makes us a little less anxious. Am I getting why this works the way it does?

[00:04:21] Karen: I think so. 

Navigating Cognitive Dissonance
[00:04:22] Karen: And I think the other piece of it is if we feel like we don't understand, and you know, a lot of times the things that we're sharing, like there was a ton of complexity that those in leadership or those who were bringing the recommendation or whatever looked at a thousand details and various scenarios, and we didn't figure out this was the least bad option by going, oh, there's an option.

[00:04:45] Karen: We'll just do it. They got there because they went, okay, that's a terrible option. We hate it. Can we do this? Nope, that's worse. Could we do this? Nope. I mean, they went through a whole process. And you can't tell that whole story. They want to. But giving everybody those details doesn't get them there.

[00:05:03] Karen: But also if you just jump to trust us. Then the conclusion makes no sense. Like you get this huge cognitive dissonance, which makes people defensive and less grounded, right? That sends them into fight, flight, freeze response, like all these other nervous system states that are not helpful in this situation.

[00:05:22] Karen: So I think we want them to be able to cognitively keep up and so we've gotta start from a place where they're solid.

[00:05:29] Paul: Right. And that by doing that you've kind of got people sort of along the way going, okay, Yeah, that makes sense, uhhuh, right? You can see kind of people nodding along. They're probably scowling as they're nodding because they know how this story ends and they don't like it, but they can at least get their arms around it, right?

[00:05:46] Paul: And that you have fewer sort of mispredictions in your nervous system. And so you're operating better, which is what the whole point of this process is, is to enable people to be able to process the information that you're giving them, right? And to be able to function well.

[00:06:00] Paul: So that's context. 

Emphasizing Choice and Agency
[00:06:10] Paul: Choice I think is really fascinating. 'Cause you and I have talked a lot on this show about choice and about people's sense of agency and like really, you know, that when our sense of agency is threatened. That doesn't do good things for us either. How do you do that in this context where, you know, 'cause you're saying that like, well there, I guess there are other options that other people might wanna take.

[00:06:25] Karen: Yeah, I mean, and some of this depends on whether you're in hierarchy or not. Like are you really giving them a choice or not? And I mostly work in spaces that don't have a ton of hierarchies. So usually the group does in fact, have a choice. They can consent to this thing or not consent to what's being recommended.

[00:06:41] Karen: But I think the instinct of folks like, if I'm on the team in the know that's trying to make a recommendation and I've been through it all and I've looked for all the options, like I've been through this whole painful process, I don't want them to do that too. And so I don't wanna tell them they have a choice because I think they don't.

[00:07:02] Karen: I think there's only one good choice. There's only one good option. Any other option is clearly idiotic. We shouldn't do that. It would be terrible. Disaster will befall us. It's awful. There isn't a choice. There's one thing and we have to do it. And I'm gonna tell you, you've gotta, and I'm gonna say, don't do that.

[00:07:19] Karen: There is always a choice. Everybody always has a choice. And I think it's totally kosher to say, there's this choice that gets us where we wanna go, and there are these other choices that don't like. And so I have been known to say there's this choice and it's not great. This is what we don't like about it, but this is why we're recommending it.

[00:07:43] Karen: And then there's this other choice. That's terrible. It's gonna be awful. You pick and, and, and it sounds sarcastic, but I don't mean it as sarcastic. I mean, each individual actually has agency. Let's name that and trust that they're gonna use that agency to do the reasonable thing. 

The Role of Upper Management in Decision Making
[00:08:03] Paul: And I think that even when you mentioned, you know, sometimes this happens in organizations where a decision gets made and we're kind of rolling it down right, kind of thing. And this is about a year ago on episodes 215 and 216, we talked about sharing bad news, and this is kind of a version of that.

[00:08:19] Paul: But one of the things that I think we always have to recognize is that people do have choices about how they're gonna deal with this information. And so when we say, even when we want to in an organization say, well this is how it is, right? It's like, yeah. But people are still gonna make choices about how they work with that, right?

[00:08:36] Paul: How they deal with it. Like they are always at choice about how they now work in this new world now that we've taken this bad option sort of thing. I think when you emphasize the choices that people do actually have, right? Like, look, there are other choices here, and can sit with them through the, like, here's why we examine those alternatives and why we think they're not a good idea.

[00:08:59] Paul: That does preserve people's sense of agency. And even when this decision has been made, I think it's useful to do the, here are the choices we still need to make. About how this is gonna be implemented. 'Cause there's always implementation decisions or how we're gonna sit with it or how we're gonna do these kinds of things.

[00:09:18] Paul: And so I think kind of regardless of whether or not you're making a recommendation to people or you're telling them upper management has taken the least bad option, I think it is really useful to lay out, these were the other options that were considered because it's like the context piece.

[00:09:35] Paul: It makes it make more sense to us. I can see how that, again, calms down our nervous systems, like helps us to actually process this to go, this isn't an arbitrary decision. This is what other alternatives were that were considered and why we are either recommending that we not take any of them or why any of them weren't. 

[00:09:55] Karen: Yeah, and I think this is also a bit of advice to that upper decision making management If you're in that position. To the extent that you can give people a choice, even a pretty small one, if you're wanting them to get on board with something that's not great and there is some kind of toggle that they can pick individually or that they can pick collectively, you know, we're gonna do this thing we don't like and this is why.

[00:10:21] Karen: But you guys can choose, you know, we're gonna cut hours and cut pay. Everybody hates it, but you get to pick which day you cut. If there is a way to give people some amount of choice in agency, it will help ground them.

[00:10:36] Paul: I worked in an organization once where the decision was made, we're gonna furlough employees, you know, this amount of time over this quarter or these two quarters. And we'd got to decide, did you wanna take that all at once as like three weeks off? Did you wanna spread it out over a few weeks?

[00:10:51] Paul: And obviously there were implications there for how your paychecks worked and things like that. So none of us liked the fact that we were in that situation, but the fact that we could then choose which of these various options works the best for my situation, what's the least bad thing for me? I now had that choice. 

[00:11:11] Karen: And I think that a little of that goes a long way. I mean, we often think, well, we can't not do the thing they don't want us to do. So it's just, you know, some little nominal thing that they won't care about if we give them choice. And I don't think it tends to land that way. I think it needs to be real.

[00:11:26] Karen: It can't be a pretend choice. But if there is actual choice where they have real agency, even if it's small but I think that turns out to be useful.

[00:11:36] Paul: ' Cause if you don't, that's when you get even more of that defensiveness and resentment And contempt and all of those things that aren't actually useful for dealing with the bad thing that we need to deal with. Right? They're very human and very understandable. But if we actually want to equip the group to be able to deal with the situation as well as they can. Then we wanna try to keep those things at bay as much as we can.

The Power of Connection
[00:11:58] Karen: And that brings us to the last piece of this, which is the connection piece. We humans do better when we're connected with other people. So when we feel like we're in danger, if we feel isolated, we feel like we're in more danger. So when we're in this position of trying to get people on board with the least bad option, we want to remind them of the connections that we have.

[00:12:22] Karen: And how to go about that I think depends a lot on the culture of the group. I mean, so there certainly are ways to remember, you know, the kinds of collaboration that we've had to remember the shared goal and that we're all invested in this in whatever way we're all invested in it, that kind of thing. And I also think it's useful to let people talk to each other, let people hear each other, let people feel heard by each other.

[00:12:47] Paul: I think they're gonna do it anyway, so it's best to create a space for it. This is, that absolutely, like we as humans. It is very natural, you know, when there is bad news, when there's things that we don't like that are going on. Like, that we want to talk about it, even if it's just a vent.

[00:13:03] Paul: Right. And we've talked before about how venting can be useful when it helps us to work through it. To clear. Not necessarily to ruminate. And in fact, if you create space for that, if you have an explicit way for that to happen, that can actually help. But yeah, absolutely. Like pointing people at each other.

[00:13:19] Paul: It reinforces that sense of yeah, we are in this together. Like the group identity is still intact. You know, that we're still here together. We have each other as assets, right? As people we can call upon. And as we're going through this difficulty, because it's very easy when we get anxious, when we get emotionally dysregulated, when any of these things happen.

[00:13:39] Paul: That our vision can narrow right, and to, it's just me. It's like I'm alone in this. And that's a very natural stress response. I was in an improv workshop once where I experienced this very viscerally where I forgot about the fact that I had another person on stage with me to help us get out of trouble.

[00:13:57] Paul: And by reinforcing that we are here together, that also can help us to regulate, to calm our nervous systems down. So again, that we're able to do sort of better thinking about this and processing of it.

Creating Space for Dialogue
[00:14:09] Karen: Yeah, and I think you can do that a lot of ways, but one thing that we often don't think about doing in a large group meeting is what on Zoom we call breakout rooms. Used to be, I think, just called breakouts in real life when we had groups. But even a like turn to someone next to you and share what I think this is gonna mean for me personally.

[00:14:31] Karen: Like that's one that having somebody else hear that is gonna feel more connecting and hearing what it's gonna mean for somebody else is gonna make me feel less alone. Like, I'm gonna experience this in this bad way, and they're gonna experience this in their bad way. And leadership often is afraid to go that way because we don't want everybody to be reminded and reinforced about how terrible this is.

[00:14:54] Karen: And I think that's the resentment thing that you're talking about is people get resentful because they don't have a chance to be heard about it. And depending on the size of the group, the leadership that made the decision maybe doesn't have the capacity to actually hear from each individual. And there may not be enough safety between levels of hierarchy and that kind of thing, but it helps to be heard by someone and to add the sense that we're in it together.

[00:15:16] Karen: So, I always try to find some element of how I can build that into a meeting. In a smaller meeting, it might be around at the end where everybody shares in a larger meeting, it can be the breakout room thing or the smaller groups thing, whatever that is.

[00:15:30] Paul: Yeah, it's really unfortunate that in a lot of organizations, like when layoffs are announced, when we've decided to do a restructuring, when we do this, any of these sort of big bad things that happen, very often there's an all hands meeting and then people are told, and if you have concerns, talk to your manager.

[00:15:46] Paul: Right? And that's it, right? That's all we got. Instead of actually pointing people at each other. I think that actually, again, we're talking about emotional regulation here. I think that diffuses a lot of the bad things that management is worried about is gonna happen that they don't wanna hear about.

[00:16:03] Paul: It's like give people away to actually process it and work through it. And this kind of points to why that actually works. Right? And what's useful about that when we're bringing these bad options to groups. 

Recap and Conclusion
[00:16:16] Karen: So our question today was, how do I sell the least bad option? And that might be how do we sell it, depending on how your organization is structured, but we're really looking at this place where we need people to stay engaged and grounded and in their better nervous system while we talk about doing a thing that all of us, me included, would rather not do.

[00:16:38] Karen: And we talked about context, choice, and connection is kind of the key thing that we think applies here. Context meaning tell the story, take advantage of the narrative brain. Give people a starting point where they do feel comfortable and then walk them through what got them to where we are. Like build the story that brings them to the place that you all already are as leadership, having worked through all the details. Hopefully without dragging them through all of the details. But that has enough logical steps that they can follow along, they can understand it, their cognition's on board.

[00:17:13] Karen: And they're not in that place of, I don't understand, I feel threatened. I'm shutting down that they actually have enough context to keep up and feel like they're part of it. And then give them a choice. We always have a choice. We often don't want people to know they can choose a thing that we think is a worst option, but if they can, we need to name that they can.

[00:17:31] Karen: And if we're in a more hierarchical situation, looking for ways to give them the choice that they really do have, if we can give them a choice about part of it. I think that's a good idea. If we can't, they at least have a choice of how they're gonna respond. And naming what those choices are, I think is super useful.

[00:17:48] Karen: And then the last piece is connection. To really take time within the meeting for people to hear each other and feel heard by each other in whatever form works within the culture and structure of your group.

[00:17:59] Paul: Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:18:03] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.