Introduction to Employing Differences

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

[00:00:09] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:00:10] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:11] Paul: Each episode we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, do I need a buddy?

Exploring the Need for a Buddy

[00:00:19] Karen: So Paul and I were talking about kinda the ways people approach the kind of work that we talk about on the podcast. And podcast is a thing that most often I think people do solo, right? If you listen to the podcast, my guess is you are alone listening to the podcast. Hopefully not. It'd be great if you doing this as a group, but I think most of the time we listen in our cars or whatever else we're doing while we're doing housework, things like that.

[00:00:43] Karen: And very often folks that are interested in these kinds of topics start reading or start paying attention, whether it's a podcast or a book or something else, kind of on their own. And I think there are two ways this can get tricky. One is that they think, well, I'm studying it and I'm learning about it, so that's going to make my community better.

[00:01:05] Karen: And we think probably not very much, maybe a little, but that it'll be way more effective if others in the group are also reading the same things, swimming in the same waters, having some of the same goals. And then the flip side is for them to say, well, these are all the great ideas.

[00:01:21] Karen: I love what I'm hearing and I wish I could do it, but nobody else wants to do it with me. And so we wanted to kind of explore the question of do I need a buddy? If I'm actually gonna make progress on making relationships better in my groups, making collaboration work better in groups. Working through the differences that exist.

[00:01:37] Karen: If I'm gonna build that skillset and make things actually change, do I need a buddy for that? 

The Spectrum of Learning Approaches

[00:01:44] Paul: Yeah, one of the traps that it's easy to fall into. And we've talked a little bit about this on the show before is, you know, there's kind of these two ends of the spectrum. There's the, I'm doing this on my own and I'm learning about it and I'm trying it out where I can and doing things like that.

[00:01:57] Paul: And then there's the whatever group it is that I'm a part of, if that's a community or company or things like that, and we wanna get better at this, we all are all in on it, right? We've gotta all go through this training. We're all gonna work on this thing together. Obviously we think that there are some advantages to an entire group doing things together, but we also have talked about on the show before that that's not always possible.

[00:02:20] Paul: So like what are places sort of along that spectrum that are useful to us? 

The Value of a Learning Buddy

[00:02:26] Paul: And this idea of having a learning buddy, right? Of having one or two or maybe three people that you sort of build this little learning community for yourself is actually one of the really effective ways to learn any skill. But particularly if we're talking about the sorts of relational skills that Karen and I get into in this podcast, because you don't really learn a thing by reading about it or listening to a podcast about it.

[00:02:52] Paul: You get an idea in your head, but in order to really learn it, you have to practice it. You have to do it. You can know about a thing but not, not actually know how to do it. Like skiing, right? You can listen to a podcast, you can read a book about skiing, but you do actually have to get on the skis at some point to find out whether or not you know how to ski.

[00:03:10] Paul: And so having an opportunity to practice, to learn together, to support each other in that can be really, really useful, even when it's not the entire group that you're hoping to have an impact on.

[00:03:22] Karen: And I think there are lots of elements of this. 

Self-Reflection and Feedback

[00:03:27] Karen: And one that I wanna point to is, I think the very most important thing that comes out of this kind of work is learning about self. So doing that sort of deep dive and why am I getting the responses that I'm getting from other people, or why do I get stuck in the same conflict over and over again?

[00:03:42] Karen: Or why can't I have the kinds of relationships I wanna have? If we can get really curious about that, and by the way, all of us can't have the kinds of relationships we wanna have, and all of us get stuck and get reactions that are different than what we intended. That's just normal. But we can reduce that if we get curious about why, which is a lot that won't surprise you if you've heard many episodes of our podcast.

[00:04:05] Karen: But when we're trying to do that curious work of, okay, what is going on in me, we get a lot further if it's a conversation than if it's just solo introspection. And I don't wanna say solo introspection isn't worthwhile, but if I'm picking, I'm gonna pick a deeper conversation with somebody else who can reflect back what they're hearing, maybe even give me some input on what they've seen me do or what they've seen land badly in a group.

[00:04:30] Karen: Or even a place where I can talk about where my frustrations are and just get another ear for that can help me hear myself in a way that may be just sitting around being introspective or even doing some journaling. It'll at least be different than those things, and I think that is a huge value of a buddy.

[00:04:48] Karen: Ironically, the value of the buddy is it helps me do my own work. 

Rubber Duck Debugging and Articulation

[00:04:52] Paul: In the software world, this is sometimes called rubber duck debugging. Which is I'm trying to figure out what the problem is with the software. And so if I get a little rubber duck and I talk to the little rubber duck, it turns out I can find out a lot of things just by articulating them out loud.

[00:05:07] Paul: And then of course, this is the level up, right, where you actually have a very intelligent rubber duck that you're talking to. You have another human being there who's walking through this. So yeah, I think that both the creating a space for you to articulate and describe and sort of this is what I'm challenged with that, like, that can be a richer experience than just say, journaling or, or doing it on your own. Actually having that show up in conversation with that person. And as you point out, you know, somebody who actually has an experience of you doing the thing you're trying to do differently.

[00:05:34] Paul: Right? You know, who can maybe make you aware of some things that you aren't aware of in the, you know, when you asked that question the other night, it sounded maybe a little judgy, and I'm not sure you wanted that. What do you mean? Right? They can also reveal those sorts of things and also give you the opportunity to talk through like options, right?

[00:05:54] Paul: Just to brainstorm around like, well, what might I do about that? And the great part about that is if you're trying to do that around this type of work, you can do that for each other, right? Even if you don't work in the same place or live in the same community or any of those things. 

Collaborative Problem Solving

[00:06:15] Paul: Like if you're still working on the same stuff together, bringing those different perspectives in, which is of course, what Karen and I do on this show, can be really valuable. And to see, you know, that challenge that you're working with from a different angle. So you can get, you know, you've got room to reflect, you've got potentially feedback on what it is that you're actually doing.

[00:06:25] Paul: You've got another thinking partner, another brain to think about, you know, what your options are. How it might be landing or someone to say, you know, if you say it that way, there's the danger that this might happen. And those are all things that are really useful for really figuring out how to practice this type of thing.

[00:06:40] Karen: I also think that in a lot of settings, if you can get two or three or as many as five sometimes within your community, within your team, within your workplace, whatever that are aligned in how, like maybe we all wanna make collaboration better or we all want a friendlier workplace, or we all want whatever our goals are, right?

[00:07:02] Karen: We all want these changes. We all want our meetings to be smoother. But if we're trying to go about that each in our own individual different way, it can be hard to actually shift a large group. But if you've got a group of two or three or five that are maybe not in lockstep, but we're drinking the same water, we're pulling in the same ideas, we're kind of having the same approach, and we're trying to get that result through similar kinds of techniques.

[00:07:30] Karen: Of course we have way better odds than if we've got five different techniques all trying to work at the same time, but potentially even working against each other and certainly not with that sort of alignment. I think some consistency makes a big difference. The kinds of things we talk about may not be the only way to do it, but if you try this way and several of you are trying this way, you've got better odds than if everybody's trying their own way.

[00:07:54] Karen: And certainly than if only one person's trying it all.

Peer Coaching and Organizational Change

[00:07:57] Paul: And one of the real advantages of that is, so whenever you've got some idea that you're trying to bring into some organization and some group, you know that idea never translates entirely by itself, right? Like we've talked before about how people sometimes adopt practices and then are surprised when they don't work because the culture doesn't actually support those practices.

[00:08:20] Paul: One of the key things about creating any sort of change in your organization around this type of thing, around culture, around interaction, and collaboration, and things like that. Any of these sort of relational changes, you need to figure out what makes it work in this environment. And so as a group, if there are, say five of you, they're all kind of trying things when somebody hits on the way that you do that here that works. That is something that you can then spread.

[00:08:49] Paul: This is why peer coaching in organizations is really, really valuable. Oftentimes, anytime I'm doing workshops in orgs, one of the things that I try to do is to do some sort of peer consultation, peer advice sort of circle, because the advantage of that is that everybody else who's in that circle helping you work through your problem, is working with basically the same constraints that you are, right? They're in that same environment.

[00:09:15] Paul: And so it means that the things that they suggest that are working have a better chance of working than just somebody from the outside or a book that you read, right? The sort of context free idea. And so when you've got a group like that, that really allows you to collectively explore. What would it take to make this idea work in this community, in this department, in this organization? Because that's something that you can't do very effectively when you are by yourself.

[00:09:47] Karen: So I think where we're going with this is really trying to address some of the questions that we get, which are, well, how do I get other people to join me? Or, well, but my whole group won't accept it. Like, how do I get my whole group to adopt this. There may be some strategies for that, but what we're really focusing on here is that very often the thing that we see that turns out to be effective is not for one person to do it alone or for the whole group to have to buy in, but for a small group, two people, three people, four people to work together, taking in the same ideas, exploring the same ideas, talking with each other and giving each other feedback, helping each other sort of see themselves.

[00:10:28] Karen: Figuring out what is the context and the culture that we're trying to apply this in, and what are the pieces that are likely to be useful for that culture at this point. All that stuff that having a peer support is a really powerful way to learn all of that. And don't be discouraged if you don't have a whole community or a whole company behind you, but go find somebody else.

[00:10:50] Karen: If you're frustrated, probably somebody else is frustrated by the same things. And if you can get somebody who will listen with you, read with you, talk with you, explore with you along these same kinds of things, your odds go up dramatically for actually making a difference in your organization.

[00:11:05] Paul: And the thing that I'll add to that is that if it turns out even with that small group of people. If it doesn't end up making, you know, the shift that you would like to see or that change in your organization, it has a much better chance of making that shift in you, that you are much more likely to develop the skill.

[00:11:22] Paul: You're much more likely to be able to internalize that when you have a buddy or two or three to help you develop that. And so it's like, even if it doesn't make as much of a difference for your org, it's likely to make a bigger difference for you.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[00:11:35] Karen: And that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:11:39] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis, and this has been Employing Differences.