Introduction to Employing Differences

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

[00:00:08] 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: What Are Introspection Skills?

[00:00:16] Paul: This week's question is: what are introspection skills?

[00:00:19] Karen: So we are continuing this week with our series on skills that when we talk about you need to build up your skills in the relationship, teamwork, collaboration space, what are the skills? And last week we talked about curiosity and being curious and interested in what's going on with the other person.

Curiosity vs. Introspection

[00:00:39] Karen: This week's skill that we're gonna talk about is introspection, and it is the opposite of curiosity in the sense that it is looking at self where it is being curious about self and what's going on with me. We mentioned this in a couple of episodes back when we did the speaking episode. Because we proposed that some introspection would be a really good idea before you start speaking.

The Importance of Introspection Before Speaking

[00:01:05] Karen: So we wanna talk today about what introspection is and why it matters.

[00:01:09] Paul: Yeah, so when we talked about speaking, right? We were talking about this idea of putting what's in you out into the space between, so the other person can interact with it, right? And so it's sharing things like here's what I think, here's what I feel. Here's what I want, what I need, like what's going on inside of me.

[00:01:26] Paul: And sometimes we know those things and sometimes they're not immediately apparent to us. We start doing things and then start going, why am I speaking so loudly? Why am I asking for this thing that I don't seem to really care about? Why can I not let this person be wrong on the internet?

[00:01:43] Paul: I'm like, what's going on there? And that's when this introspection set of skills starts to become really handy. When we're not actually immediately in touch with the things that we want and feel and need. Right. 

Understanding Our Own Reasons

[00:01:54] Paul: When we don't understand our own reasons, or the other person is starting to react to us in some way, like we think that what we're saying isn't making any sense to them.

[00:02:03] Paul: Cause it's not coming out in a sort of coherent way. So yeah, we think it's really important to be able to, and of course we talk about this on the show all the time, do that inner work, right? We often talk about it, but going, what are my reasons for this? What are the things that, you know, that's going on with me?

Learning Introspection Skills

[00:02:17] Paul: So what we have kind of a collection of skills because the point of this series is we think these are all things that you can learn how to do. We've talked about how many of these things are behaviors. This just happens to be like an inward facing behavior. It's possible no one will see you do any of these introspective things, although I certainly get a look on my face sometimes, like you can see the gears turning often slowly and grinding.

[00:02:41] Paul: And that's an indication that I'm probably doing some introspection at that moment. But what are some skills that we're thinking of when we talk about this, Karen?

Emotional Literacy: Naming Our Emotions

[00:02:49] Karen: I think one of the key things that is surprisingly lacking is we call it emotional literacy, and I'm gonna actually talk about it as a language literacy issue of being able to name with some precision the emotions that we're feeling. And the space I look for this is Brene Brown's, one of her more recent books is Atlas of the Heart. Where she's, it's mostly, most of the book is a list of emotions and detailed descriptions of what those words mean.

[00:03:20] Karen: But she talks about in the beginning of that book about her work of researching. And so how many emotion words do we have? And the short answer is, for most of the population, for most people, the emotion words are happy, sad, angry, or some version of that. Glad, sad, mad, if you like. Which is to say three.

[00:03:43] Karen: And she proposes, I think 80 as a good number to have that exists. And she makes the point that I think is so important here, which is if we can't name the emotions, we can't understand how they're functioning. 

The Role of Language in Emotional Understanding

[00:03:58] Karen: Humans are very language bound. It's why we don't remember things that happened before we spoke.

[00:04:03] Karen: Because until we have language, we don't have a way to attach our brains. And if we don't have language for what's going on with us emotionally. We don't have a way to think about how is that emotion influencing my thoughts, my needs, my wants, my inclinations, my opinions, like all that stuff that we're saying we need to get in touch with before we go speaking out to the world.

[00:04:28] Karen: We don't have very good access to it if we don't have words for the emotions that are huge drivers of it. And so, I think it is a cultural thing. This is the Eskimos have so many words for snowflake because that they live in the snow all the time. Our problem is we do live in the emotions all the time, and we don't have all the words for the emotions.

The Impact of Naming Emotions

[00:04:48] Karen: So I think one of the pieces of this skillset is literal emotional literacy. Can you name various emotions with clarity about what they mean? So that, then the next piece is I can look within myself. I'm gonna turn off the brain for a second and go, what is the emotion part of myself doing?

[00:05:07] Karen: What does my heart space look like? What's going on in that? And actually put words to it when I do the work to pause and see what's there.

[00:05:15] Paul: Yeah, it's really key because as you point out like it's about understanding what's actually going on inside of us. Because it's not like all anger, family of emotions are all the same. Right. Being angry. And being irritated. And being annoyed. And being frustrated, right? Those are all slightly different and they point to different things that are happening us and different strategies we might wanna pursue to actually deal with whatever is sort of underlying that.

[00:05:46] Paul: And so that's part of the reason why, like developing a better sense of that, you know, not just, I feel this lump of emotions that I put all together in one pile that I call anger, is really useful. And that's kind of an example there, right? Of being able, how can we tease these apart, right?

[00:06:03] Paul: The difference between joy and contentment or things like that. My father-in-law said that at one point he was asked like, well, what do you think about this turquoise? Right? And he says to me, that's blue. I was an eight Crayola child. Meaning he grew up with a box of crayons that only had eight colors in it.

[00:06:20] Paul: And so he really only learned to see these eight colors. And for me, growing up in a culture where particularly men did not talk about their feelings. I didn't have words for all of these things that I was feeling. And it's been a long path, right? For me to start to develop that. To be able to then notice, oh, usually one of the places that I come from, and this comes from the nonviolent communications realm on the work of Marshall Rosenberg, the idea that feelings come from needs either being met or unmet, so that when I can start to identify, well, I'm irritated. Well, what's irritating me?

[00:06:57] Paul: What's the unmet need that's under that? That's the way now in to be able to go, oh, this is what's going on now. I might actually be able to make a request, right. To do something about that need. I wouldn't have access to that if it was just like, this just bothers me. I wouldn't be as skillful in that situation if I hadn't spent the time to be able to discern what's going on in me.

[00:07:22] Karen: Yeah, and I think that piece it, as you say, in the culture, I mean especially being male, but. Even if you're female, like it's just not a space we go to. And particularly not in the public spaces like school and work and all, you know, those kinds of things where we go out into the world. The idea is that what we know and what we think is what matters, and that ignores the fact that what we think and what we're able to access of what we know are decidedly influenced by what we feel.

[00:07:50] Karen: So the introspection is kind of trying to get all of those pieces together.

[00:07:54] Paul: The other thing about the emotional literacy thing and being able to name your emotions, there's actually a good bit of neuroscience research that shows that particularly with unpleasant emotions, that when we are able to name them, it actually dampens them that you get more functioning moving to the pre frontal cortex away from the amygdala, right?

[00:08:13] Paul: So we actually are more integrated in our cognitive and emotional, when we are able to name the feeling that we are having, rather than just being run by the emotional centers of the brain. And so that's the other reason, right? Even if you never say out loud what you are feeling, if you have that inner sort of, oh, right, I got it. I'm angry right now. Oh, I'm, uh, oh. I'm, I'm joyful right now. I'm irritated.

[00:08:39] Paul: Whatever these things are, it allows us to show up in that more integrated space that we've talked about as being so important. Right. We're not marginalizing our feelings. We're not saying, Nope, we're gonna live solely in that rational, thinky part. We're actually able to show up in a more connected way, connected with ourselves when we're able to name that.

[00:09:00] Karen: Yeah, and I think that when we do that, others have a better shot at meeting us where we are. And so sort of an extreme example of that that totally shows up in my world from time to time is that I find myself realizing that I want a thing that makes no sense, and I think of myself as this very rational, logical person, and I can make an argument for anything.

[00:09:23] Karen: Like I can point to the logic of why I want it, but that doesn't actually get me anywhere. And it turns out that it's far more useful to say, as I did to my husband over breakfast this morning, that thing that I want, that we've talked about, and it doesn't make any sense. All of the logic says we should get rid of those things that we have down there.

[00:09:43] Karen: I don't want to, I agree that it's not logical. I agree. It makes no sense, and I just want to keep them and if I can say that, then I'm no longer at war. I'm no longer trying to make a case that there's a good logical reason when there's not, which, of course, invites the other person to argue because their logic is better than mine and they know it.

[00:10:05] Karen: Right. But if I can just say it's not about logic. It's about something else. There's some other reason. There's some other, something going on, and maybe it's tied to a past historic story in me that has an emotional piece, like it's drawing up some emotional piece or some other reason, wherever it's coming from.

[00:10:23] Karen: If I can name that and share it, then I begin to make sense to the rest of the world and we can work with what's real and a remarkable percentage of the time. The fact that I want it for no good reason whatsoever. If I can say that out loud, the other person's like, oh, okay.

[00:10:41] Paul: I didn't care that strongly about it. But you have feelings about it. We'll go with that. Yeah, it's actually remarkable. And I think that's one of the things that only becomes available to us when we stop thinking that we are being logical, right? When we actually are able to recognize, oh, this is an emotional response. Right?

[00:10:59] Paul: And also to not judge ourselves for being in that space. Right? To be able to admit like, you know, I really wish I weren't having this just irrational emotional thing. I wish I could let it go and I can't, and maybe that's okay. Right. And I could put it out there because now as you said, the other person can work with it.

[00:11:18] Paul: Right? And it's no guarantee, right. You know, to say like, well, I want it, therefore I'm gonna get it. It's like, well, no. The other person also might have those sorts of things, but now we know what we're working with. Because I think one of the problems is that when we show up, claiming that we're making a logical argument and our logic doesn't make any sense to the other person because it's motivated reasoning, right?

[00:11:40] Paul: It's not really logical. Our argument is really emotionally driven and when we're able to recognize that, we stop showing up in that incoherent way. And that I think is something that fosters relationship.

[00:11:52] Karen: I think this is another way that the curiosity and the introspection mirror each other, which is if I'm doing my work on introspection. Then your work when you're with me at trying to be curious will be much more fruitful, right? Because you can be curious all day long and you could ask me and do all the things that we talked about last week to try to draw out where I am.

[00:12:15] Karen: But if I have no idea where I am and I'm not putting words to it, I mean, bless you for still trying. It's still a good idea. It's better to have, you know, the one side without the other. But boy is it richer. If we can have both because my introspection makes your curiosity successful.

[00:12:32] Paul: So we've talked a lot kind of about how feelings show up in this, right. And this, you know, emotions showing up in our reasoning and emotional literacy and things like that. I think there's other parts of introspection as well, right. That I think are important. 

Introspection and Logic

[00:12:45] Paul: I mean, sometimes there really is the introspection of like, wait a minute, what is my logic that's behind this?

[00:12:50] Paul: Like, when I want this thing and I'm making this case for it, you know, I may have come to that conclusion as kind of a snap judgment, and then I just need to back up to be able to go, if I wanna show my work to the other person, like we talked about, you know, with in curiosity, right?

[00:13:04] Paul: Of being able to say, okay, here's the data that I'm working from. Here's my reasoning. That sort of thing. We actually need to be able to figure out what that chain is. We need to be able to look at that, right? So there's some degree of introspection, which is going, well, let me actually double check my logic on this. Like, well, how did I get here? What data am I working from? So that I can put it out there. For example, one of the things that often comes up in work that I do in leadership development is people want to get feedback on how they show up as a leader.

[00:13:33] Paul: And one of the things that's really useful to do is to get people to unpack their impression. To go back to the experience, like what was the data, right? So it's like, well, this person's really overbearing. Like, oh, okay, so this is a conclusion you've come to, right? It's attribution, right? But rather than behavioral, right?

[00:13:51] Paul: So like, what led you to that? These are the questions that I'm asking when I'm helping people get ready for this, right? And they have to really think about like, so when was the last time you interacted with them? What did they say? What did they do? We talked about listening in one of our early skills here.

[00:14:06] Paul: And being able to sort of go, well, wait, what am I basing this conclusion off of? Like, where did I get there? What was the behavior that led me to this conclusion? I think that is an overlooked part of this introspection, right, of being able to say. These are the things that have really led me to this conclusion.

[00:14:24] Paul: Sometimes in that process, we reevaluate that data and go, oh, actually on second thought, I've come to a different conclusion. And I think the ability to reframe, you know, to sort of reevaluate the data that we have. This is one of the things that Adam Grant talks about in his book, Think Again.

[00:14:43] Paul: To be able to reconsider what we have previously thought. That's a type of introspection as well.

Physical Introspection: Listening to Our Bodies

[00:14:49] Karen: Yeah, and I think the last piece I wanna make sure we don't leave out, although I think we're better at awareness of this, but it's the physical introspection, what's going on in my body. And partly that's useful 'cause it may tell us about what's going on in our emotional space. Very often we feel it in our gut, so to speak.

[00:15:06] Karen: Literally. Before we realize what that is. So we're looking for emotions. Looking physically will often give us clues, but beyond that, how we're doing physically may also be relevant to how we wanna show up. So if we're exhausted, if we're starving, if we're sick, if we're, you know, whatever's going on, or if we're feeling really energized.

[00:15:26] Karen: I mean, some of us have a need to go out for a run. I'm not in that group, but there are people who like. They're just like bubbling and they gotta go do something before they can sit and think about something. Whatever might be going on in your body and what are your physical needs is gonna change how you show up.

[00:15:41] Karen: Even if you're like, oh, I'm not gonna pay attention to that, likely the rest of the world is so that, that sort of physical introspection, I think if we're kind of making our list of checklist of things to look into, I don't wanna leave that one off.

[00:15:56] Paul: Yeah. Well, and it's so important, particularly because I'm one of these people right, who is very thinky, right? I come from a very cerebral background which involves a lot of marginalizing of the body, right? Of not paying attention to bodily signals. And it's very often that I'm working with people and I'm like, great.

[00:16:13] Paul: So like, when this comes up, where do you feel it in your body? They're like, huh? Like there's a degree of physical literacy, you know, around that to go, oh, actually, where I noticed that is, you know, it's like the drops out the pit of my stomach or this, that, and the other thing. Like, that's another piece that we may not have developed.

[00:16:31] Paul: Right. We may not have. 

The Influence of Physical State on Collaboration

[00:16:32] Paul: And to your point, our physical condition, the state we're in at any given point, that also influences our capacity, right? When we're hangry. We're not good at being in relationship. It's really useful to be able to recognize what is affecting our ability to actually relate and collaborate.

Practical Examples of Introspection

[00:16:52] Paul: We had a company meeting that had run long and over, and then right after that we were supposed to have a team retrospective where we were gonna come together and talk about what happened the last couple of weeks, how we might improve, what we might do, select some important relational, collaborative work.

[00:17:09] Paul: And no one had gotten lunch. And I said, we are moving the meeting because this is not gonna be productive. I knew what I was feeling and I was generalizing that out to the rest of the group, but I'm just like, not right now. Like we need 45 minutes for us to eat food so that we can actually do this work productively.

[00:17:28] Paul: So like being able to assess our own capacity to actually engage in relational and collaborative work is also a form of introspection.

Summary of Introspection Skills

[00:17:38] Karen: So looking at introspection as curiosity turned to self. What's going on with me? We talked about the emotional literacy piece, which is that ability to name emotions and ideally more than three that we can give really precise names to our emotions because that helps us understand and put words to how those emotions are relating to our thoughts and feelings and wants and all of that.

[00:18:01] Karen: Like getting all of those things to sort of coexist with each other language is a really important piece of that. And how also naming emotions tends to be a grounding experience. So it helps us be more present, more integrated, more fully with whoever we're with. And that we wanna be thoughtful also about like, what are we thinking?

[00:18:20] Karen: Where's our thinking coming from? How can we show our work? How can we track the logic that we're using and then the physical piece of what's going on in our physical bodies? If we can name all of that, it allows us to do the fairly radical things like saying, okay, I really want this thing and I don't have a good reason.

[00:18:38] Karen: It's just that I want it. It doesn't make sense logically. And if I can show up that way and it then motivates my speaking, then it sets up the other person's curiosity to be successful. And so all of that together of that, can we look at who we are and what's going on with us and where are we and what are we experiencing?

[00:18:58] Karen: What kind of capacity do we have? All of those things, and then be prepared to share that as is appropriate and make sense. 

Conclusion and Next Week's Topic

[00:19:05] Karen: Next week we'll talk about calibrating vulnerability, which will be a piece of that, but if we have our own awareness of it, it makes us way more present in collaborative spaces.

[00:19:14] Paul: Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:19:18] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.