Influence in Action

by Craig Weber

  More Engagement

  The two curiosity skills are great tools for keeping people engaged in a meeting or conversation because they work like conversational glue. When people know that their view may be solicited at any time—either to invite their perspective into a conversation or to test the perspective of another—they’re more likely to pay attention and stick with the flow of the dialogue. The skilled use of the curiosity skills, in other words, makes it riskier to disengage from a conversation or meeting because you never know when someone may ask for your view on the matter at hand.

  Back and Forth

  In a conversation, you’ll often bounce back and forth between testing and inquiry. After explaining his concerns to Phil, Steve tested his perspective: “Push back on me here,” he said, “especially if you think I’m being unfair.” Phil responded with a position, but he failed to explain it: “I appreciate that you’re willing to bring this up, but I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.” Steve then inquired to invite more of Phil’s thinking into the conversation: “I don’t think I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but maybe I’m missing something. What makes you say that? What are you seeing that I’m not?”

  They Cultivate Your Better Angels

  These skills also engage many of the characteristics you’re trying to cultivate:

  • Candor. There is no way to test your view if you don’t put it out there first.

  • Curiosity. You are always seeking novel ways of looking at an issue.

  • Courage. You might be found wrong. You might make someone angry. You might feel “less than fully brilliant” when you recognize that other people have a better grasp of the issue than you do.

  • Humility. Recognizing the ironic fact that the price you must often pay for getting smarter is feeling dumber (think about it), you refuse to let your ego get in the way of learning.

  • Mental strength. Keeping your ego in check and maintaining conversational discipline takes focus and grit.

  • Mental agility. Your eagerness to shift your thinking and double-loop learn requires a degree of cognitive flexibility that more ego-driven people can’t muster.

  Curiosity Is the Key to Smart Thinking

  Bertrand Russell said: “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” But I think that adopting a cocksure stance is what makes people stupid in the first place. Holding your view of “reality” as truth, as if you’ve got everything all figured out, leaves no space for learning. If you’re unable or unwilling to treat a view like a hypothesis and test it, you cripple your ability to think more intelligently. This is the reason rigorous curiosity is so powerful. It dramatically boosts learning. While the cocksure nurse their arrogance and stupidity, those full of doubt—who are curious, asking questions, and constantly seeking new ways of seeing and thinking about the world—grow ever more informed, humble, and wise.

  Holding your view of “reality” as truth, as if you’ve got everything all figured out, leaves no space for learning.

  Next Steps

  The four basic skills for balancing candor and curiosity, when supported by disciplined awareness and a learning-oriented mindset, provide a powerful framework for seeing what’s being played in a conversation and then for playing what’s missing. The key is to use them competently in action—in a meeting or in an important conversation—even when someone is screaming obscenities in your face or calling your mother a foul name. That’s the focus of the next chapter in which I’ll share a range of ways you can build your facility with the skills. Then, in the chapter after that, you’ll learn that if you’re looking at it through the right lens, your workplace and all its imperfections provides a superb forum for practice.

  * To review the concept of Joint Control, see pages 71–75 in Conversational Capacity.

  SHARPENING YOUR SKILLS

  Learning to Balance Candor and Curiosity, One Skill at a Time

  You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills.

  —JIM ROHN

  Earning a black belt in karate. Piloting an aircraft. Driving a car. Performing neurosurgery. Performing a role in a Shakespearean play. Climbing the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Dancing with the Paris Opera Ballet. Playing tennis, curling, guitar, golf, or piano. Balancing candor and curiosity under stress. What do all these activities have in common? You can’t just read a book and pull them off competently—you must first acquire the skills.

  This is an important point. As I mentioned earlier, too many books and thought leaders succeed at pushing concepts—whether they’re about conversation, team building, personal effectiveness, management development, or leadership acumen—while failing to provide the requisite skills. They’re great at telling you what to do and why to do it, but they disappoint when it comes to showing you how to put that advice into action.

  This book is different. It doesn’t just provide good ideas; it teaches you practical skills for putting those ideas to work. And because acquiring a skill requires practice, in this chapter I’ll share a range of ways you can sharpen your ability to stay in the sweet spot when it counts.*

  Reminder: Your Personal Plan

  One quick note before we move on. As you review these practices, keep in mind the personal plan I’ll help you create—a customized strategy for bringing more focus, discipline, and balance to your conversational style. As you review the practices, reflect on the work you’ll need to do to get better at crafting a clear position, putting forward your thinking in a lucid way, carefully testing your hypotheses, and inquiring into the hypotheses of others. Your goal is to identify the most valuable activities you can adopt to do that work.

  Don’t stress out about mastering all the skills at once. Focus on the specific skills that will most enhance your overall conversational balance. In this sense, it’s like tennis. A tennis player will improve her overall game by identifying a place she needs to improve—her backhand may be a little sloppy or her serve may be a little soft—and then she’ll practice that particular skill. By doing drills to isolate the skill, she increases her overall performance on the court. In the same way, identify the skills that’ll bring the most balance to your conversational behavior, and then make practicing those skills the focus of your personal plan.

  Position Practices

  Stating your position—where you currently stand on an issue—in one or two sentences is the first step in getting an idea out of your head and into a conversation in a well-structured way. Here are a few practices for improving your ability to do this well.

  Ask Yourself Questions

  What follows is a list of questions to ask as you craft a position:

  • What is my main point?

  • Why does it matter? Why do I think it’s important?

  • How do I feel about this issue?

  • How can I state all this in the most clear, concise, and compelling way?

  • If I’m torn between two or more options, how can I clearly communicate that?

  • What if my position is that I don’t have a strong point of view on the matter? How can I convey that, explain why, and see if others feel the same way or have a more focused take on the issue?

  • If my position is more an intuitive feeling than a clear thought, how can I best express that and then check to see if others have a clearer idea about where those feelings might be coming from?

  Write It Down

  Before a conversation or meeting, write down your main point three different ways; be as clear, concise, and compelling as possible. Identify the statement that expresses your overall view most effectively. When you’re writing an email, a letter, or a proposal, practice clear position statements. Whether you’re writing or speaking, clear position statements are a pivotal component of effective communication.

  Position Exercise

  Another great way to build this skill is to read an article in a maga
zine or newspaper, or watch a news segment, and to then summarize the main point of the piece in one tight sentence. If someone asked you, “What was that article about?” how would you distill the main idea down to its essence? You can also do this when listening to people in meetings, at dinner, anywhere. Condense what others say to the clearest and most succinct point you can.

  Active Listening

  Inquire into the views of others to make sure that you understand their position. To do this, provide a one-sentence summary of what you’re hearing and then test your interpretation with them: “It seems to me you’re saying X. Do I understand your point correctly?”

  Have Someone Rephrase Your Point

  Explain your view and then ask a colleague or friend to echo back your main point in just one sentence. Sharing your position with a colleague—and having them help you clean it up—can be particularly useful before a conversation or meeting in which you plan to raise an issue.

  Listen Carefully to Others

  In meetings, dinner conversations, on TV, podcasts, or radio, listen carefully as people talk and observe how they express their points of view. How clearly do they state their position? How might they have said it more clearly? Jot down how you’d say what you think they’re trying to say.

  Have a Beer

  Whenever people are finding it difficult to nail down their position on an issue, an approach I have found useful is to ask them this question: How would you frame the basic issue or problem if you were talking casually with a trusted friend over a beer at a bar? If you can relax and just blurt out your impromptu response to that question, you can then work with that raw observation, perspective, or concern. Starting with that quick, casual, off-the-cuff comment can be a very useful way to identify and craft a clear, succinct position statement.

  Steve, for instance, might blurt out to a friend: “You wouldn’t believe this guy I’m working for now. He’s a piece of work. He tells everyone he wants them to tell it to him like it is, but then when you do, he beats you up for it.”

  Steve could then clean that up by making sure it’s clear, concise, compelling, and contains no unnecessary harshness: “Phil, I’ve never worked for someone who’s more open about his need for timely and accurate information as you, and I applaud that. But despite your good intentions, I think you act in ways that makes it really hard for people to do what you’re asking.”

  Constructive Framing

  Remember a good position is as direct as possible with no unnecessary harshness. There is a big difference between “No one wants to work with you because you’re an arrogant ass,” and “Your behavior is limiting your effectiveness because you often push others away with your aggressive style. Let me give you an example and then tell me if you think I’m off base in some way.” Practice reframing your position in the most constructive and compelling way possible.

  Thinking Practices

  By stating a clear position, you’re letting others know where you currently stand on an issue. When you explain your thinking, you’re explaining how you got there. Again, this skill is similar to doing long division in elementary school, where you weren’t allowed to simply show your answer—you had to show your work. What follows are a few practices and readings you can use to do this in a sharper and more accessible way.

  Think About Your Thinking

  Ask yourself questions to reflect on the content and caliber of your thinking:

  • Why do I think what I think?

  • How did I arrive at this point of view?

  • How have I “gone up the ladder”?

  • On how much solid ground does my view sit?

  • How much evidence do I have for this way of looking at the issue?

  • What do I think the evidence suggests?

  • What assumptions am I making?

  • Are there gaps or blind spots in my way of looking at the situation?

  • Do other people see it differently, and, if so, how did they go up the ladder?

  • How can I express all this clearly and succinctly so that others see my train of thought?

  Write It Down

  A quick way to get clear on your thinking is to assess how you’re making sense of an issue by writing it down:

  • What evidence do I have for this view?

  • How am I interpreting this evidence?

  Watch Your Own Ladder

  Watch your mind at work. How? First, read and review Chapter 6 of my book Conversational Capacity, which explores my take on the “ladder of inference,” a concept that illustrates how your mind makes sense of the world around you. Then pay attention to how your mind goes up the ladder, where your beam of focus tends to drift, and just as important, how your mind responds. (This activity, by the way, doubles as an awareness practice.)

  When you walk up the street at lunch, for example, recognize what your mind is up to. What is the sensory input? What judgments, thoughts, interpretations crop up? If you notice a tie someone is wearing, for example, and think, “That purple paisley tie pairs poorly with his brown plaid suit,” you should recognize the difference between the directly observable evidence (purple paisley tie and brown plaid suit) and your interpretation of that evidence (“pairs poorly”).

  This practice, which appears deceptively simple, is actually quite a challenging habit to master. Why? Your mind tends to lump evidence and interpretation together into a jumbled, fuzzy mess. Learning to distinguish clearly between the two is a prerequisite to thinking and speaking more clearly.

  Separate Data from Interpretation

  You can perform a similar exercise when you read a short article or listen to a news story. As you read or listen, identify the evidence being provided and the interpretations being employed to make sense of it. Here are questions you can ask:

  • What data do they share to make their point?

  • How are they making sense of that data?

  • Is their point of view well-grounded in evidence? Or are they providing a speck of evidence and then taking you on the equivalent of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride with their speculations?

  Questions to Ask About the Views of Others

  Learn to see how others are going up the ladder by paying closer attention to their reasoning. Don’t do this to be a judge or to convict them of ignorance or stupidity. Do this to genuinely see how they’re making sense of a situation. Here are questions you can ask:

  • Why do they think what they think?

  • How did they arrive at that point of view?

  • How much evidence do they have for that way of looking at the issue?

  • What assumptions are they making?

  Get Help

  Seek out partners who can help you work through your “business case” before you have a conversation. Other people can be a valuable resource when it comes to clarifying your thinking, as well as how to best explain it.

  Strengthen Your Systems Thinking

  Increasing your SysQ, a practice I first shared in Chapter 9, is not just a proven way to sharpen your thinking; it also provides a powerful set of tools for communicating it. Below are a few short examples. If you’d like to learn more about the following skills and how they can help you think more clearly and communicate your thinking in a more cogent way, a suite of examples and tools can be found at findinghighleverage.com.

  BEHAVIOR-OVER-TIME GRAPHS

  “I think our situation is less precarious that it seems. Let me share with you a behavior-over-time graph that shows a longer-term trend that illustrates my point, and then I’d love to get your reactions, especially where you see things differently.”

  CAUSAL-LOOP MAPS

  “I think this decision will create some vicious unintended consequences. Let me share with you a causal-loop map that illustrates how I’m making sense of this problem, and then I’d love to hear from those of you who see it in a contrasting way.”

  STOCK-AND-FLOW DIAGRAMS

  “I think we’re focusing on the wrong plac
e to intervene. Let me share with you a stock-and-flow diagram that describes a more high-leverage way to take action, and then get your thoughts and reactions, especially if you think I’m missing something.”

  Draw a Picture

  Another potent way to share your thinking is graphic facilitation, the use of images, symbols, metaphors, pictures, and visual descriptions to illustrate your mental model. You can do this yourself, but it’s often best to employ a graphic facilitator or visual artist to help you with the imagery.

  Graphic facilitation (sometimes referred to as visual facilitation) can be an efficient and engaging way to explain your current thinking about an issue in a fresh and creative manner so that you can test, expand, and improve it. For more information, visit www.facilitationgraphics.com/.

  Readings

  Here is a list of readings, books, and resources that you can use to expand your ability to think well:

  • De Bono’s Thinking Course by Edward De Bono

  • How to Think by Alan Jacobs