CHAPTER 18
BECOME A SCIENTIST: THEY'RE NOT LEARNING FROM YOU; THEY'RE LEARNING WITH YOU
Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks's 2000 Year Old Man tells the story of how humans discovered God. First, they worshipped the leader of their tribe, a cruel and powerful man named Phil. “One day, Phil was hit by lightning. And we looked up, we said, ‘There's something bigger than Phil!’”
There's something bigger than your partner's problem. In Step 3, you're going to find out what.
Ben started out by complaining about Ramona. In his mind, she was the problem. By asking about Ben's energizing outcome, Dara helped him identify what he really wants: a high-performing team.
Now Dara will help Ben see Ramona's behavior, not simply as an obstacle, but as an opportunity to help him achieve the outcome he wants.
When you're at Step 3 with your partner, you want to get them to a point where they can honestly say, “Thank goodness for this problem! I thought it was a brick wall, but it turned out to be a door.”
So how do we get there?
First, circle back to the problem. Explore what's happening now and what your partner has already tried in their attempts to solve it. You have a couple of goals here. You want to continue to build empathy and connection, and you want to dig beneath their stories and interpretations to get to the data: the facts and details.
Then you'll search for hidden opportunities. You'll explore the potential upsides to the problem—how it might be positive, useful, or valuable. And you'll explore the gap between the energizing outcome and what's happening now, identifying what's missing or what's in the way. What you're looking for is how the thing they thought was a problem turns out to be a key part of the solution.
Because this is a counterintuitive process, you run the risk of generating resistance if you bulldoze your way from problem to opportunity. You want to give your partner ample time to talk about the problem and take your time in making sure you understand their experience and perspective to their satisfaction. You will be most successful if you approach this part of the conversation with curiosity.
In his book Sapiens, Juval Noah Harari identifies one of the key qualities of the Scientific Revolution as “the willingness to admit ignorance.” He writes, “The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been, above all, a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.”
The most helpful mindset you can adopt in this part of the process is a willingness to “not know,” to recognize that any knee-jerk solutions are premature. This can be very challenging because we don't like not knowing. It's not fun. It doesn't make us feel good or competent or even helpful. (For more on the power of not knowing, check out my TEDx talk, “I Don't Know,” at BregmanPartners.com/change.)
If you're a leader or manager (or parent or, frankly, almost anyone), you may hang your identity on having answers. “If I don't know,” you might be thinking deep down, “Then what use am I?”
The answer is: of tremendous use. At this stage, not knowing is precisely how you will be most helpful.
Because not knowing leaves room for learning.
And you don't need to know because—and this is really important:
They're not learning from you; they're learning with you.
You are an effective thinking partner because you're discovering together. You're not a teacher, talking down to your student, imparting your great wisdom. You're not asking rhetorical or leading questions that make the other person feel like a kid at school trying to figure out the “right” answer the teacher is waiting for.
You're an ally. You're tackling this together.
THE OPPORTUNITY STEP IN ACTION
The Opportunity step is built around three lines of inquiry:
- What's happening now? (Take a detailed look at the problem.)
- What have you tried? (Create a comprehensive list of attempted solutions.)
- How can you use the problem to achieve your energizing outcome? (Find the opportunity afforded by the problem.)
Let's see how Dara takes Ben through the Opportunity step, finding his path to a high-performing team. As a reminder, we paused the dialogue here:
| DARA: | Great. What does a high-performing team look like to you? You mentioned a team that generates great ideas and commits to them. Anything else? |
| BEN: | Well, one of the reasons we don't generate great ideas is that we avoid conflict. I'd love to be on a team where we can argue over tasks and deliverables without damaging our relationships. For us to perform at that level, we need an environment where it's safe to disagree for the sake of our shared mission. |
Now Dara and Ben explore how Ramona's behavior can contribute to Ben's outcome of a high-performing team.
WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW?
| DARA: | Got it. Tell me what's happening now. |
| BEN: | Ramona isn't the leader, but she acts like she is—and not a very good one. She keeps bossing everyone around. |
| DARA: | Can you give me a specific example? |
| BEN: | Sure, at yesterday's meeting she was at it again. |
| DARA: | Can you take me there? If I were a fly on the wall, what would I see and hear? |
| BEN: | I was presenting a slide with the results of ad testing, and she interrupted me with, “Your data isn't reliable.” Then she went off on a rant about how we're writing ad copy without having done in-depth customer avatar analysis. |
| DARA: | Tell me more. |
| BEN: | She said that because we don't know enough about our ideal customer psychographics, we can't write compelling ads. Therefore, the response rates are meaningless. Which means we're making product decisions based on a market segment that will never be our customer. |
| DARA: | Then what happened? |
| BEN: | I told her that I got the data from analytics, and they'd verified it. And that she could please wait her turn and ask questions when I was done. |
| DARA: | What did she do or say in response to that? |
| BEN: | She huffed and was quiet for the rest of the meeting. Now she's avoiding me, and ignoring my emails, in a really passive-aggressive way. |
WHAT HAVE YOU TRIED?
| DARA: | What specifically have you tried in the past to deal with this dynamic with Ramona? |
| BEN: | I've tried talking over her when she interrupts. |
| DARA: | How did that go? |
| BEN: | Not well. She got louder and more aggressive. |
| DARA: | What else? |
| BEN: | I asked her to stop interrupting and wait her turn. I was actually kind of mad and, I admit, I was a little aggressive about it. |
| DARA: | And what happened then? |
| BEN: | She withdrew from the conversation and didn't participate for the rest of the meeting. She just sat there stewing. |
| DARA: | How did you respond to that? |
| BEN: | I just continued on, but I felt bad—like I had done something wrong. It was really uncomfortable. |
| DARA: | What did the rest of the team do then? |
| BEN: | Stony silence. Come to think of it, they had been pretty quiet before then too. Not much discussion or interaction, just listening to one presentation after another. |
| DARA: | What else have you tried? |
| BEN: | Well, I used to double-check the data obsessively for a couple of days before each meeting. |
| DARA: | Did that help? |
| BEN: | Not really. It annoyed me and wasted my time. |
| DARA: | And what else have you tried? |
| BEN: | Once I emailed Ramona before the meeting and asked her to help me create the slide. We worked together for an hour, and the meeting went great. |
| DARA: | That's interesting. What did that look like when you were collaborating? Can you let me be a fly on the wall? |
| BEN: | She came to my office and I asked her what were the most important points I needed to get onto the slide. |
| DARA: | And then? |
| BEN: | She showed me a flow chart she'd created with a bunch of go/no-go gates and asked what metrics I'd want to see at each gate to justify the next investment of time and money. |
| DARA: | Was that helpful? |
| BEN: | Actually, it was. Very. |
| DARA: | And what else have you tried? |
| BEN: | That's pretty much it. |
HOW CAN YOU USE THE PROBLEM TO ACHIEVE YOUR ENERGIZING OUTCOME?
| DARA: | OK. We've talked about how Ramona gets in the way, how her behavior is problematic, and that you get frustrated and annoyed by it. I hear that clearly. And it also sounds like there are ways in which she has been helpful. Now I want to ask you a different question, and I'd like you to take a few moments to think before you answer. Ready? |
| BEN: | Yeah? |
| DARA: | What's good about Ramona's bad behavior? I know it's annoying and can feel disrespectful. Without minimizing that, is there anything productive, positive, useful, or of value that it brings to the team? |
| BEN: | [Long pause] |
| DARA: | [Silently waiting] |
| BEN: | Well, I guess what's also true is that she's willing to say things that other people aren't. To raise the undiscussables. |
| DARA: | That sounds like boldness. |
| BEN: | Yeah, and I guess it's also a willingness to risk friendly relationships for the sake of what we're trying to accomplish. |
| DARA: | Can you give me an example of how she does it? |
| BEN: | Actually, yes. Everybody sort of knows that the data's sketchy, but Ramona was the only person to really say it out loud. Nobody else spoke up. Which I get—acknowledging it would set us back at least a month. We'd have to start again from scratch and find a better market research firm. Ramona spoke up when the rest of us sort of just looked the other way. |
| DARA: | That's a great example. Sounds like Ramona is playing an uncomfortable but important role. And that the silence of the rest of the team—while easier to overlook because it's polite and quiet and comfortable—is actually also an obstacle to the team being a high-performing team. |
| BEN: | Yeah, the rest of the team—and I include myself here—actually prefer to be nice and polite to each other, rather than raise difficult issues. |
| DARA: | How does that get in the way of what you're trying to accomplish? |
| BEN: | Well, it seriously undermines risk management. We can't prepare for what we aren't willing to acknowledge and discuss. |
| DARA: | Anything else? |
| BEN: | I think we're missing the best ideas. The first one that someone comes up with gets adopted because, you know, it's pretty good and we just compliment them. Asking for other ideas seems like it would be rude. |
| DARA: | Got it. So I'm hearing that, even leaving the issue of Ramona out of it for the moment, there are other things getting in the way of you having a high-performing team. Does that sound right? |
| BEN: | Yes, absolutely. |
| DARA: | Can you list them? |
| BEN: | Well, like I said, we prefer politeness to honesty. We aren't willing to engage in conflict for the sake of better thinking or risk mitigation. |
| DARA: | Anything else? |
| BEN: | That's the crux of it. |
| DARA: | Here's what I'm hearing then: Even though her aggressive approach blocks other people's good ideas, removing Ramona from the team isn't a great path to high performance because no one would be willing to speak up and challenge groupthink. Am I thinking about this right? |
| BEN: | Yes. Removing her might make it worse. She brings a quality of gutsiness that our team—again, me included—really needs. |
| DARA: | That's so interesting. Given that, what would your high-performing team look and sound like? |
| BEN: | We'd be as sensitive as I am and as brave as Ramona. |
| DARA: | As sensitive as you and as brave as Ramona. That's compelling. And I can feel your excitement. Sensitive and brave at the same time? |
| BEN: | More or less. If Ramona could just learn to speak her mind without alienating the rest of us, and the rest of us could learn to speak honestly and raise important issues, then we'd really get somewhere. |
| DARA: | So while Ramona's the problem … |
| BEN: | She holds a key piece of the solution. |
| DARA: | So can I rephrase what we're going for here? |
| BEN: | Yes, please. |
| DARA: | In order to achieve a high-performing team, you want to create a culture where everyone speaks their truth with care and sensitivity, and commits to speaking, listening, and being open to hard truths for the sake of the team, the best outcomes, and their own growth and development. Did I get that right? |
| BEN: | Yes, totally. Now I'm actually kind of excited about building that high-performing team, because I see that I've got all the pieces already. And yes, Ramona is part of the problem, but not the whole problem. I'm part of the problem too—as are the others on the team. And, together, we're the solution. I just have to figure out how to integrate those pieces. |
| DARA: | That does sound exciting! |
| BEN: | It's like we have two completely different cultures on the team—ours and Ramona's. Neither is right or wrong. Both are necessary for high performance. So how do I merge them? |
Let's stop here. In the next few chapters, we'll revisit parts of this dialogue to unpack and explore how Dara used the three questions to help Ben discover his hidden opportunity.