Sitting with a group of technology managers, discussing the difficulty of working with their internal clients, one member of the group was quick to point out a certain client who was a very difficult "control freak." I asked the tech manager to explain what she meant. She followed up with a painful soliloquy in great detail analyzing the client, but again labelling him as a control freak. Two other members of the team also had worked with the client, and were nodding their heads. Actually, I was curious to know whether others might come up with different interpretations. But no, all three Boomers were in agreement with that single interpretation of the client.
Drawing inferences, like those tech managers, is fraught with difficulty. One of the important truths I've learned, especially from my friends in statistics, is that inference creation is a lot tougher than most want to believe. When it comes to human behavior, unless I have a track record of relations with one person, I'm unwilling to draw a single inference about most anyone.
Single inferences as interpretations of behavior are what Carol Dweck calls "fixed attributes." Fixed attributes can be thought of as stereotypes. The real difficulty with fixed attributes which often come up in performance appraisals is that they simply don't lend themselves to learning or coaching. Significantly, they're just one version of the truth. Here's a question you can always apply to them: how else can you interpret that person's behavior? Rarely do behaviors or events have only one possible interpretation.
While watching the news about the oil spill the other day, the question being asked was who to blame for this disaster. The question was phrased to mean that one single person or organization would be at fault. I chuckled, remembering a historical comment from Thomas Hart Benton, one of the first U.S. senators from Missouri, elected in 1820. In referring to a colleague, he responded: He has a bad case of the simples. There's usually a lot more going on in a situation than is obvious. Events don't lend themselves to simple interpretation. So I played a game with myself regarding the oil spill. What or who were all the possibilities for blame? BP? Halliburton? Transoceanic Drilling? US Minerals and Mining? Louisiana's hell bent need to get tax money from big oil? Lack of education for the drilling workers? Lack of thoughtful drilling protocols? A bad case of the simples won't work for the Gulf disaster. Nor will it work for many situations of importance.
After reading Tammy Erickson's fascinating and insightful Harvard Blog on Multiple Truths, I have still better insight regarding how different generations interpret events. There are differences among the generations in how they go about interpreting events and . . . people. The Boomer Mindset is very willing to blieve that situations can be interpreted from one perspective. In contrast, the younger generations (X and Y) are much less likely to imagine that there is one correct answer or a single authority.
Why is that? Their experiences of surfing the Internet, says Erickson, have given them a better sense of the way situations can morph and interpreted differently, but not less correctly, by different reporters.
Bingo! That was a Gen-X and especially Gen-Y characteristic that immediately resounded. I'd seen that again and again in team settings, but hadn't put it together. As Erickson writes: No account represents absolute truth. All reporting is, by definition, a retelling of the story, a conscious selection of facts to include, a decision to omit details considered extraneous or unnecessary. In most instances, I believe this retelling is done with a sincere attempt to provide a straightforward account, but it's nonetheless shaped through the writer's lens, based on the reporter's sense of what will be important, interesting, and relevant to the intended audience.
All of us have an infinite capacity for rationalizing reality to fit our personal ideas. It should be painfully obvious that there are multiple perspectives and versions of the truth. Interpreting them wisely is our responsibility. One of the reasons I make interacting with all the generations a high priority is that I can always count on gaining different perspectives. Interpreting them becomes my problem, but also my good fortune.