Dan Erwin

How to Recognize Someone Is Using You

It was a seemingly innocent question. But actually, he was just using me.

On Easter Sunday, after spending a rare day alone at home, I decided to grab a small bite and a glass of wine at a local pub. Since I would be alone, I took along a book that I intended to finish. A terrific little volume by Mark Edmundson: “The Age of Guilt.”

I sat at the bar, slowly drinking my cab and enjoying a crabcake, all the while reading and marking up this fascinating book. One of the most intriguing and enlightening works I’d read in years.

My reading habits began in elementary school, developed while I was in seminary, blossomed while I was in the pastorate and a seminary faculty member—and exploded in my consulting business. Although I am a lot more than this, I am my books.

I take a lot of time marking my books and papers, and putting notes in the front of the books and also outlining my research papers notes on an added single page, all making important substance available immediately. I’d be much less a person without my books and my studies. No question but that my effectiveness in church ministry, seminary—and especially in business—was tied to a substantially developing knowledge base and—I don’t want to ignore this—an extensive experience in the performing arts that continually shaped and reshaped my decision making.             

Is Your Anger Functional or Dysfunctional?

Over the years I’ve met with clients and business people who were resistant to working with a colleague because he or she was an “angry asshole.” But when I analyzed their statement by talking to other colleagues, I found that so-called “angry” people were a very mixed bag. Their anger differed significantly. It took me awhile to figure out that some anger served a useful purpose and some did not. But that the differences are rarely clear to most people. What I learned was that it was often helpful and enlightening to push back on “useful” anger, but that I was liable to get burned by another person’s anger.

Intuitively, I could usually figure out the anger that was being displayed, knowing whether to charge ahead or back off. Furthermore, in my seminary studies (1960) I had stumbled across a very insightful statement by St. Thomas Aquinas: “Without anger, teaching will be useless, judgments unstable and crimes unchecked.” That single statement had caused me to rethink

Over the years I’ve met with clients and business people who were resistant to working with a colleague because he or she was an “angry asshole.” But when I analyzed their statement by talking to other colleagues, I found that so-called “angry” people were a very mixed bag. Their anger differed significantly. It took me awhile to figure out that some anger served a useful purpose and some did not. But that the differences are rarely clear to most people. What I learned was that it was often helpful and enlightening to push back on “useful” anger, but that I was liable to get burned by another person’s anger.

Intuitively, I could usually figure out the anger that was being displayed, knowing whether to charge ahead or back off. Furthermore, in my seminary studies (1960) I had stumbled across a very insightful statement by St. Thomas Aquinas: “Without anger, teaching will be useless, judgments unstable and crimes unchecked.” That single statement had caused me to rethink

Is Your Communication As Effective As You Think?

The answer to my post title? You're prably not as talk-effective as you think.

And if you think your colleagues don't express themselves well, even in very important settings, you may be right.  Indeed, most of us seriously overestimate our ability to communicate effectively.  Those of us in the discipline of communication have known that for years, but now comes a study demonstrating how great the potential for miscommunication really is. 

Boaz Keysar and Anne Henley, psychologists at the University of Chicago, studied 40 pairs of listeners and speakers.  The talkers believed that their intended meaning was understood  "most of the time."  That belief, like a lot of other so called "soft skill" beliefs, won't stand up to the scrutiny of research. 

The research showed that nearly half the time that speakers thought they were understood, they were actually wrong.  In 46% of the cases there was a breakdown--the listeners didn't get it.  What's most surprising is that the speakers were warned that the info that they were to  communicate was ambiguous.  "Even then, even though they were warned," the researcher said, "they still thought they managed to convey their intention with intonation."

Conversation Is Not Talk

Knowing how to actually converse, not just talk, is an absolute necessity in the digital world.

MIT’s well known digital psychologist, Sherry Turkle, argues in one of her recent books, “Reclaiming Conversation,” that we have sacrificed mere connection for conversation. She goes on to write that conversation is the “cornerstone for empathy and as well as for democracy; it sustains the best in education and in business it is good for the bottom line.” I agree with her fully.

But I found it appalling that Turkle has practically nothing to say of how to resolve our conversational problem. She provides approximately 20 out of 350 pages to recommend that we turn off our digital devices and put ourselves in situations where we have to “talk,” assuming falsely that talk and conversation are identical and that conversation is a natural competency. Conversation, however, is not natural, but a learned competency—a fact of which Turkle and her over-credentialed, high-IQ colleagues inevitably fail to understand. Furthermore, conversation is not just talk. Nor is it aimless. In today’s world, conversation is both purposeful and highly necessary. One of the most significant reasons is that diversity in the workforce seemingly promotes misunderstanding. But it takes conversational competency to break down these misunderstandings.

Misunderstanding
Misunderstanding in organizations is the norm: not the exception. For the millions who labor in organizations, that should be no surprise. The people who study current organizations find six “major” reasons for interpersonal misunderstandings in nearly all organizations, especially the big ones.

                *More levels of hierarchy or more work teams with more members.
                *Cultural, age, gender, sex, religious, and value differences.
                *Struggles for power.
                *Growth of subcultures and anti-organizational cultures.
                *Competition among peers for scarce resources.
                *Increased use of interactional media.

Nothing new here, except the new insights that these “misunderstandings” are true everywhere in the digital world--and that most professionals have a great deal of difficulty dealing with them. There is also a list of reasons why most stumble in trying to deal with them. The reasons are not immediately obvious. What actually makes misunderstandings ever more difficult to deal with is that very few of us have the interactional background, education and experience models for turning misunderstanding into conversational successes. Significantly, it is especially difficult to unlearn the past. And the past includes a strong orientation to deferring to power resulting in both an inability and a clear resistance to asking questions—one of the most basic strategies for resolving misunderstanding. Even amongst the youngest generations, deference and ignorance typically result in debilitating caution and multiple misunderstanding.

Surprise!
There’s one fact about misunderstandings that few understand: they are one of the best options for turning your career into success. The surprising impact of working through a breakdown is not merely a fix.

Double-Checking My Conversational Skills

Last Sunday, I headed to one of my restaurant haunts for a late lunch. Although I have a number of favorite restaurants, I usually head to NoLo’s for their weekend brunch, especially for the avocado toast and salad, a favorite of mine. Although I very often go with friends to favorite restaurants, my Sunday brunch is inevitably solo. As a consequence, I always sit at the large bar and order my meal. The place, as usual, was mobbed with late 20’s and 30s, along with a few “olders.” I inevitably take my male purse, stuffed with a couple articles or a small book, just in case. I took the only chair with two young black women on my right and two young black men my left, all obviously college grads. The neighborhood is young professionals and Sunday is a packed noisy crowd. The kind of happy noise that lets me know I’m still a member of the human race, even as a member of the so-called “elderly.”

I pulled a couple study articles out, looking at them briefly, turned to my left and started talking, a conversation that lasted more than two hours—and was great fun. But what made it especially insightful, creating the rationale for this post, is the three of us had several conversations, then together analyzed the relationships.

I began by commenting that the avocado toast that the fellow to my immediate left had just been served was one of my favorites. I usually have two eggs, sunny side, but he had scrambled eggs on top, providing another opportunity for small talk. And then, we were off. We talked about favorite restaurants, where we all lived and whether we ate here regularly. I asked about their work, learning they were sales people, both college grads and obviously successful professionals. After introducing myself as “Dan,” the fellow to my left introduced himself, providing me with his name—“Isaac”—to which I responded that Isaac didn’t fit any African Americans I knew. I was correct: he was Ethiopian. I couldn’t remember who colonized Ethiopia, to which he responded “no one.” And then I remembered, “Haile Selassie and all that stuff,” I commented. Yes, but he wanted to know how I knew that and I responded with my “don’t know shrug.” Both he and his friend talked so rapidly and so humorously that with my hearing deficit, I had to ask them to repeat, explain, rephrase, etc. They were quite OK with that.

Shortly, we had a ten-minute conversation on Detroit, my home in the 1940s. Detroit is inevitably a conversation for a lot of people. .

5 Top Blogs in the Year 2021

My top blog for 2021 is not a surprise. The numbers are way beyond any other blog--and just continue to boom. I have no trusted way of understanding why thousands continue to read this post, but I have a suspicion: 65% of my readers are in the 18 to 34 age group. This blog clarifies issues that have shown themselves to be important for this targeted group. Here are the five most-viewed blogs from last year:

    14 Intelligent behaviors: May 14, 2010. There's nothing new about companies wanting to find and keep the best talent. These are the behaviors they're always looking for.

    A not so obvious skill: the minimal encourager: March 3, 2010, Minimal encouragers are the subtle, nonverbal, and short verbal actions which encourage the speaker to express him/herself more fully.

    Why should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, November 29,2012: One of the persons most relevant to to your success just might be your enemy. 

    Influence management: three big issues: May 14, 2009: Whether you are a manager or not, personal influence is always front and center.

    Carol Dweck on learning to fulfill your potential: April 16,2014. With her mindset theory, the Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, can help you confront your demons.

Here are three more blogs for the youngest work generation:

3 Keys to Successful Career Change

Although the notions around career change have been in flux for a number of years, there is one identifiable thread running through the rhetoric of the past 50 years: always build on your old career and its well-developed competencies.

You won’t need all of your old competencies, but a significant number must be available to support your new career. Journalists love to report on the unique people who won’t follow that rule. But the number of people who build a successful career that ignores their previous competencies is miniscule. Analyzing the past can force you to define what’s transferable and what’s not. In the long run, the distinctions between the past and the future provide focus for gaining new learnings quickly and efficiently.

This approach has two significant advantages: it is not overwhelming—and it makes you immediately valuable to your (new) organization. I always assumed this was self-evident, but experience reveals that few really understand the process initially!

One of my mentees provides a superb example for successful change. About a dozen years ago, he got into a major financial firm right out of college as a client relationship specialist. An English major, his conversational and linguistic skills were superb. Though he did not initially recognize his giftedness, he almost automatically thought first in big pictures, then created or broke out process from that macro understanding. This unusual competency sometimes goes with a humanities degree, but is usually missing in those with technical and business degrees.

His use of that expertise was spontaneous and unconscious. Early on in the financial firm, he began using technology with his relational skills, the focus of the finance position. After just a couple years, he bumped up that elementary experience into making sense out of tech strategy, assessing internal tech needs--and working with technology folk. Pretty soon, though he’d never had any technical background in software, he began to understand technology process and strategy more richly. (You don’t need to know how to code to understand process and strategy). Soon, with articulate questioning and networking, he became adept at figuring out what various programs could and could not do. As a result of his curiosity and focus, he became an expert strategic and planning thinker. That led to project management in a leading tech firm. (Still no coding expertise.) But from that experience he recognized the value of Agile, got his credentials very quickly and was soon using Agile in his project management. Next, you guessed it, he got on the Scrum bandwagon and is now a Senior Scrum consultant. I suspect there’ll be still further vocational and growth moves.

His career development model is simple and straight-forward: develop by adding strategic tools.

Sure, this sounds like overly simple process. Yet, the model is fundamental to all career change. Surprisingly, no more than five to ten percent of business folk seem to have the understanding and discipline to follow the model. Indeed, my observation of several hundred individuals attempting to develop skills without anchoring growth in the past reveals ongoing, unnecessary limitations.

Why is that?

Edgar Schein of MIT has talked and written about this macro problem for years.  More recently, Herminia Ibarra has also been dealing with this same issue. They believe that when the gap between your present situation and the hoped-for new situation is too large, the more likely it'll be that you'll ignore or misunderstand the information in the new context. And the result will be—failure...

Understanding Relationship Barriers and Breakdowns

Communication breakdowns happen a lot more than most of us think. It may be obvious that with a wide range of organizational associates, relationship breakdowns are inevitable. But candidly, it also happens regularly with one-on-ones. The actual researched percentage of misunderstanding and breakdown in an ordinary work conversation is so high you won’t believe me without extensive explanation. So, I won’t share the percentage. But suppose a tech manager is relating to a colleague in sales. That’s a set-up for breakdown. Inevitably, they’re working on different timelines, based on different objectives. Furthermore, the rewards are typically conflicting, the techie on salary and sales on commission.

But add four or five more people into the mix, all from different organizational disciplines, and you’re not just adding to the potential for relationship breakdowns, you’re both multiplying and speeding up the potential for misunderstanding and breakdown.  Inevitably, conflicts over personnel, resource allocation, timelines and turf, surface.  Differences of objectives, strategies, measures of success and even values can escalate the emotions.  We have a “communication breakdown" is not just Led Zeppelin, it remains a common buzzword for these differences.  In a real sense, however, the above relationships are not, strictly speaking, "communication breakdowns."  The parties involved understand exactly what's going on and they are effective at communicating their differences, and hopefully, negotiating them.  They involve trust and competition, usually over scarce resources of one kind or another. What makes interpersonal breakdowns especially difficult is that resolution often requires behavioral negotiation skills, skills more complex than negotiating products and dollars.

Candidly, the above differences that we label "communication breakdowns" are neither the most common nor the most personally painful.  There are, instead, some very common barriers and breakdowns that get in the way of effective relationships that can be even more damaging than the above list.  The really damaging barriers are about misunderstanding another person's point of view.  Indeed, I've found that that the most common barriers and breakdowns in organizations are inevitably about relational breakdowns.  What makes these interpersonal breakdowns so difficult is that dealing with hard products is a lot different than dealing with the barriers posed by soft people feelings. So, when the breakdown is interpersonal, these breakdowns can require behavioral conversations and at least basic behavioral negotiation skills. Behavioral skill of either type is not always available, so the breakdown remains unresolved or pushed up the ladder.

Attribution theory
The best way to understand these breakdowns is through what is known as "attribution theory" which deals with the ways people interpret observed facts and explain others’ as well as their own behavior. What’s significant about attribution is that the causes we use to explain another’s behavior impacts the way we think about, feel about and behave toward that person. The practice is so widespread that attributions can be made of others’ behaviors without an observable cause. Of course, it takes very little thinking to realize that observed behaviors can be interpreted in numerous ways.  Furthermore, research also shows that once we've created our interpretation, right or wrong, it's very difficult to dislodge.

The process has become so questionable that in response to the potential for erroneous conclusions social scientists speak about the “fundamental attribution error.” The attribution error is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others--while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people are almost inherently biased to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind of person” that manager or worker is rather than on the business context.

Let's say you're the manager of a technology team.  Noticing that one of your employees seems to be working particularly hard over the past few weeks, you wonder why.  You might conclude that his project timelines are causing his behavior.  Or maybe he is angling for a raise.  Could be that he's attempting to suck up.  Maybe he's just bored and wants to keep busy.  So, you decide he's angling for a raise, but a colleague tells you he's just sucking up. Whatever. You've drawn a potentially fallible conclusion based on observable fact. And, in spite of all that's been said, once you've decided he's angling for a raise, you'll reject most any other interpretation. And your relevant behavior will follow.

We also make positive inferences.  You might think your employee genuinely wants to see his team succeed.  Or perhaps, you decide, you've just never realized what a hard worker this guy is. But more often than not, it’s the negative attributions that follow, resulting in the relational breakdown. Bad is always more powerful than good. So, it’s rare for us to ask what’s going right about a situation? Instead, it’s what’s going wrong?

Those dangerous inferences
People draw their conclusions both from the work context as well as past history with a person when they come up with interpretations.  But. . . underlying those interpretations are just a few basic assumptions that drive most of them (I prefer "inferences" even though "interpretation" is the more familiar.  Getting used to the term "inferences" will support some other cool, problem-solving and decision-making skills.)   Anyway, these wrongheaded inferences cause us to flare up, get disgusted, get angry and frustrated, be ashamed or even walk away for another day--or week—or even years.  Some families have had major breakups merely because members interpreted the behavior of another using one of these inferences. Inferences, like conclusions are nothing more than opinions. The language just sounds more intelligent.

Thankfully, attribution theory provides us with a lot of insight into human relationships and communication.  Here are three recurring and dangerous assumptions...

“If humans don’t keep on exercising their lips. . .their brains start working?”

Seeking solitude can be a serious mistake.

Ford Prefect, that alien from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse never quite understood earthlings’ peculiar “habit of continually stating and repeating the very, very obvious, as in ‘It’s a nice day,’ or ‘You’re very tall’.” He considers, then rejects the theory that human mouths seize up if not continually utilized.  He finally concludes that if human beings “don’t keep on exercising their lips…their brains start working.”

That was how the late Douglas Adams expressed a common high-flown opinion about “empty chatter”: it is trivial, or perhaps worse, a substitute for real speech and thought. “Should we talk about the weather?” sings Michael Stipe of REM in “Pop Song 89.”

As a business consultant, I learned that plenty of managers—and execs held that view in spades, that is--until I educated them. Evidently my education worked rather well, because probably twenty-percent of my several hundred clients over the last 15 years of my business consulting wanted help in small talk. One CFO at a multi-billion-dollar firm hired me for only that purpose. His wife had told him on several occasions after cocktail parties that he needed to learn how to do small talk. She was right on. It took eight to ten sessions to learn how. I never quite got over laughing all the way to the bank over teaching a business person how to do small talk.

But I eventually realized my judgment was unfair. Until I got started in the pastorate in the 1960s, I didn’t know how to do it either. But I quickly realized in the very first year out of seminary that I’d be in deep-doo-doo without small talk. So, I eventually became an expert in the subject. In the 1960s no one had ever written about small talk.  But today there are plenty of books on the supposedly inane subject of small talk, many of them quite inadequate. Inadequate because they are tone deaf to the subtexts of small talk.

How to Read What's Not Being Said or Written

In today’s complex world, the more analytical and rhetorical tools you have, the better off. That thinking was confirmed uniquely a couple years ago when I put up a a blog on "reading subtexts.. Surprised by the comments and “thank yous,” I’ve decided to go a bit further into what my discipline of rhetoric calls “close reading.” By “close reading,” I’m referring to both print and spoken messages and to more than just the literal words. As in, “If I’m reading the vice-president correctly, he’ll reject that proposal out of hand.”  

So, when I talk about subtexts, I’m referring to covert meanings, hidden commitments, undiscussables,” or what's not said.  The meanings are not immediately clear, but over time and with context, the listener can understand what’s meant.

For example, a student goes to turn in his paper. After looking through two pages, his teacher asks, “Are you sure you want to turn this in?” The literal text is a question that asks for a yes or no. The meaning of the text is suggested by the actual words, message and action discussed. But the student understands her subtext--that his paper may have some typos, misspelling or syntax problems. By her question, she gives the student the latitude to make his own decision about the paper—or receive a lower grade.

A different tool, beyond that notion of subtext, is what does the meaning of a text do to a person’s thoughts, motives, actions or predispositions? This is the kind of analysis that is usually much more complex. It requires a richer, fuller understanding of the context—the teacher’s past comments about his writing ability.

In this larger context, the student remembers many positive comments his teacher has made about his writing. So her question means that there’s nothing wrong with the paper as such. But given the larger context, he recognizes that she’s reminding him that he’s more capable of original, creative writing. Based on the past, her question asks whether he wants to enhance his writing. So what does he think about redoing the paper, giving further thought, insight and color to his article? In sum, it’s a question about his unusual originality and creativity.

This analytical tool can be even more useful for stories, anecdotes and movies.

I watched a couple of absolutely fascinating movies over the past month. The stories and the acting in both were rich and warm. One about a heterosexual relationship and the other about gay relations. The first, the 2005 “Pride and Prejudice” starred Keira Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen. The second was the BBCs “Man in an Orange Shirt,” with Vanessa Redgrave. Curious, because of their power over me, I watched both of them a couple times...

“Setting” Boundaries Versus “Negotiating” Boundaries

Is there a substantial difference? Or are they just two words for the same thing? And does it really matter? Prior to the 1950s, they would have been just two words for the same thing. That is, if anyone ever used the term “negotiating” boundaries. The practice of “negotiating” boundaries comes primarily out of the 1980s with the flattening of business hierarchies and the strong orientation to women’s rights. With the exception of sales negotiation, it was rare to talk about negotiating relationships until the mid-1980s. And since then there has been tons of research and some training solely in the practice of negotiating interpersonal boundaries. In simple terms, setting boundaries is one individual determining boundaries for others. Negotiating boundaries is two or more creating a workable agreement on the boundaries between them.

So, there’s a significant difference between setting and negotiating boundaries. Major business leaders as well as many community leaders recognize these differences even without distinguishing between the two terms. But, ask the right questions and they can clarify immediately. I’ve learned, sadly, that these same professionals are typically incapable of using the negotiation competence in their family. Shifting competencies from one context to another without training is highly problematic—even for top business school grads. Similarly, lower level bureaucrats, patriarchal families, pastors, the Roman and Evangelical churches, small and medium-sized privately held owner-firms lack insight to the distinctions and sometimes have a lot of resistance on their hands as a result of their ignorance.

Creating still more difficulty, my psychologist colleagues have no rhetorical format for negotiation. Common formats provide the means for improving, changing or even rejecting former ways of communicating. Without a common format, they’re always attempting to reinvent the wheel, a strategy which readily results in failure or limited success. They talk a good talk about “setting boundaries,” but lack awareness of the extensive implications of differing boundaries. This is surprising, because the counseling profession knows that ignoring or flagrantly setting boundaries is one of the major causes of family breakdown. And there are plenty of other people and organizations in the dark and looking at abject failure because of their ignorance and unwillingness to operate on the basis of negotiating boundaries.

The role of power
Although I’ve never heard anyone make the distinction between setting and negotiating, it’s time to start using the rhetoric much more carefully. Why? Because, the distinctions are primarily about power: who’s got it and what are the most effective ways to use it.

In business organizations power is traditionally viewed from three perspectives: vested, expert and network. Simply put, vested power is the legitimate power given to an individual to run teams, projects or disciplines within an organization. Expert is the power conferred on an individual who has the necessary knowledge others require for success. And network power is that of a person who knows a terrific amount of people who are capable of providing the necessary support and insight which individuals or groups require to succeed. Obviously simplistic, but occasionally useful clarity.

However, as a result of the unique work of the French academic, Michel Foucault, we understand that power is a lot more complex than the above little model. Foucault emphasizes that where there is power, there is also resistance. So, it’s all the more important to understand that successful power has much more to do, for example, with how a person or an organization chooses to organize ideas, make comparisons, and locate new ideas, often metaphorically, within highly respected old ideas. To an obvious degree, knowing what to say, how to say it, and what not to say in a given culture can be powerful negotiation strategies. That kind of expertise is usually necessary for successful boundary negotiation, which at its core is a matter of interaction around “I’ll do this if you’ll do that.” Simple relationships can sometimes be negotiated in three minutes, while major organizations or nations may take ten to twenty years to negotiate their differences in order to achieve mutual goals...