Dan Erwin

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...

Figuring Out the 2020 Candidates by Counting Words

Back in 2004 Pete Buttigieg, his Harvard Colleague, Ganesh Sitaraman, along with Peter Emerson wrote an intriguing, fun article suggesting that by counting the number of words in the party platform, you could figure out who would win the presidential election. The smaller the page count, the more potential for winning the election.

They surfaced a great deal of examples to support their proposal. They found that since 1960 the average page count of the Democrats' platforms in losing years was 82 pages, but that the average of winning years was 46. The longest platforms at 128 and 124 pages came during the disastrous years of 1980 and 1984. 

They also found that another indicator was what they called the candidate-to-opponent ratio. In the Democrats long 1984 platform they were unable to spell out their platform without mentioning/comparing to the Republicans. That year Ronald Reagan was mentioned 213 times, while Walter Mondale, the Democratic candidate wasn't mentioned once. Reagan won by a complete rout. 

These guys also studied the rhetorical use of words, specifically the use of "crisis." The Republicans used the term "crisis" a dozen times in their 1980 platform, including in the first sentence. Of course, that was the year that Reagan won in a landslide.

I've thought about this article and my own background of rhetoric in the past months by comparing Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. I've listened to Buttigieg throughout his campaign and compared his positioning to that of Elizabeth Warren. Buttigieg was in no hurry whatsoever to create policy. In fact, he pushed back on media's demands for a lotta policy statements, wanting to keep his approach simple, while Warren made "I've a policy for that" her mantra. All along my rhetoric background suggested that what Pete's doing is very smart and that Elizabeth Warren's inundating us with policy will bring her down, even though right now she's getting all the attention...

5 Steps to Get Buy-In from Your Colleagues (and Your Boss)

Many people do not seem to recognize that getting buy-in for their ideas is not only key to organizational success--but also to personal and career success. This is an issue that does not seem to go away or get old. Furthermore, the inter-disciplinary set-up of businesses today just makes the competency both more difficult and more valuable.

Surprisingly, there is a definite process for how actionable recommendations evolve and gain acceptance. When I say “process” I’m revealing that much of communication is built upon protocols. To a degree, communication process can be compared to software development process—to coding.  

But don’t misunderstand. Though the analogy to coding is insightful, the behavioral consequences of communication are far more unpredictable and the inferences can be strikingly different and even more political. Still, basic processes exist for many communication competencies. Once internalized these communication processes (I prefer “rhetorical processes”) can be applied and adapted to differing contexts and interactions. In short, there is specific, learnable process for how actionable recommendations can have a better chance of gaining support.

How Effective Is Your Democratic Candidate?

In March 2014, I wrote a blog post on Satya Nadella, at that time the new Microsoft CEO. Based on his conversational rhetoric I proposed that he would be able to look forward to a highly successful tenure. My conclusion proved accurate. After listening to a number of 2020 candidates I realized that the same process could be quite applicable to an assessment of their future. One Democratic candidate fits the bill perfectly. Although I'm not willing to share my conclusions about the candidates thus far, I thought that the blog might be useful for other political junkies like me. Thus, I have reprinted the blog, making it immediately available on my site. Your assessment will need some awareness of the typical Democratic policy perspectives from the past twenty years, but given that assumtion, this blog should be of value to the astute listener.

Can you guess who these candidates are?

Preface to This Blog: Most perspectives on organizational and leadership change propose that communication occurs in the context of change. Here, I invert that perspective and propose, instead, that communication—in the form of conversations—is the context in which change occurs. In other words, communication/conversation is the tool to successfully execute change, not a result or by-product of change. The promise of leadership conversation is that there’s a new and better way to lead an organization now that command-and-control is at best futile, and at worst, and probably more commonly, destructive. Satya Nadella is indicative of the best. Kudos to Microsoft for their choice. The blog below elaborates and extrapolates.

“If they engage with conversation in the right way,” Harvard’s Groysberg and Slind write, “they have the potential to unleash organizational energy of a sort that no leader could ever command.” That’s why the conversation between Adam Bryant and Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, grabbed my attention. And though an interview is not the kind of dialog that is inevitably revealing, the uniqueness of Nadella’s response can only be indicative of many highly astute leadership conversations. 

Powerful rhetoric
Social science research finds that organizational mindsets form the boundaries of possible change within an organization. Proposed changes that do not fit within existing paradigms—including corporate leadership--simply do not ...

“If they engage with conversation in the right way,” Harvard’s Groysberg and Slind write, “they have the potential to unleash organizational energy of a sort that no leader could ever command.” That’s why the conversation between Adam Bryant and Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, grabbed my attention. And though an interview is not the kind of dialog that is inevitably revealing, the uniqueness of Nadella’s response can only be indicative of many highly astute leadership conversations. 

Powerful rhetoric
Social science research finds that organizational mindsets form the boundaries of possible change within an organization. Proposed changes that do not fit within existing paradigms—including corporate leadership--simply do not ...

In March 2014, I wrote a blog post on Satya Nadella, at that time the new Microsoft CEO. Based on his conversational rhetoric I proposed that he would be able to look forward to a highly successful tenure. My conclusion proved accurate. After listening to a number of 2020 candidates I realized that the same process could be quite applicable to an assessment of their future. One Democratic candidate fits the bill perfectly. Although I'm not willing to share my conclusions about the candidates thus far, I thought that the blog might be useful for other political junkies like me. Thus, I have reprinted the blog, making it immediately available on my site. Your assessment will need some awareness of the typical Democratic policy perspectives from the past twenty years, but given that assumtion, this blog should be of value to the astute listener.

“If they engage with conversation in the right way,” Harvard’s Groysberg and Slind write, “they have the potential to unleash organizational energy of a sort that no leader could ever command.” That’s why the conversation between Adam Bryant and Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, grabbed my attention. And though an interview is not the kind of dialog that is inevitably revealing, the uniqueness of Nadella’s response can only be indicative of many highly astute leadership conversations. 

Powerful rhetoric
Social science research finds that organizational mindsets form the boundaries of possible change within an organization. Proposed changes that do not fit within existing paradigms—including corporate leadership--simply do not ...

The Demands of Extreme Teaming

In an interview with Harvard’s Amy Edmondson, the professor points out that today’s managers have to work with teams that cross distance, discipline and hierarchy—a task that doesn’t come naturally. She refers to the task as “extreme teaming,” arguing that with the complications of 24/7 global operations, more people than ever are required to collaborate outside the context of a formal team.

Edmondson is extremely cautious in her conclusions. For example, when asked why we’re seeing more extreme teaming, she responds, “beyond the increasingly globalized workplaces, there’s a recognition that we’re not always going to rely on vertical integration to solve all of our challenges. It sometimes just makes sense to team up with another organization to get something done.”

Note the language: “not always going to rely…” “increasingly globalized workplaces” “sometimes just makes sense.” That many caveats and qualifiers in just two sentences of 37 words including articles? Really? In medium-sized or large corporations, 90% of execution is cross-disciplinary. And in small tech firms, close to 95% of execution is cross-disciplinary.

There actually are hurdles, as the interviewer writes, “Many managers are not equipped with the skills to capture the full value of these multifaceted collaborations.” And what about the ordinary workers who are involved in all these cross-disciplinary teams?

Actually, team failures abound in virtually every organizational change. One recent study of 95 teams in 25 leading corporations found that nearly 75% of cross-functional teams are dysfunctional. Engineers don’t converse well with designers, marketing doesn’t converse well with development, and so on. It’s becoming rather clear that the real business of business is conversation. Yet few have these skills at the level necessary for today’s successful business person.

And what about the few that have these skills in spades?