Category: Communication

When Commonsense is Threatening

My previous post What is Theory? What is Commonsense? speaks of how to convince people when they see something as theory and not as commonsense.

But what if they find the commonsense threatening? Can you still make them see your commonsense view?

Professor Felipe Monteiro says it accurately in a Knowledge@Wharton article, although in a different context, “You’re more likely to act on opportunities that confirm what you’re doing rather than opportunities that challenge what you’re doing.”

The same applies to accepting “commonsense”. People are more likely to accept your commonsense view if it confirms rather than challenges what they’re doing.

When People find Commonsense Threatening, they find it in their best interest to discard the commonsense. Or worse still, attack you for bringing it to their notice and forcing them to respond.

In this context, how are we likely to respond in the following situations –

  • When acceptance means loss of face to one’s own self and to the world? And giving up the current habit is tough work? Like addicts
  • When there is fear of peer pressure? Like teenagers
  • At work when it threatens how we judge ourselves? Or how others judge us and our work? When the truth places the burden of new action on us, making our current work meaningless.
  • When it is diametrically opposite to our beliefs? And our culture?Like widow remarriage propagated in 19th century India by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and opposed by orthodox brahmins.
  • When it threatens the primacy of our rule? Like when Galileo said the earth moved around the sun and brought the Vatican inquisition upon himself.

With responses ranging from the difficult-to-get-across to discarding, censorship and physical and mental harm, odds are that if you encounter any of the above situations, it’s unlikely that your commonsense view would be accepted.

Because it is threatening. And most of us would fight tooth and nail not to accept it. Because it would mean admitting that our value system has been wrong. That we need to take action now. That we need to step down from our pedestal. That our followers might desert us, leaving us to nothingness and penury. That our work, prestige, money is at stake – All the things that have been giving meaning to our life.

Who would willingly want to give up all that?

So how does one transmit commonsense with success?

Presenting the facts in bite-sized pieces continuously. Showing the good of it through examples. Listening to their point of view to understand rather than refute them. This shows us the chinks through which our arguments can pass through. When everything fails, to be able to live with the final satisfaction of having done our job of communicating.

It takes patience, determination and consistency to make a dent. Even then, some kinds of acceptance come only with a change of guard and a change of generation – people who aren’t threatened by this truth; people who’ve had the chance to play it around in their minds and evaluate it without feeling threatened – Widow remarriage today is not the banned ideal it was in the earlier centuries; and the Church did accept Galileo’s observations, even if it was over 350 years after the inquisition, long after the inquisition itself had lost its meaning.

But why bother at all?

  • Because, every day of our lives, we are here to make a better life for ourselves and for others.
  • Because in the give and take of life, you need to carry people along with you. You cannot give up on your people.
  • Because it helps you too – even if there isn’t a successful result. It let’s you step back and see their point of view. It can build humility in you if you let it, teaching you about the fear, anger and self-protection that people hang on to.
  • It can teach you to listen with humility when others’ commonsense threatens you.

It helps you remain patient. ‘Cause now you know you have to look for the crack in the wall that you can chip away at – until you get a hole big enough for you to crawl through. Sometimes you can’t, nevertheless you would’ve made a hole – one that someone else will begin to chip at.

Because, truth, ultimately has a way of making its way to the front.

What is Theory? What is Commonsense?

Do we need to make this distinction?

Since our ability to transfer our point-of-view to others not as a theory, but as commonsense allows them to accept our ideas with greater ease, I’d say yes, it helps to understand the distinction.

So what is theory? And what is commonsense?

We tend to associate theory with thoughts at our desks and in academic institutions; and commonsense with the field where the action lies. Hence, commonsense differs from theory by its practical essence.

Theory is what Boyle’s Law in physics is to me – I don’t know it for a fact; it’s what my schoolbook had said. That pressure and volume are inversely proportional.

Commonsense, on the other hand, is something I’ve experienced – a thing I’ve always known.

  • The fact that wheels go round – We’ve all seen bottle caps, hula hoops, car wheels roll along.
  • The fact that airplanes fly – We’ve always seen them fly.
  • The fact that fire burns the finger – We’ve experienced it or felt the heat.

Today, these are irrefutable facts. There was a time when believing in them would have been foolish. It takes us years of seeing things with our own eyes and living with them to accept them as common sense; or be born with them – like wheels and planes.

Or experience them – like the child that must burn its finger before it stops putting the finger in the fire – or go close enough to the heat to see the commonsense.

Until then, your words of caution are just so much theory to it. And theories are meant to be tested. Or left as theories until proven right.
On the other hand, people rarely put commonsense to the test. It’s considered foolish to do so.

Inside your Domain – Outside your Domain
This fact is applicable to your domain too. Commonsense isn’t universal. Let’s say you are a professional in marketing, finance, human resource, operations. Or a writer, painter, doctor, musician.

Your domain understanding is full of commonsense to you since you’ve experienced it, lived with it. It is theory to others because they haven’t lived with it.

If you don’t pause a moment to understand this fact, it becomes a battlefield of you vs them. Inside your domain vs outside your domain.
Understanding this helps you create a bridge.

So the next time you try to convince your boss, colleague, daughter or husband about the commonsense involved in your point-of-view, step back a moment. And ask yourself, “Is this commonsense to them?

Now ask yourself a second question, how do you convince them of the validity of your commonsense within your domain? Flip it and ask yourself, when would you believe a new thing as commonsense?

Going through the experience is a long, expensive, time-consuming task and all you have is a short half hour or a presentation in which to take them through it. The only significant way is to experience it vicariously – with irrefutable examples, and numbers that cannot be ignored; not as an opinion. It helps us transfer our own experience to others in an acceptable form.

Proving the Commonsense
The acceptance comes about when your examples and imagery are –

1. Tangible – If the results are hard to ignore

2. Immediate – The effect is immediate and

3. Consistent – I can see it happening time after time.

If the effect takes years to show up, if it’s as intangible as emotions, and if it lacks in consistency, there’s a high probability it will not become commonsense to the other.

So pick up tangible, immediate, consistent examples and show the commonsense through them.

But, will others sense the common sense once you’ve made this effort?
Maybe yes. But in at least half the instances, maybe not.

Remember that it’s nothing against you, your knowledge or your capability. More likely than not, it is discarded if it threatens their thinking – if it challenges rather than confirms their thinking.

That’s the theme for the next post.

Building Bridges

Bridges don’t get built when you decide things in your head and impose them on others. They get built when you continually speak to your team members, letting them into the entire process.

Nor do bridges get built when you go into a huddle, get the act done – a product, service or project – and spring the surprise on your peers or superiors. They get built through continuous dialogue, sharing your thoughts and welcoming theirs.

Why do you need the bridge anyway?

Because human nature being what it is, an alienated person thinks you and your department are the enemy or the weakling who underperform and is more ready than usual to attack or discount you.

It’s true for nations, states and communities – it’s true for organizations. The less you interact with the other, the more there is a shared antagonism.

Letting the others in is a painful process that we are happy to avoid. It’s easy to tell ourselves, “He doesn’t understand,” or worse still, “She’s bent on attacking our work”.

But then this kind of thinking creates apprehension in us. And defensiveness.

Your job doesn’t end with conceptualizing and delivering the service or product. It ends only when you carry the rest of the stakeholders, convincing them of the worthiness of the product.

What happens when you don’t?

If you are at the lower levels, you end up the immediate loser – with the danger of the product getting sidelined or ultimately not used. If you are a senior executive, you live with the danger of alienating your own and the other teams.

People need to buy into your idea, your roadmap, your path. If it means working harder to draw analogies, show the numbers and convince them to give it a try, do it. And if you are good at it, you will even make them think it’s their idea.

If after all your efforts, you couldn’t convince them, go back and take a relook at the reasons as objectively as possible. If you still believe you’re right with logical reasons behind the belief, if it’s a big enough event and if it happens consistently, then you are working at the wrong place. Find yourself another job.

Are you Talking in the name of Communication?

XYZ Corp. announces the launch of…

The pressure over Corporate and Marketing Communications professionals to have widely covered news releases and email customers with announcements of launches and awards is intense.

But the job of communication begins not with the communications department. It begins with the product.

If you are limiting yourself to this most visible part of communication, you aren’t doing the real job of communication.
That’s to listen.
Without listening to your customers, announcements are superficial at best. It isn’t about you talking from atop the hill to the multitude saying, “Hey look, this is what I’ve done. It’s good for you. It shows my commitment to you. So stick around.”

1. The first and foremost part of communication is listening.
2. And then of fairness.
3. Then and only then can you do the talking.

What happens in a one way street?
Well, you take the 3rd job first. Let’s say your team has spent innumerable hours on a product and one grand day, you fling aside the curtain and say “Lo and Behold, here’s the product we’ve all been waiting for.”

The implication is, “Tell me it’s good. Now go use it.”

Well, the listener may not always be listening. Second, he or she may not find it interesting – most likely not. Third and most important, it may mean something else entirely to the person. Essentially, you do not know what it means to the listener.

Now take the 2-way street. You make an active effort to listen to your customers. You call them up, you visit them and you listen to them. As an active continuous process, from the top of the company pyramid to the bottom.

Sure, customers can’t always tell you what they want. Conserve your resources to do those radical developments that you conjure up.

But customers can certainly tell you what’s going wrong and how to make it better which adds up to what they really want in an existing product. Rather than hunker down into a defensive position, open up and listen to them.

Now that you’ve listened, go to part 2. Give a fair thought to zero in on the suggestions that really mean something to the customer – despite whatever it takes for you to deliver them. Then and only then, do you match them with your resources and capability. If you are thinking of your resource constraints while listening, you aren’t doing a fair job of hearing the customer.

Listening is an iterative process where you may have to repeatedly go back to the customer to test continuously whether what you think your product delivers is really what it means to them.

Watch them use it if you can. Now, that is quiet listening.

Then and only then can you go to Part 3 of the process. Of speaking to the customer. And making the grand unveiling. It’s the smallest, although the most visible part of communication. It isn’t an easy job. It’s just that it’s the last part.

To the public it looks like a great job done at the heart of your company.
You know the truth.
Your customers feel cared for.
Some times, to the customer just the fact of having been heard serves the purpose of feeling involved since you realistically can’t do all that she asks for. And the customer truly feels the product and the brand belongs to her. That’s the real job of communication.