REAL THINKING CONVERSATIONS Looking for Good Points

If no one person has all of the truth, and if all of us have bits of the truth, then one of the reasons we need each other is so we can be exposed to the bits of truth which we don’t have. But there’s a problem with that. Most people think that they have the truth. Don’t you? It’s one of the cognitive biases that all of us humans have and naturally default to— until, of course, we learn better and learn how to question our understandings.

Question: Why or how is it that we all think we have the truth? Answer: It arises from how we construct our mental maps. Throughout the early days of our life we received mental maps from parents and teachers. Then as we grew, we began creating mental maps about all sorts of things by ourselves. What we so typically forget is that it is a map about reality and not reality. Yet it feels real. Once integrated, our neurology and brain does its best to make it real in our lives. No wonder we think we understand!

Then we meet other people who have very different maps. Our either/or thinking which develops in childhood as one of the first stages of thinking, then puts us in intellectual conflict with others. “Either I’m right or you are.” Actually, both may be right and equally, both may be wrong. Depending on the perspective each person takes, they could be describing truths that are simultaneously true. Each could have a piece of the truth. In that case, ideally we would want to get everybody’s truth on the table. Then we could ask challenging questions to interrogate that “truth.” We could ask clarifying questions to find out what’s real.

Susan Scott calls this interrogating multiple realities. She asserts from her experience that this is what makes people begin to truly think.

“What’s the payoff for interrogating multiple realities? People learn to think. Many so- called learning experiences don’t provide opportunities for real thinking. Meetings are just thinly veiled attempts to persuade others (employees, family members) to agree wit the teacher’s (manager’s, parent’s, spouse’s) conclusions. Real thinking occurs only when everyone is engaged in exploring different viewpoints.” (2002, p. 26, italics added)

Now getting people to think— to really think and think things through— is an incredible valuable way to be a learning organization and to be on the cutting edge of creativity and innovation. Yet that is not easy. It’s not easy in organizations due to the influence of group-think, the pressure to conform, and the fear of exposing oneself to criticism. So instead of real thinking, people keep quiet, keep their thoughts to themselves, play it safe, conform, etc.

Yet most of the time this doesn’t happen naturally or inevitably. People have to learn how to

interrogate reality, their own and others, and how to do it in kind and respectful ways. When we don’t, we argue, fight, accuse, mind-read, judge, condemn, and many other things that undermine relationships and cause everyone to feel bad. Yet there’s a better way. It begins with the basic idea of Alfred Korzybski, “The map is not the territory.” It begins with the basic NLP Communication Guideline, “People operate from their maps of reality, not from reality.” To understand this is to understand that no one has a monopoly on the truth and that we can learn from anyone. It is to understand that a person can hold a position diametrically opposed to yours and still make some “good points.”

I was recently engaged in some back-and-forth arguments about a position. I argued my side as best as I could and the other person did the same. In one of the exchanges, I acknowledged that one person has made “a good point,” and then another. A friend who shared my view then questioned me as to why I would “give in” to agree with anything that “my opponent” said.

“Ah, the combat frame. Do you think that’s what we are doing? Fighting and combating each other about who is right?”

He did. He even said, “what else is it about?” I said I appreciated him asking that question. To ask that question at least provides an opportunity to see if there is another way to frame things other than a battle. I then said I thought we were in a search for the truth and the best way to move forward. I said my frame is that of searching together for how to understand the situation and how to find a mutually satisfying solution. For me it was not about winning or losing a battle. If I were to use that metaphor, then the enemy would be ignorance, confusion, and mis- information, and certainly not the other person.

Later my friend said he thought about that and liked that perspective. “Next time, I’m going to see if I can hear and validate a ‘good point,’ before I start disagreeing.” This is the way to have thinking conversations. Instead of looking only for the other side’s weak points, look for and valid when the other side makes a “good point.”