I’m an old guy. When
I was young, in the early days of personal computers, I worked mostly worked on
my own… developing software with me, myself, and I, as they say. I did not see other computer programmers as my
colleagues. I saw them as my competition. There really was not enough work for all of
us and I wanted to be the one who knew things.
So, if I knew something useful and/or powerful I didn’t tell anyone
about it. I kept it to myself and
increased my value to potential employers.
By and large we don’t live in that world anymore. Most of the time we work in teams,
collaboratively, and our work is also often dependent on the work of other
teams, vendors, technology we did not create.
This brings the importance of effective collaboration and communication
into sharp relief.
One example of this is when we disagree. Disagreement can be an incredibly useful
thing. If you think X and I think Y, and
I want to convince you of the value of my point of view, then I must think more
deeply about what that is, and why. It
causes me to consider what I believe from another perspective, namely yours. Your push-back will cause me to think yet
more deeply, and perhaps incorporate some of what you are saying into what I
think. The same can be true for
you. Together, we may achieve a much more
profound truth than either of us would have on his own.
But this only happens if the disagreement is cordial and
non-threatening, if we can avoid the dysfunctional aspects of disagreeing with
someone. Here we can run into a
particularly tricky roadblock when it comes to people who work in technical
jobs.
Techies are paid, among other things, to be smart. This is an intellectual business after
all. The idea that I may not know something
that (perhaps) others think I should know can be very threatening, and can
cause me to act defensively. This does
not lead to effective collaboration.
This comes up in my job as a teacher. I teach classes in technical subjects like Design Patterns
and Test-Driven
Development, among other things.
Naturally, my students in these courses are technical people. A classroom has a lot of similarities with a
team; there is a leader to be sure (the teacher) but the engagement is more
effective when it is highly collaborative.
Because of this I don’t want all information to come didactically, from
me. I want it to be a mix of me, my
students, experiences, collaboration, and so on. Part of this means that I, on a pretty
regular basis, will pose a question to the room and ask the students to try to
answer it.
Very early in my experience as a teacher I noticed that this
tended to produce a lot of silence. This
varies by student group, of course, but it was not uncommon for the students to
just stare at me rather than try to answer my question in front of the other
students. I gradually realized that this
was often because nobody wanted to be shown to be wrong. The whole idea was too threatening.
So, I came up with a technique for overcoming this, and I
use it whenever I encounter a group of students that seem to be unwilling to “take
a chance” at answering a question. I
think it can be equally useful on a team where people seem unwilling to yield even
the slightest point to one another. I
call it…
The King Henry School of Argument
If you have seen “The Lion In Winter”,
then you’ll recognize why I use this term.
If not, see it! Two bucks on
YouTube, and you’ll thank me. I even gave you the link. Anyway, here’s what I
do:
I pick a student who seems relatively willing to interact
with me. Let’s call him Jason. I start by asking him, personally, a question
where he cannot possibly be wrong because it is about his own opinion.
Me: Jason, tell me, what is your favorite movie?
Jason: Um, I suppose it’s “Scott Pilgrim vs, The World.”
Me: Oh, I like that one too.
I particularly loved the way Andy Samberg portrayed Scott Pilgrim.
Jason: No, Scott Pilgrim was played by Michael Cera, not
Andy Samberg.
I pretend to press the argument for a few minutes, even
though of course I know Jason is correct.
Finally, I bring up the IMDB on the projector screen in the room and
look up the film in front of the entire classroom. Naturally when I look up the movie in
question it confirms that Michael Cera played the part just as Jason claimed. I pretend to be surprised by this.
I then turn to the room and ask the group “who won the argument?” Almost without exception, everyone agrees
that Jason won and I lost. But I then
point out that Jason came into the argument with the same information he left
it with, namely that Michael Cera played Scott Pilgrim in the film. I, on the other hand, have left the same
argument with new information that I did not previously have and also I have corrected
a mistake in my memory. I have gained
something from the interaction, whereas Jason has not (except perhaps a minor
stroke to his ego). To these old eyes,
that looks like winning (that’s what I learned from King Henry in the
aforementioned film).
I then, of course, own up to the fact that this was all a
ruse. Gotta keep things honest. The point was to shift their point of view.
When we collaborate, the value we bring to one another is
what we can contribute, each to the other.
If you already know everything then my value to you is limited or
non-existent. In the classroom, I point
out that if a group of students is already “right” about everything then coming
to class with me is a waste of time.
They have come, I submit, to gain knowledge they don’t already possess. Revealing what those gaps are is just part of
the process of learning. And, by the
way, I point out that I always learn from things my students because I am not
afraid to admit that they sometimes know things I do not.
Of course, my real intention is to change the interaction
from a threatening one to one of promise.
I also believe what I am saying to be the truth. Nobody knows everything. We operate in an environment of constant
change and innovation, and staying current can be a real challenge. If we take down the mostly pride- and
fear-based impediments then we can be true colleagues, and everyone will
benefit from them.
So will the products we create, and the customers that
benefit from them.