Re-framing and empathy

We find commonality with others when we genuinely seek to learn their perspective. What we often find is that both parties are simultaneously right and wrong at the same time, and the distinguishing feature was context and perspective.

For example, challenging questions to an optimist:

1. What challenges do you think you might encounter which could slow your progress toward your goals?
2. Have you encountered other challenges in the past that you had to overcome, and how did you do it?
3. Do you have a set of tools in your tool kit to deal with those challenges, to help you overcome them?
4. Who could you partner with to help you overcome your challenges?

Challenging questions to a realist:

1. Do you know anyone else who has had this or a similar problem and has overcome it?
2. Do you know if this has ever been done before?
3. What do you think is different between the example that was successful, and your situation which you believe cannot be?
4. Do you believe it is worth it for you to try to overcome this challenge?
   

It takes a level of discipline to pull yourself out of your own narrative and forcibly see the world through another lens. Your perceptions of other groups run a risky prospect of categorising everything they say as silly, irrelevant, or wrong. One question we might all ask ourselves: Which is more likely?

Option 1: That they are completely wrong, and I am completely right.

Option 2: We are both partially right and have different pieces of information drawn from different contexts and experiences.

If you are brave enough, you might ask the next question: Am I trying to be right, or correct?

Nobody wins a binary argument

The wiser someone gets the more they realise that the world is a complex place. Problems are almost invariably multi-layered and faceted. The temptation is to assume that there is a right answer to every problem, wherein reality it can sometimes be the choice between two or more terrible options. Quite simply we must on occasion, pick the lesser of two evils.

There is a movie starring Harrison Ford from 1994 called “Clear & Present Danger”, in which Harrison Ford plays Jack Ryan (based on Tom Clancy’s series of books.) Jack Ryan is at earlier points in his career quite the do-gooder (and mostly stays that throughout), and in this book, and as reflected in the movie, comes up against Deputy Director CIA Ritter, who is quite the opposite.

It’s very much a black-and-white set of characters, and when they finally clash, you have this great scene that details good vs. bad, positive vs. negative, black vs. white, or yin vs. yang…and it’s this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKsDjpKr2Mk Ritter explains simply, “Grey. The world is grey, Jack.”

Moving Forward

It's easy to dismiss someone's opinion by categorising them. Pessimist. Optimist. Naive. Negative. Difficult. Once we've applied the label, we no longer have to seriously consider what they're saying.

The harder option is to accept that two people can look at the same situation, draw different conclusions and each hold information the other doesn't.

That doesn't mean every opinion is equally valid. Nor does it mean we should abandon our own position every time somebody disagrees. It means being willing to test it.

We don't control every problem we're presented with. But we can choose the tools, perspectives and information we use to make sense of it. Sometimes we'll discover we were right. Sometimes we'll change our mind.

The more useful question is whether we're trying to be right or trying to be correct.