Article - the solution is in the dialogue - unless you misread the people you are talking to
Malcolm Gladwell’s new book – Talking to Strangers (Penguin Random House, UK 2019) is a good reminder of the pitfalls inherent in talking to people face to face because we can be dramatically wrong in our assumptions about the people we are talking to. Whether we are in meetings, networking or just talking to the people around us, e.g. clients, suppliers, acquaintances, colleagues or friends, the less we know them the more we can misread them.
As Gladwell outlines in his book, misreading people can cause us to trust fraudsters (e.g. Bernie Madoff), make wrongful arrests (e.g. Sandra Bland, Amanda Knox), follow leaders we later dislike (e.g. Adolf Hitler) and choose the wrong partners (e.g. sexual abuse). In my experience misreading people also causes us to accept to work for the wrong boss, engage the wrong suppliers, trust clients to pay us when they don’t, and go into business with the wrong partners.
When we misread people and things go wrong, we normally blame them not ourselves. To avoid making mistakes, there are three common problems Gladwell suggests we need to be aware of. Once aware of these possibly wrong assumptions we can then ask questions to avoid misreading people and suffering negative consequences.
Who do we typically misread?
The Truth teller who looks dishonest (we tend to do ok with truth tellers who look honest)
The liar who looks honest (we tend to do ok with liars who look dishonest)
Comments on demeanor
· Doubts about other people are normal and are the flip side of your belief they are telling you the truth
· Unfortunately lies are usually detected after the fact
· We almost always miss the cues
o Do they stumble?
o Are they nervous?
o Do they give implausible answers?
o Do their words and behaviours match?
o Are they suspiciously self-defensive?
o Have they done the right thing, in the right place, at the right time or is something amiss?
Problem 1 - We default to honesty (Truth default theory)
We tend to think people are telling the truth. As a result, when people look trustworthy and they tell the truth, no problem. Likewise, when people look deceitful and are lying, we also encounter few if any problems. However, when people are mismatched e.g. liars look trustworthy or truth tellers look deceitful, that we tend to misread people and make big mistakes.
Questions can prevent our default to honesty
If you have any doubts about what they are saying or doing…
1. What are the odds you are wrong?
2. Can you explain your doubts?
3. Are there enough red flags to cause you to think they are lying?
4. Is the opposite of truth even possible to imagine?
5. Do you have the time and interest to test your doubts?
6. Can you rely on internal controls to spot deception?
7. What do other people think of this person’s behaviour?
Problem 2 - We default to clarity (The transparency problem)
We tend to think we see correctly and we tend to think that when we look, we can see other people’s real behaviour. Both these assumptions can fail miserably because people are not transparent and do not always show (voluntarily or not) what they are truly thinking or feeling.
Questions to test if YOU see behaviour correctly?
1. Are you annoyed, angered, impatient?
2. How has your life prepared you to spot deception or not?
3. What is the social cost of doubting the other party?
4. Do whistle blowers exist?
5. Is your position, stature, media profile, culture, background, motivational preference, mood, preventing you from seeing things as they really are?
6. Is their skin colour, gender, language, religious attire, sexual orientation, age, etc. preventing you from seeing them for who they really are?
7. Can you read facial expressions, and do you know the same facial expression in one culture can mean something quite different in another culture?
8. Do you watch more TV, Netflix, Sitcoms, movies or read books than you interact with real people (especially people of different cultures or backgrounds) and as a result think dramatized behaviour is normal (or the absence of dramatized behaviour abnormal)?
9. Does your personal experience match your preconceptions when meeting other people and how often are you correct (e.g. people with emotional problems don’t always have or show emotional problems)?
10. Are you in love with the other person?
Questions to test if THEY see the situation truthfully?
1. Is group compliance preventing people from speaking/acting independently?
2. Does their ethnic culture prevent them from speaking/acting independently?
3. Does corporate culture prevent them from speaking/acting independently?
4. Does something in their past cause them fear of speaking/acting truthfully?
5. Does a lack of respect from others cause them to avoid speaking/acting truthfully?
6. Are they in love?
Problem 3 – We tend to think people behave the same regardless of context (displacement)
We assume people will behave the same regardless of the time, place and emotion (the context) but context has a heavy influence on people (called coupling). Just think how you behave at a cemetery, in a pub, or at a sports match compared to how you behave at home, in the office or on the high street.
Questions to prevent overlooking context
1. Are either you or they intoxicated and therefore myopic in thinking what is immediately happening is more important than the long term (e.g. gambling vs solvency)
2. Are either you or they intoxicated and therefore myopic in thinking that the present environment is more important than the unseen environment (e.g. staying up late in front of your screen)?
3. How do you or they react to stress or “PTSD” knowing some people blackout and remember nothing of important encounters despite appearing to function normally?
4. How unsettling or uncertain is the situation?
5. How sleep deprived are you or are they?
6. How hard are you trying to get people to open up about their thoughts and feelings, knowing the more you push for them to open up, the more elusive they will become?
7. Will the people involved behave this way if you change the time, place, emotions presently involved?
8. How is the context in which you meet someone influencing your interpretation (or projection) of who you think they really are?
9. Are you simplifying their behaviour, or can you see the ambiguous complex person they really are?
10. Are you looking at the person and jumping to a conclusion or are you looking at their world, using Ma-Ma to ask questions and trying to truly understand them?
11. Is your interrogation process effective (e.g. Reid Technique or Peace Model)?
Bottom Line
Does the possibility of misreading other people discount the value of meeting them in person and defaulting to text or phone calls? Not at all. The benefits of in person dialogue far outweigh the possible drawbacks but we should proceed with awareness and knowledge how to deflect possible problems. Stop misreading other people and practice testing your assumptions of honesty, clarity and context. You will be pleased you did.
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This article is written by Peter Nixon, FCPA, speaker, trainer, advisor. Founder of Potential Dialogue (PD), creator of the PDSystem, PDBlog, PDToolbox.
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