Know Your Enemy (especially when its your friend)
A few of these initial blog posts have been centred around the subject of how we relate to others, the importance of understanding our worldview and the difficulties (and surprises) inherent in interpreting the world view of others. What I had struggled with a little was finding a good, relevant (and real) example of me misjudging the reactions of someone else - and then I remembered a previous post on my company intranet blog.
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Often we tend to let our 'british reserve' get in the way of being constructively critical - playing down the criticism to avoid 'upsetting' the recipient. I know I am guilty of that from time to time and this is an example of me projecting a worldview (mental model) onto someone else. However, I had two lessons in how to receive criticism well which went against that model.
Both were cases where I had reviewed written output for people that I don't know very well - in one case the only contact I had with the author was an email asking me to review the paper. This meant that I was even more 'wary' of being seen to be a harsh critic - both from the point of view that I would be starting a relationship off on the wrong foot and also because when you receive lots of criticism it is easy to get discouraged and lose heart.
The first case was a paper for a conference that someone wanted to be reviewed before final submission. Despite it being rather late in the day for any changes, there were some structural changes to the paper and some omissions that I felt should be corrected. The immediate response I receivde from the author when I submitted my suggestions (heavily caveated with "in my opinion" and "hope you don't think this is too critical") was
For someone who claims to be critical, you sure are gentle about it! I’ll think about your comments as they are good!
This was followed up later with
Very many thanks for your time and wise effort
when the comments had been digested.
In the second case I was asked to review a paper written in English by an Italian colleague. The English was, as is usually the case, very good, however I was still able to offer some thoughts and some ways to improve the readability of the paper. I did send the comments off with a certain amount of trepidation, because there was a lot of virtual red pen!! I received an email reply quite quickly
let me say, very frankly, that you have given a "quantum leap" to our paper.
Many many many thanks, absolutely over any our expectation.
Hence, dear my friend… welcome on board!
Well, I was relieved to hear that my comments had gone down well - although I still think that "quantum leap" was a bit too much....
There is no doubt that my expectations were quite different to the reality. The mental model that I had projected on to each of these recipients was clearly wrong. Instead of becoming defensive and rejecting criticism they had each demonstrated an admirable openness to the criticism and clearly they, in turn, had expected less from me - so we all gained out of this particular set of misprojections.
Of course, not all misprojections end up so happily - and, perhaps, we are most likely to 'suffer' when dealing with those who are closer to us. The relationship between husband and wife, or between father and daughter, or between you and your immediate boss will, inevitably, result in a feeling that you know the other person very well - you will convince yourself (probably unconsciously) that you have a very accurate mental model of their behaviour.
The damage that can result when the inevitable flaws in that model surface can be immense. Chaos Theory shows us just how small changes in initial conditions result in huge changes in eventual outcomes. So it is here - a small 'miscalculation' about what the other person's reaction will be may damage the relationship entirely in the end.
I've seen it happen to others and often the words said are something like "I can't believe they did that" or "what was he thinking of" or "I expected better"!
Of course, the expectations may be exceeded - not all miscalculations need end with a negative result.
