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Feb 27, 2003 If miscommunication with your wife earned merit badges, I would have a shirt full of them. I'm not real sure how I developed this ability, but I am quite adept at tossing words back and forth with her rather than carrying on a conversation. Fortunately, this "talent" does not seem to accompany me to work. There my abilities fall on the other end of the spectrum. On several occasions I have stepped into the middle of heated words (with no fire protection, mind you) and clarified some critical point that allowed the warring parties to move forward. A time that stands out came early in my career. Software development, my department, was meeting with customer service, their department. Their department had called the meeting to discuss a problem whose solution had proved persistently elusive. The order processing application reserved items for each customer order as it came in. But then it would allow these reserved items to be moved between orders, despite their having been reserved. The customer service department insisted that software development needed to fix this. My department gave one of our standard replies. The software wasn't designed that way. It didn't make hard reservations. The reservations were soft so that management could move product between orders depending on the day's business conditions. Their side tensed. To a customer service mind we were giving the same old excuses. They fired back. Software development was being difficult. We had to change the way the system worked. We returned fire. The change was too difficult to make. Everything would have to change. The software wasn't set up to work that way. They used bigger guns. Too many customers were getting their orders late. Product originally set aside for one order was often getting yanked for other orders. Tempers flared. Volley after volley flew in the war of the words. Through most of the conflict escalation, I had managed to stay out of the fray. With words hurled around so rapidly, there had been little opportunity for me to participate. But I had realized some important information, that I thought everyone surely knew. Why did they seem to be overlooking it? Finally, I could take it no more. I burst onto the battle field and demanded a hearing. "Excuse me. I'd like to ask a question." There was a pause in the action. So far, so good. "I'm under the assumption that upper management wants to be able to move product between orders. If there's a shortage, they may want to take items from one customer to fill an order for another, 'more important' customer. Is that true?" Customer service nodded. I continued. "Then, even if we could change the software, upper management wouldn't let us, because that's not how they want to run the business. And there's nothing we can do about that. Right?" Everyone nodded. Bull's eye. Suddenly, a peace treaty had been forged, and our two sides moved ahead to find creative ways to compensate for the bad things that happen when product gets moved around. As in this situation, many times I've found that disagreements are little more than overlooked information. The use of a three- letter word (and the avoidance of many four- letter words) can often be used to uncover missing information in the heat of battle. That three-letter word is why. There is always a why for the positions that people hold. That is an obvious statement, but it is crazy how often the why gets missed. And missing it causes big problems. When I cannot see the why behind a person's position, I begin to see the other person as stupid and unreasonable. It becomes nearly impossible for me to treat that person in a way that lets us communicate. Yet I also believe that most people don't hold positions that they think are stupid. There is a logic to their way of thinking. And if I can understand that logic, we go a long way toward overcoming our disagreement. Unfortunately, people are not always good at expressing their why. So when I'm in a discussion that seems to be going nowhere, I try to ask myself, "Why?". Why are the parties to this discussion taking the positions they are? Often I am surprised to see the answer reveal itself. When it does, it is often the key to keeping the peace. So if you want an easy way to improve your communication abilities, start asking yourself, "why?". Hmmm. Maybe I should try this with my wife. About the author: Pepe is a writer, whose day job as a software engineer keeps him from writing as much as he wants. His work has appeared in several magazines and periodicals. His take on life sometimes gets him a little out of step with the rest of society, but he keeps marching in the parade. You can reach him at wrob@usa.com. ------------ Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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