Today, I learned some­thing impor­tant. In the­o­ry it should be an open secret but real­iz­ing that I can use this insight as a prac­ti­cal tool in every­day com­mu­ni­ca­tions was like a Heure­ka for me. It’s about chang­ing per­spec­tives — broad­en­ing one’s mind.

A few weeks ago, my busi­ness part­ners and I decid­ed to coöper­ate with anoth­er team to joint­ly start a new com­pa­ny. The other team brings in expe­ri­ences and exper­tise in dif­fer­ent areas which would be per­fect­ly com­ple­men­tary to our own exper­tise. My part­ners and I, we know each other very well — to the extent that each of us thinks to know what the other one would do or say in a spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion. That level of under­stand­ing can’t be expect­ed when new mem­bers enter the team. Typ­i­cal­ly, every­body has to get used to the oth­ers, learn how they think, act, and react — and what do they mean when they say some­thing. At a cer­tain level of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, with every team mem­ber equipped with a few years of team­work expe­ri­ence, that should be of no fun­da­men­tal prob­lem. And yet, it is a challenge.

Image an upcom­ing meet­ing of your new and big­ger team with a poten­tial cus­tomer. You talk about what to expect from the meet­ing and how to present your new com­pa­ny. You agree on the the­o­ret­i­cal level and one of your team’s mem­bers cre­ates a pre­sen­ta­tion. The feed­back you get from the new team mem­bers is that they not only don’t like the con­tents of the pre­sen­ta­tion but they expect­ed a very dif­fer­ent style.
This feed­back con­tains two dif­fer­ent aspects:

• The pre­vi­ous agree­ment based on a the­o­ret­i­cal or oral level can’t be achieved on the exe­cu­tion or prac­ti­cal level.
• There are fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences in how team mem­bers want the com­pa­ny to be presented

Let’s start with the first aspect: a mis­match between the theoretical/oral and te execution/practical level is a well-known flaw in all kinds of busi­ness­es. Every­body who is used to attend busi­ness meet­ings is fully aware of that. And there are tools to min­i­mize or elim­i­nate that prob­lem: atten­dees repeat in their own words what oth­ers have said before, meet­ing notes, etc. So, in our case, I was­n’t real­ly sur­prised about it and there are sev­er­al ways of opti­miz­ing here.

Chang­ing Per­spec­tives — Broad­en­ing One’s Mind

The more dif­fi­cult aspect seems to be the sec­ond one: imag­ine you have been active,y — and some­what suc­cess­ful­ly — pre­sent­ing your ideas, prod­ucts, and ser­vices for quite a few years. You have devel­oped a cer­tain style. Your team agrees on that style which is the result of your team mem­bers’ expe­ri­ences. Now, new ream mem­bers expect some­thing total­ly dif­fer­ent. And not just some­thing dif­fer­ent, but a style you have learned to dis­like and not to apply for cer­tain reasons.

What to do — how to react? My vis­cer­al or emo­tion­al reac­tion was: ok, give them a sec­ond chance, they just did­n’t get it. Their exper­tise is in a dif­fer­ent area, they should accept our exper­tise here and let us do our stuff. But — I felt bad bad think­ing that way — it was one of those typ­i­cal cog­ni­tive dis­so­nances which appear from time to time. Sure it would be wrong or unfair to react as described above. Those guys are new in the team since we think that it’s bet­ter with them as with­out them. So it should make more sense to find a way to imple­ment, inte­grate, or add their ideas in/to our ideas. But, how?

Don‘t Know What To Do? Change Perspectives!

My answer: change per­spec­tives. A rather mun­dane approach you might say, but — is it real­ly? Forc­ing myself tak­ing their per­spec­tive and try­ing to see things through their eyes I learned some­thing very useful.
My first insight: the abil­i­ty to change per­spec­tive is some­thing I have to renew and train on a daily basis. I tend to think that I am right and the other per­son is wrong — or — that my way of doing things is supe­ri­or to oth­ers, at least in my fields of exper­tise. By defin­ing that this does not have to be true I stop think­ing / act­ing ego­is­ti­cal­ly and make the change of per­spec­tives possible.

Next, I ask myself and the other team mem­ber why he thinks dif­fer­ent­ly. What might be the rea­sons for him to come up with a solu­tion I would not choose? In our spe­cial team mem­ber case I asked myself first and found some quite con­vinc­ing argu­ments for the oth­er’s per­spec­tive. When it comes to busi­ness, you can eas­i­ly eval­u­ate most strate­gies: how suc­cess­ful have they been in terms of rev­enues, costs, prof­its, etc. In our case, it’s obvi­ous that our new part­ners have been used their styles very suc­cess­ful­ly in the past. Since we have been suc­cess­ful as well, the dif­fer­ence could lie in dif­fer­ent tar­get groups. It turns out that we indeed have been tar­get­ing dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple and depart­ments with­in cor­po­ra­tions. So the key to our appar­ent­ly incon­gru­ous strate­gies could lie in dif­fer­ent tar­get groups and not how we see our com­pa­ny or how we expect our­selves to act in general.

Solv­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Prob­lems Is A Daily Challenge

In hind­sight, this con­clu­sion seems to be a pret­ty basic one. But as long as I was con­front­ed with two appar­ent­ly incon­gru­ous ways of mak­ing busi­ness it was quite hard to resolve that con­flict. By chang­ing per­spec­tives and try­ing to find the good argu­men­t’s for my coun­ter­part’s argu­men­ta­tion I was able to rec­og­nize that the prob­lem was not about dif­fer­ent styles but about dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions or frame­works both of us had been work­ing most of the time.

Chang­ing Per­spec­tives — Broad­en­ing One’s Mind

How did we solve the prob­lem: we agreed about using slight­ly dif­fer­ent styles for dif­fer­ent tar­get groups and sit­u­a­tions — pre­sent­ed by the team mem­ber who is most com­fort­able with it. For me, this expe­ri­ence once again shows that even when you are equipped with a good chunk of knowl­edge in this area, solv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems is a daily chal­lenge. The trap of not chang­ing per­spec­tive is always there and we’re always con­front­ed, direct­ly. Try Chang­ing Per­spec­tives — Broad­en­ing One’s Mind.

perspective