learn Archives - MICHAEL REUTER

If You Understand, You Don’t

michaelreuter — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 18:35:26 +0000

Often, I hear people say to one another: “Yes, I understand.” This phrase can be heard in private as well as in business conversations and every time I ask myself if people reflect about what they just said.
From a neurological perspective, to understand something means to match that with what is already known by a human being. If you tell me that something has happened because the earth moves around the sun, I’ll accept that and maybe say “I understand” since this relation between sun and earth is known to me. So, as long as I use “I understand” to express that something approaching me matches something within my knowledge base, that’s ok.
If “I understand” something which is new to me, or inconsistent with my knowledge, I rather don’t understand that. Since it isn’t actually known to me, I can’t understand it, but I rather had to learn it. In other words: understanding means matching with the already known, learning means adding or changing (to) the already known.
Why should this differentiation be of interest for us? Assuming that most people use the expression “I see” or “I understand” in the way used above, we should be careful if we tell something new to somebody who answers with “Ah, I understand”. In this case, I would challenge this ‘understanding’, since either I haven’t told this person something new (opposed to what I thought) or this person hasn’t really grasped what I told him.
We know that most problems between human beings result from communication deficiencies and I’m convinced that especially this ‘understanding thing’ plays a major role by creating a pseudo atmosphere of agreement and shared assumptions, values, etc.. If we express our understanding but have — falsely — matched some potential new knowledge with our existing knowledge and by experiencing the informant bias, we consciously or unconsciously add to more misunderstandings.
I personally try not to fall for that bias by asking myself hard whether I really got what somebody just has told me. And more than once the other one reacted quite irritated when I asked him to repeat what he just said in a different way. Another good idea is to repeat myself what the other told me, what — surprise — shows that in most cases he again rephrased what I repeated. That may sound like a rather philosophical or tiring exercise but I am convinced it does not only help to understand but to learn and to enrich my personal knowledge base.

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The unpleasant discusssion

michaelreuter — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 18:36:31 +0000

Today, I had a quite strange and unpleasant discussion. It was about business strategy and sales, and the both of us differed quite clearly in our views on how to ‘do it right’. I wasn’t in the best mood, and from my perspective, the other guy behaved in an egoistic, slightly arrogant and selfish manner. He used typical killer terms, such as “totally clear” or “as I’ve always been saying” to underline his apparently superior line of argumentation.
I’m used to these rhetoric techniques which are popular tools used in many corporate meetings. And normally, I don’t bother at all since I don’t use these techniques myself and I don’t react on them, neither. But today, I couldn’t resist and after a while I found myself in a quite strenuous debate with “rights” and “wrongs” — with both participants looking for winning arguments.
During those 90 minutes, I asked myself a few times to calm down, forget about what the other one just said, start anew, and so on. But it didn’t work. At the end we came to some sort of conclusion which did not satisfy one of us. I left with a bad — or at least very mixed feeling. During the first 2 hours or so after the event, I realized that I was trying to explain myself by (mentally) arguing against his statements.
Luckily, after some coffee and some distraction, I suddenly asked myself: what, if he were right? What, if I put my arguments aside for a moment, and took over his perspective — no matter if his argumentation was flawed or not?
This exercise — to really take on your opponent’s perspective and act respectively — is one of the more demanding ones. To change my spots has been quite difficult, today. But, it worked. I successfully imagined some scenarios based on his arguments. The result: as always, I learned a lot by doing this exercise. First: the anger I felt after having left was anger about myself — not being able to cope with the situation in a good way. And — without going into detail, I now know that I really could — and should — optimize my own views and behavior regarding business strategy and sales. I still regard some of his views as flawed but these are details: my key takeaway from today’s discussion is that I learn most from difficult, unpleasant communications. In a wider sense, that reflects that we all can learn something from anybody.
If you read this, thank you for today’s insight, dear.….!

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You can learn something from anybody

michaelreuter — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 21:22:29 +0000

I hear gossip about colleagues everyday — in the subway, during lunch, etc. . I don’t really listen to people chitchatting but interestingly those people around me seem to always be the ones being in the right to complain about others. Until today I have never overheard a conversation in which somebody told her peer that she herself was unfair, illoyal or focusing on her individual success instead of the team’s. Isn’t that funny? It seems that people like to detect deficiencies in others and talk with their peers about them to assure themselves of being in the right.
What about turning the table? Let’s not try to detect deficiencies in others, but to discover their abilities and individual skills!
You can learn something from anybody. Yes, from anybody. Even if you are a very smart guy with a PhD and/or truckloads of cash. You can learn something in situations and from people you don’t assess as important or of any value for you.

Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enemies. (Plutarch)

This is how wise people see it, and this has been my experience, too. Typically, some of the people we communicate with throughout the day, appear to be interesting, who add to our well-being by motivating us or who are just very nice. Others we would evaluate as “neutral” whereas from time to time we speak with people who waste our time, who are mere energy suckers: we talk with them, they complain about this and that, and at the end we feel exhausted.
Conventional wisdom recommends to shun those guys and I do not disagree in general. But especially those negative people, probably lamenting about their own problems and unfair treatments, can serve as (anti) role models: i.e. how not to behave, what to eschew.
Then we meet people who work in lower positions than we do, who are less educated or who simply dress in bad style. And you know what? Each of those individuals can do something better than we ourselves! Perhaps the checker — who left school at the age of 16 and whose monthly salary is your dinner bill — is deeply in love with her man while you’re busy managing your divorce. Or, take the bean counter from your controlling department — a man with thick glasses and without the lightest sense of humor — didn’t you see him last night playing the lead violin in the symphonic orchestra? Every human being is a master of something. And to identify these special skills is what we should do.
My personal experience is that I can learn something from anybody. This is a very interesting experience especially if you don’t expect it. But if you are an open-minded type and you look actively for skills in other people, you will be surprised about how well those skills are distributed.
The other (not: flip) side of these discoveries is: learning what others are capable of makes you humble. It illustrates that you aren’t Mr or Mrs Perfect — and that looking down at people is not only unsocial but doesn’t make any sense at all: if anything, by discovering skills and strengths in others we only learn from them. And this improves our own lives.
Learnings can be big things like learning to have patience, or small things like not to react immediately when somebody criticizes you, but to pause for a second, breathe — and react afterwards — in a much cooler way than you would have done without this mental break. The opportunities to learn come unexpectedly — in many cases you realize it much later. But that doesn’t matter: the most important aspect is that you do realize it, anyway. If that happens, you have been successful — that’s your learning.
Just try to learn from your friends, colleagues, neighbors, and especially from children (many adults would never imagine that they could learn from children at all)! If it works out for you the same as it does for me, you will experience less anger, you enhance your overall feeling and your life becomes more colorful.
You might be interested in reading the reply to this post, by @lenerl.
The photo was shot in Herrsching at Ammersee, a beautiful lake southwest of Munich.

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