This is a transcript of episode 363 of the Troubleshooting Agile podcast with Jeffrey Fredrick and Douglas Squirrel.
Is your plan to avoid conflict making things worse?
Listen to the episode on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
Easing In
Listen to this section at 00:14
Squirrel: Welcome back to Troubleshooting Agile. Hi there, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Hi, Squirrel. So you brought up a topic for me, and it’s one that you and I have discussed for years and years. I actually don’t remember if we’ve ever discussed it in detail on the podcast. Therefore, I think it’s a great topic and that is: easing in. So, what is easing in, and why is it worth discussing?
Squirrel: Well, let me give you an example, and then, Jeffrey, I’m going to ask you to call out some of the key elements and ask me about it, so our listeners can learn. Because the reason I brought up the topic is because I saw such a perfect example of it. Now I have to anonymize this heavily, so apologies for being very vague, but you’ll see why immediately.
Squirrel: I’m advising a CEO and this CEO has to take a drastic action, and you can imagine the kinds of drastic actions that people might take. And it’s none of those, actually, it’s a different drastic action than our listeners are imagining. But don’t worry, it’s pretty drastic. And he’s having to explain it to some folks who really care about it, some people who are deeply affected, people who have seen it coming. It won’t be a big surprise to them, but he has to tell them all about it and make a decision with them. This isn’t a situation where he, as the CEO, can just dictate ‘this is what we do.’ He needs the cooperation of these stakeholders in making the decision and in taking the drastic action, and he has a really strong view on which action to take!
Squirrel: There’s a number of different choices, all of them are painful. They aren’t quite what the company wants to do or what the CEO wants to do or what any of these stakeholders want to do, but they’re in one of those situations where they have to make a drastic choice. And so he shared with me some thoughts on this. And I noticed two very prominent things in what he was sharing.
Squirrel: First, there weren’t any people in what he was describing. So everything ‘was done’ and ‘has happened’ and ‘mistakes were made’ and so on. So lots and lots of passive voice. And then at the end, after having made a very strong case and pointing out all kinds of problems and difficulties and the sorts of things that led the CEO to this conclusion, there’s a very weak section that says, ‘well, on one hand, we might do A. There are some pros and some good things about A, but there’s another choice. If you’d like to hear about it, it’s B and B would really work, and it would solve all these other problems. But you know, I’m wondering what do you think should we do, A or B?’
Squirrel: So, that final one is an example of not a genuine question very, very prominently. For listeners who know us, when we talk, you know how we talk about that topic. But, Jeffrey, I wonder if you could comment on the characteristics of ‘easing in’ here to help me out and help my client and our listeners out. What could we do better, when we have this kind of strong opinion and difficult choices?
Jeffrey: Well, I love it because I think what you have here easing in… You ended very clearly with the idea that this person is putting their thumb on the scale. They’re presenting it as two equivalent options, but the prelude kind of comes out with their views in terms of, they talk all the negatives of one and they kind of then recommend the other with no downsides, no trade-offs. And hey, there’s this other one that would actually be good, but, we could do the bad one if you want!
Squirrel: I can make it even worse, actually, for you, Jeffrey, because there are downsides to the preferred one. And so there’s an attempt by the person writing here to give both sides and to sound evenhanded. But it doesn’t work! It’s very clear B is the preferred option, that’s the one that makes sense, we should do B! But, it actually weakens the argument for B.
Jeffrey: Right… Right. So what is easing in then? Easing in is a class of behaviors, and sometimes it’s when you have opinions. It’s usually when you have something that you are worried about how the other person will react and what you’d really like is for them to understand what you mean and come to your way of thinking without you ever having to actually explain it. That’s kind of the ideal case.
Jeffrey: And you actually referenced in here, some of the ‘eight behaviors’ right here, where you might state views, ask genuine questions, and be transparent. There’s a white paper on that, which we’ll link in the show notes. And actually, I think for people who are unclear about what we mean here by easing in, and maybe your example is too abstract, there’s a beautiful example in a case study in that white paper.
Squirrel: Oh, yeah.
The Paula and Ted Case Study
Listen to this section at 04:59
Jeffrey: It’s called the ‘withholding relevant information case study.’
Squirrel: Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s beautiful. Yep. It’s so good because there’s the left-hand column telling you what the person is thinking, and it contrasts so strongly with the right-hand column. That’s what’s going on in my example too, although I can’t share as much detail.
Jeffrey: Exactly. That’s right. Sometimes we’ve referred to it before as the Paula and Ted case study. Or, people who’ve been to some of my workshops, we will use this sometimes. The idea is that Paula and Ted have both been part of a presentation to some executives, and afterwards, Paula is trying to get Ted to do something. But, she wants to get Ted to understand what she wants and to agree to what she wants without ever actually making the case, without outright stating her view.
Squirrel: Because that might lead to conflict with Ted, which she’s trying to avoid. And I think that’s what my person is also trying to avoid. How could I not actually have the argument but still win?
Jeffrey: Yeah, exactly. This really is apparent in the very first line of the case study, where there are two columns, with the right-hand column being what’s said. Paula says to Ted, ‘how do you think your presentation to the directors went yesterday?’ And this sounds very curious, ‘say, I’d like to know what you’re thinking…’ But in her left-hand column, Paula is thinking, ‘I thought the presentation was a disaster, and so did three other people I spoke with.’
Jeffrey: So in a sense, this is a very natural thing. I think what Paula wants to have happened is for Ted to say, ‘you know, gosh darn, it really went bad,’ and, ‘we should do something.’ But he doesn’t. He says, ‘well… I think it went okay.’
Jeffrey: That’s not the answer Paula is looking for. As you go on in the case study, it sort of escalates a bit, but in a very gentle, mild way. There’s never really any drama, except for in Paula’s left-hand column, in the thoughts. And that’s the nature of easing in, that you have something where you’re expecting conflict, you really don’t want the drama. So you’re like, ‘how is there a way I can approach this without actually sharing my personal point of view?’ That’s what I think of as easing in.
Jeffrey: First of all, why does it matter? People are doing it to try to avoid conflict. But, in my experience, the actual impact of this behavior is to undermine the relationship. It undermines the trust and respect between the people involved, because people can see what you’re doing… one of two things happen, actually.
Jeffrey: A — either they see what you’re doing, and they’re unhappy with it. They want to know why you can’t speak to them directly, because what you’re showing is the lack of trust. Or B, and this is also common, people completely miss the thing that you’re hinting at, they don’t get your message! You walk away thinking, ‘well, I’m glad I got that out of the way!’ And they’re left baffled or just oblivious. So it’s an ineffective technique that works against the aims it has, and yet! It’s something people go to again and again because it feels better than risking the conflict.
Squirrel: And then you can tell yourself afterwards, ‘oh yeah, they really didn’t listen. They didn’t understand. I did tell them very clearly.’ This is why doing the kind of analysis that is in the Paula and Ted case study really helps, because you realize that you actually never told them whatever it was you wanted to.
Squirrel: I hope that’s what I’m doing for the person I’m coaching by looking at what he’s planning to say and saying, ‘hang on, you haven’t actually asked for what you want to do, for taking the drastic action.’ That is the fundamental problem with easing in, that you ignore all the people. That’s the passive voice bit, that you somehow reduce the conflict so that nobody ever feels bad. But actually, feeling bad would be a really good precursor to taking drastic action.
Squirrel: The same is true in Ted’s case. We’d really like Ted, actually, to feel bad, to feel that the presentation went poorly.
Jeffrey: Yes!
Squirrel: And then, from there, we would be able to start working on improving it. Or it would also be good if Ted disagreed, gave us new evidence and said, ‘actually, it really did go well.’ And then we could take different action. We could adjust our priors and our beliefs, and that might be helpful. But the problem is, easing in leaves you with the worst of both worlds. You never find out what the other person thinks, and you never communicate to them what you think. So… if you’re looking for that outcome… Easing in is really great!
Jeffrey: I think this actually is great, it connects to what we talked about in our last episode where we’re talking about learning from failure. So, if I just take what you just described, on the one hand, we prevent other people from learning from their mistakes, so they lose that value. And you know what? Sometimes our judgment, believe it or not, can be wrong! I might have a very strong opinion about what someone did wrong or what we should be doing, but if I can test it with them, then I might learn I was mistaken!
Jeffrey: As long as I avoid the actual discussion, I’m not just robbing them of the opportunity to learn, but I’m robbing myself of the opportunity to learn, or as is often the case, there’s something we both could learn. And it’s not happening because we’re not having the discussion because we’re more focused on avoiding conflict than on being effective.
Squirrel: Well, if listeners are interested in being effective rather than avoiding conflict, or if they’d like to make the case to us that actually, in some cases, avoiding conflict is good. We like it both when listeners tell us about applications and about disagreements. So we would very much like not to ease in with you, but to tell you our view and then to hear what you think. And the best way to do that is to head on over to agileconversations.com, where you’ll find free videos, our book, lots of ways to get in touch with us. We enjoy all of them, and we like hearing from you. So please do get in touch. Of course, the other way to keep in touch is to come back again next week when we’ll have another episode of Troubleshooting Agile. Thanks, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Thanks, Squirrel.