I recently wrote a note in CEA’s work slack and thought it might be worth writing up for the Forum, too. All of these are my own perspectives and not those of my employer.
Here’s a shower thought about evaluating people/what happens during high-pressure interactions:
Talking to ~powerful people can be scary
When I’m stressed or feeling judged, my reasoning and communication abilities seem to get noticeably worse, at least some of the time
I think this is common
And hard to control for in evaluative contexts (like job interviews)
So, if Powerful Person and Being Evaluated Person are talking, and BEP is having trouble articulating their thoughts, I often see one of three things from PP:
A. Silence B. Quickly moving on to another topic, mentally tagging BEP’s answer as insufficient/poor C. Putting words in BEP’s mouth
and sometimes continuing as though the answer BEP parroted was generated by BEP
I think C can be pretty hard to avoid, but avoiding it is vital.
What I try to do instead:
1b. (common tactic:) Be generally reassuring and soothing.
I think this tactic can be helpful, if you don’t let it lead you into B or C.
2b. (less common:) try to help them scaffold their arguments without actually providing the answer. It takes a lot of curiosity and patience. Poke, explore, ask. I don’t think I’m great at this, and I don’t have bullet-proof guidance for how to do it, but I try to:
Reflect people’s positions back to them to check I’ve actually understood what they were trying to say
Ask “why” a lot
Explore reasoning chains step by step, digging in when I notice confusion or disagreement
If they say something hyperbolic or bizarre, I check in to give them a chance to tweak what they’ve said (“All EAs should do X immediately!” “All EAs?” “Well, ok, what I really meant was. . . .”)
I want more PPs who are in evaluation mode—formally or informally! - to remember how nerves can throw noise into the interaction. I want people to be doing way more of 2b.
Check out the book “how to have impossible conversations”. It has some really great thoughts on creating spaces where you help the other person make their own journey rather than trying (and failing) to do it for them.
Also, the inner critic is very real, especially in our hyper competitive, achievement oriented, production/consumption culture. There is another way to hold oneself and others in a light, nonjudgmental way. But from experience it takes a lot of emotional and spiritual work with a trustworthy, compassionate coach/counselor/mentor. This story illustrates the depth of our societal divide:
In a meeting between the Dalai Lama and a group of American psychologists in 1990, one of the psychologists brought up the concept of negative self-talk. Since there are no words in Tibetan that translate into low self-esteem and self-loathing, it took quite a long time for the psychologists to convey what they meant. But this wasn’t a translation problem. It was a problem of conceptualization. Self-loathing? People do that? The Dalai Lama was incredulous. Once the Dalai Lama understood what they were saying, he turned to the Tibetan monks in the room, and after explaining what the psychologists were suggesting, he asked, “How many of you have experienced this low-self esteem, self-contempt or self-loathing?”
Complete silence.
Here was a psychological state of mind so ubiquitous in our culture that everyone experiences it from time to time, if not every single day. Yet the Tibetans—trained since childhood in the art of a mental exercise they call meditation—acted like they were being told about some alien life form. The Dalai Lama turned back to the psychologists and asked a simple question: “Why would you ever let your mind get like this?”
I recently wrote a note in CEA’s work slack and thought it might be worth writing up for the Forum, too. All of these are my own perspectives and not those of my employer.
Here’s a shower thought about evaluating people/what happens during high-pressure interactions:
Talking to ~powerful people can be scary
When I’m stressed or feeling judged, my reasoning and communication abilities seem to get noticeably worse, at least some of the time
I think this is common
And hard to control for in evaluative contexts (like job interviews)
So, if Powerful Person and Being Evaluated Person are talking, and BEP is having trouble articulating their thoughts, I often see one of three things from PP:
A. Silence
B. Quickly moving on to another topic, mentally tagging BEP’s answer as insufficient/poor
C. Putting words in BEP’s mouth
and sometimes continuing as though the answer BEP parroted was generated by BEP
I think C can be pretty hard to avoid, but avoiding it is vital.
What I try to do instead:
1b. (common tactic:) Be generally reassuring and soothing.
I think this tactic can be helpful, if you don’t let it lead you into B or C.
2b. (less common:) try to help them scaffold their arguments without actually providing the answer. It takes a lot of curiosity and patience. Poke, explore, ask. I don’t think I’m great at this, and I don’t have bullet-proof guidance for how to do it, but I try to:
Reflect people’s positions back to them to check I’ve actually understood what they were trying to say
Ask “why” a lot
Explore reasoning chains step by step, digging in when I notice confusion or disagreement
If they say something hyperbolic or bizarre, I check in to give them a chance to tweak what they’ve said (“All EAs should do X immediately!” “All EAs?” “Well, ok, what I really meant was. . . .”)
I want more PPs who are in evaluation mode—formally or informally! - to remember how nerves can throw noise into the interaction. I want people to be doing way more of 2b.
Check out the book “how to have impossible conversations”. It has some really great thoughts on creating spaces where you help the other person make their own journey rather than trying (and failing) to do it for them.
Also, the inner critic is very real, especially in our hyper competitive, achievement oriented, production/consumption culture. There is another way to hold oneself and others in a light, nonjudgmental way. But from experience it takes a lot of emotional and spiritual work with a trustworthy, compassionate coach/counselor/mentor. This story illustrates the depth of our societal divide:
In a meeting between the Dalai Lama and a group of American psychologists in 1990, one of the psychologists brought up the concept of negative self-talk. Since there are no words in Tibetan that translate into low self-esteem and self-loathing, it took quite a long time for the psychologists to convey what they meant. But this wasn’t a translation problem. It was a problem of conceptualization. Self-loathing? People do that? The Dalai Lama was incredulous. Once the Dalai Lama understood what they were saying, he turned to the Tibetan monks in the room, and after explaining what the psychologists were suggesting, he asked, “How many of you have experienced this low-self esteem, self-contempt or self-loathing?”
Complete silence.
Here was a psychological state of mind so ubiquitous in our culture that everyone experiences it from time to time, if not every single day. Yet the Tibetans—trained since childhood in the art of a mental exercise they call meditation—acted like they were being told about some alien life form. The Dalai Lama turned back to the psychologists and asked a simple question: “Why would you ever let your mind get like this?”
Excerpt from The Awakened Ape