I used to think listening to people had to be pretty easy since, I figured, it was their job to say what they meant.
That feels like one of the biggest misconceptions I carried around (for way too long) – it’s flawed on numerous levels, including but not limited to its American-ness (since culturally we value directness more than just about anyone). It also willfully ignores how people come to conclusions and how people (especially persuasive people) explain their conclusions.
Put it this way: if Jonathan Haidt is right (and I think he is), we make decisions with our hearts (maybe our gut, or our elephant) and then explain and rationalize them with our heads (the rider). To me that means that what we say to explain these decisions is necessarily a rational (re)construction of truth, rather than the truth itself: we will construct a story that uses the core truth as a springboard and then assembles the pieces that will be, in our judgment, most persuasive and palatable to the listener.
With this in mind, when someone is explaining something (a plan, a proposal, a decision) to me and he says…:
- The main reason we should do this is….
- also it has to do with….
- and, by the way, there’s this one other small reason….
…it seems to me that the most logical thing to expect is that people’s “main” and “also” reasons are the series of facts/explanations that will be most convincing to me.
This makes the “by the way” a great candidate for what’s really going on.