Quote from Anon on July 6, 2022, 10:03 pm

Off Topic

I want to point out that after reading this part:

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on July 6, 2022, 4:48 pm

 

LOF's reply used Kavalier's mention of chess as a quick bridge to something very different, and that might feel like a brush-off (Kavalier can confirm that or deny).

I've also previously noticed that LOF sometimes adopts a "free-flowing" debating style that does not always take much of the original reply into account.
That can irk the person who took time to write the post because the person feels ignored. The exchange doesn't feel like a two-ways influencing street as all exchanges between equals and people who respect each other should be.

When we feel we're open to being influenced but the other person skips our good points, the feeling is that we are giving with our openness, but the other person isn't.
So it's a sucker's trade of persuasion (ie.: it does feel like the other person is playing a win-lose game).

Ignoring large portions of what one says can be good when debating to win in front of a public, but it's something to be careful with when one wants to exchange opinions, build bridges, or learn, because the feeling is that one is not interested in exchanging ideas, but in monologuing and/or winning.

To avoid that issue, if LOF wants to avoid being sidetracked or stick to his proposal, he should first validate the other person's point of view, and clearly state that he's going to skip a longer reply.
For example:

Great message!
I partially agree with some but not with all. I will reply later if I find the time. As of now, I want to stick to the original idea of testing PU's ideas because I think there can be much added value there.

 

 

− there was a *click* moment for me and a lot came together.
Now I get -why- it is so important and effective to validate what others have said and why that builds rapport, and why certain things break rapport. I had an intuition and knew it works, but until now I didn't really get why:

It's because a good conversation or persuasion is a flowing exchange where both sides have to be -open- and are constantly -giving- and -receiving-.

And that's why there is no real rapport with people who push an agenda (like stereotypical salesman or street preachers) −they are not open, but they want you to be open and try to change your thoughts. And that's not an exchange of equals, so we close and shield ourselves from either their agenda or them.

Being aware of this simple yet powerful rapport building process consciously will probably improve overall conversation skills and intuition significantly, and will make difficult situations - like criticism, easier.

In my opinion this is PU worthy, as it is both very important to realize and there are countless situations where we can benefit from it.

Off Topic

Off Topic

I want to point out that after reading this part:

Quote from Transitioned on July 7, 2022, 12:32 am

I m going to comment as I ve made the same mistakes which definitely impacted relationships across my life.  And you guys are both awesome it comes from a place of love.

I thought MMCs overall point as I understood it was great  That Emily was attempting some behaviour modification.  Which is kind of the opposite of power protecting.  Now she was trying to be helpful.  And she s walking into a conflict zone so caution and tact are needed.  If she had tried to get him to share what caused the break and how he felt about it that might have worked better.  Kind of what a lot of us males are often guilty of, ignoring the emotions and processing and skipping over into solution mode.

But then MMC fell into the same trap didn't start with the WIIFM and his message got lost in the noise.

So looking at TPM principles how could he have approached it differently.

Couple of ideas

Start by finding something to agree with.  We all agreed the guys comments were no bueno

Focus on what Emily was trying to achieve first (WIIFM) - from Emily s point of view she thought this guy was way out of line with his angry statements - which he was and wanted some counter smackdowns.

Ask questions instead of making statements.

Like you I thought there was more background.

"But they should not be taken out of context. I guess you hand-picked those sentences from the whole conversation."

But this way of asking sounded 'off' to me too

You could have said something like.  "This seemed to escalate quickly.  Were there any other details?  You might have summarised to make the post easier to read"

Then she could have come back with some info and probably a cooler mood.  And MMC could have bridged over to some of his other points.

So in summary I d say most debates become fights.  So always build rapport first then focus only on what they want as their top priority.  Then widen the discussion out and present it as unimportant 'a little tail'. Ideally put the tail in a separate post or a follow-up email once there's a bit of emotional distance.

BTW we re just making this into a case study coz that's how we do.  In real life you're probably dashing off a post.  But it's good to try and embed these habits because at work you ll often be dashing off an email between or in meetings.

 

 

 

Quote from MMC on July 7, 2022, 2:10 am

Quote from Anon on July 6, 2022, 9:57 pm

I'm not sure if right now is a good point in time to share my (subjective) perspective, but I'll try:

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on July 6, 2022, 5:04 pm

Emily / MMC

 

My impression was that Emilys' push back was fair and I was honestly impressed how she handled it.

Some things rubbed me the wrong way in that thread with MMC.

There were a few specific things that he stated, that made made him look quite dishonest, untrustworthy and hypocritical, and I think there is value in pointing them out specifically:

 

MMC claims she intentionally ("hand-picked") misrepresented the attacker to make him appear worse than he actually is. That was boundary crossing in my opinion:

But they should not be taken out of context. I guess you hand-picked those sentences from the whole conversation.

 

− while he also claims to be objective.

I have no side or no WIIFT to take side.

 

In that thread, MMC morphed into that guys attorney, while explicitly claiming to be objective. I would avoid that because it comes across as untrustworthy, especially in this particular context of a guy clearly being toxic towards her.

 

MMC stated:

My point is, in most social circles, no one is rightfully the high-judge/police.

I see that as "I hereby judge, you have no right to judge."
That's quite hypocritical, and MMC is aware of that:

I expressed my personal preference against social judge/police and clearly I have no side or no WIIFT to take side. Well, if expressing the preference against judging is itself judging, then I am indeed judging 😉

Being open about it was a smart move, but felt overall still dishonest to me, because of the framing:

MMC is "expressing personal preferences" and when others do that, they are "high-judge/police" (which I interpret as: they are control freaks that overreact to other peoples flaws or something along this line).

 

Overall I respect his boldness to go against the grain and defend the attacker.
But in my opinion there were significant mistakes made in how he did it. (There were also fair points raised by him, but this post is focused on what I think went wrong).

Hi @anonymous_user, thanks for your opinions. I am impressed with your boldness in writing a critical note focusing on specifics. You are truly a rare-find. It is my pleasure to collaborate with you. I also agree with you that someone has to bold enough to defend the "accused attacker". Well, even a murderer has the full right to have a dedicated attorney, and has the equal right to defend himself. Unfortunately, trying to write an objective case-analysis, I did not really defend the "accused attacker": I was mostly extending the previous points made by other wisemen. See this link for details.

I sincerely appreciate your compliments on my boldness, but please kindly allow me to not to take this undeserved compliment, because I was not bold enough to side on the accused "attacker".

Because I take you as positive thinker with boldness, let me ask you some simple questions. Do you agree or disagree with:

1. In most social circles, no one is rightfully the high-judge/police, unless both sides agree on the judge role.
2. Everyone has the freedom to express preference against social judges, and this does not harm anyone.
3. Emily, the case writer, "omitted a long message she sent" right before the "attacker's quotes". At the same time, the positive sides of the "attacker" are entirely omitted. We only have a one-sided story. Things might change (to either direction) if we know the fuller picture.
4. Our forum encourages us to provide the full conversation, as isolated quotation is hard to be analyzed.

Let's focus on the specific case-study, rather than on the personal traits of anyone (that leads to turkey's down-spiral). 

On "omission" and "hand-pick"

For example, if you disagree with my guess that some quotations are isolated (picked) from a bigger conversation, you can rightfully express your objection with evidences.

Well, if Emily (or you) clarified that she indeed provided the full, unbiased picture of the "attacker", and the conversation she provided is indeed completed, then some of my guesses were wrong and I will openly admit that.

I did not say "Emily misrepresented the attacker to make the attacker worse than he is"; this is your original idea, and you own the full copyright of your original research. I truly appreciate your ability in conducting original research and happy to see more contribution from you.

To me, it is also possible that Emily omitted some personal details with the purpose of protecting her friends (this is again my guess and could be wrong; I am just offering an alternative perspective which does not mean to invalid your original research). I did say "hand-picked", which means picked with a purpose, commonly associated with a positive connotation in most cultures. For example, "hand picked" strawberries and "hand picked" grapes are almost always good things.

I admit that I don't know Emily's exact purpose. My point is, regardless of the purpose, the omission is a bit against the forum rule, and I am not able to write a good analysis with partial truth.

On social judging

I want to reemphasized that Emily explicitly asked for feedbacks in her thread. It will be my moral obligation to give a neutral, unbiased, and un-sided feedback. Moreover, in a case-study, the writer is not necessarily the main character, so I kindly disagree with Lucio's suggestion that "we should take the side of the speaker".

In a science-based forum, I personally won't make conclusion on someone's personality, unless I really know about it. I'd focus on the fact and truth. I'd be very careful when framing someone as "attacker", "toxic", or "untrustworthy". Of course you are free to express different opinions.

As you can clearly see, I personally did not judge Emily, and I refrained myself from judging the "attacker" too much (do you believe this is siding with attacker?).  In this interaction, some people might judge you by your negative words, such as "dishonest, untrustworthy and hypocritical", and further take you as an attacker or a negative person. Despite of these, I won't judge you, and I delightedly opt to associate positive adjectives with you instead of negative ones. Permission to be frank. I cheerfully believe you as a positive person trying to be fact-based and truth-based -- definitely a noble direction. I hope the best of your joyful journey :)

 

Quote from MMC on July 7, 2022, 6:17 am

Quote from Transitioned on July 7, 2022, 12:32 am

I m going to comment as I ve made the same mistakes which definitely impacted relationships across my life.  And you guys are both awesome it comes from a place of love.

I thought MMCs overall point as I understood it was great  That Emily was attempting some behaviour modification.  Which is kind of the opposite of power protecting.  Now she was trying to be helpful.  And she s walking into a conflict zone so caution and tact are needed.  If she had tried to get him to share what caused the break and how he felt about it that might have worked better.  Kind of what a lot of us males are often guilty of, ignoring the emotions and processing and skipping over into solution mode.

But then MMC fell into the same trap didn't start with the WIIFM and his message got lost in the noise.

So looking at TPM principles how could he have approached it differently.

Couple of ideas

Start by finding something to agree with.  We all agreed the guys comments were no bueno

Focus on what Emily was trying to achieve first (WIIFM) - from Emily s point of view she thought this guy was way out of line with his angry statements - which he was and wanted some counter smackdowns.

Ask questions instead of making statements.

Like you I thought there was more background.

"But they should not be taken out of context. I guess you hand-picked those sentences from the whole conversation."

But this way of asking sounded 'off' to me too

You could have said something like.  "This seemed to escalate quickly.  Were there any other details?  You might have summarised to make the post easier to read"

Then she could have come back with some info and probably a cooler mood.  And MMC could have bridged over to some of his other points.

So in summary I d say most debates become fights.  So always build rapport first then focus only on what they want as their top priority.  Then widen the discussion out and present it as unimportant 'a little tail'. Ideally put the tail in a separate post or a follow-up email once there's a bit of emotional distance.

BTW we re just making this into a case study coz that's how we do.  In real life you're probably dashing off a post.  But it's good to try and embed these habits because at work you ll often be dashing off an email between or in meetings.

 

 

 

Hi Transitioned, I agree with almost all of your points. Well-presented and well-thought! It is my greatest pleasure to read your comment and guidance.

Just a small note on the "hand-pick" part. Anon hypothesizes that "Emily intentionally misrepresented the attacker to make him appear worse than he actually is". This is Anon's original ideas, not mine. I highly respect his original research, so I cannot take credits from him.

My choice of word, "hand-pick", means pick carefully/purposefully,  a phrase associated with positive connotation in most cultures: something top-rated was chosen with the heart. In this case, it is possible that Emily is trying to protect her friends or frenemies (my guess which could be wrong), or because of space-saving (your guess). Filling the missing conversations could make the accused "frenemy" look worse, or better, we don't know yet.

It is possible that other people (with honest reasons) had a negative understanding on specific positive words, and readers will be (unintentionally) misdirected from the true meaning of a word.  Once the negative frame is set by the authority, I could be too weak to turn things around, but it is still a valuable and joyful learning and experimenting experience for me. I still view everyone as positive learners with a growth mindset.

Let's be fair, "hand-pick", "invasive", "gas-lighting", and "dishonest", which word-choice is more aggressive or negative? We can keep our answers in our mind and keep growing. Cheers.

Quote from Transitioned on July 7, 2022, 6:58 am

Thanks MMC for clarifying.  I think this is a case of the guilty tarring the innocent.  So many people manipulate by hand picking facts that its got a bad rep.  Maybe 'curate' is the new 'hand pick'.  Curate seems to go with Artisanal (which means I should be happy to pay a LOT more)  And 'guidance' makes me blush and maybe chuckle ruefully a bit.  Seems like everyone here is more advanced than me.  But what I lack in talent I make up in bloody minded persistence so I'll get there one day.

When I put this in the quotes "You might have summarised to make the post easier to read" that was a bit of benefit of the doubt up front.  To make sure it wasn't taken by Emily as accusatory.  And true - I often post and then people ask for more detail and then those details turn out to be key and I didn't see that to start with.

Quote from leaderoffun on July 7, 2022, 9:32 am

Major learnings

1. When you use someone for an example that is not positive and you don't power protect that person, you risk disempowering the "example"

2. Using the generic "you" is dangerous, because it can be read as the individual "you". Use 'we' instead. Make yourself part of the group that you are criticizing

3. First validate the other person's point of view, then clearly state that I'm going to skip a longer reply because of reasons (you need to let it marinate, the discussion is worth another thread, etc).

4. When talking about things that all people do (For example, protect their beliefs and seek confirmation only, not testing them) assume there's a risk the reader feels this is more personal than general, more so if they are having a back-and-forth with you

5. When what you say risk disempowering someone, that's exactly where you to be _twice_ as careful

6. All these things work in 'all terrains'! Example: If you say "Germans do X" and there's a German in the room, he is very likely interpreting "LOF says I do X". If my help if you are part of the group that you are criticizing, but even so remember to say it before you offer criticism. If you are not part of the group, or people don't know, you are setting yourself for 'social failure'

7. Praising someone else when someone is communicating he's being hurt will feel disrespectful. Particularly if the praise is about a personality trait the person feeling hurt has or is a generally positive thing everyone wants to have

8. **Secondary effect of compliments!** There's such a thing as a '**triangulation attack**', where one doesn't attack the person directly, but instead compliment someone else. I indirectly say that you lack that good trait. This is doubly powerful and valuable in analyzing power interactions, because is '2nd degree'. You may think "If I'm saying good things, it adds value to anyone". Not so. Social interactions are often null-sum games, adding to someone detracts karma from someone else who is not getting the compliment.

9. Always keep the discussion between the two, and never open it up to other folks

Minor learnings

1. Parse out responses, create a new thread when the topic starts going away from an answer to the question on the thread

2. Link your ideas to other ideas explicitly. When a connection exist in your mind (or Zettelkasten, lol), it doesn't mean it exists in the medium that you are using to communicate (post). Write less for yourself and more for others (less stream of consciousness)

3. When criticizing an idea, don't mention anyone by name, otherwise you are risking they take it personal. Then the conversation is about them, not the idea. If you do, do say multiple times that you have that same problem you are criticizing or build warmth in any other appropriate way

 

Thank you Lucio again for taking the time you took to dissect this interaction. You were not kidding when you said this would be a learning opportunity lol. Each of these points are 'flashcard worthy', and you remember more when the rule applied to you already.

Quote from leaderoffun on July 7, 2022, 9:39 am

My interpretation of Kavalier post:

one gets the impression that you are not from the field of humanities, not familiarized with its methods, its literature, and are pretty much flogging a dead horse.

(paints the attacked person as an ignorant of the field discussed)

if you are serious about intellectual endeavours you should have known it by now

(paints the attacked person as not intellectually serious)

There's more but that's enough.

Here one can go though the catalog of social blunders and pick some; but I don't think it's necessary. This is an ad ominem attack. Or in simpler terms, an insult (well, an attempt). Worse yet, it's factually wrong, which makes it fail as insult and instead flags the attacker's not just lack of social finesse but also judgment ability.

Kavalier: there you crossed a line, and kept horserding into the horizon.

Lucio: I have some feedback for you if you think it's worth it. I can also share in private if you prefer.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on July 7, 2022, 9:52 am

Hey LOF,

If you focus on that message alone, I think you're right (my interpretation of it was based on what preceded it, and taking into account as justification the previous misunderstanding/possible power moves).

As for the feedback for me, absolutely, and pick the format you prefer (if it's about anything relating to these last exchanges, I think public is better so others also have a chance to learn / stay in the loop).

Edit:
And since I had missed the post above it, thank you for sharing your learning, great stuff (and some of which may as well find its way into PU indeed).

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on July 7, 2022, 10:07 am

Not the perfect timing since this comes after a few "not so great" exchanges and you ideally want to rebuild goodwill and social capital in-between "episodes", rather than doubling down.

But in the spirit of just being frank and assertive, I think it's better to point it out than not.

@MMC

On this thread, thank you for sharing your experience man, respect for the courage to share it (and wonderful case study for learning, too).

I need to make a note on this part:

Quote from MMC on July 7, 2022, 9:24 am

I feel very sorry for your misfortune. I hope it will help you get stronger rather than bother you and hope it does not affect your mood and career too much.

This is an (unwitting) covert power move.

The frame is "poor you, sorry for your misfortune".

I never said or implied I felt sorry for anything, never said it bothered me (let alone that it might "make me weaker", which "I hope it will help you get stronger" implies by opposition).
I said it was an enlightening experience, the opposite of a misfortune -and a bit of an exaggeration maybe, but still... My frame of the whole event is very positive-.

"Hoping it does not affect my career" even opens a potentially damaging thread that was never there to begin with.
How's that got anything to do with TPM?
If anything, it provided more life experience to strengthen TPM.

I guess you meant it all in a supportive fashion, in which case: thank you.
Still, as we said many times here, many covert power moves start with positive intention, but still disempower the receiver and frame him in a way that he may not want to be framed.

Something to be aware of.