...a monthly eZine

Dr. Pamela Armstrong
Psychologist, Therapist and Kolbe™ Coach

What is your relationship with “facts”?

I like to tell clients:

“Facts and feelings need to be kept separate especially when you are flooded with feelings and are needing to communicate with someone who may turn the flood into a tsunami.”

Facts are, in general, our friends. They help us to be grounded in some form of reality. However, facts can be highly debatable, depending on the subject and the context. Humans seem to be the creatures who have brought debate to the level of a fine art. When two dogs are fighting over who gets the chew toy, the issue of whose chew toy it is does not usually get settled in a just manner unless a human intervenes. After all, we have these principles we think should be adhered to (usually).

We were raised with a world view which contained a factual base of some sort, including the idea that certain actions are dangerous and potentially deadly. To some extent, buying in to that factual base is an issue of survival. Good parents still program children to respect safety rules and to practice them even when the parent is not present.

However, our ideas of what is factual and what is “spin” or belief seem to keep changing.  Children today often lack an exposure to historic facts and the relationship between the past and the present.  School subjects are often taught in such a way as to disconnect rather than connect these dots.  Busy parents often do not have the discussions with their children about what they are learning and how that learning relates to the parents’ knowledge and experiences in real life.

The result can be that children have a very limited grasp of what is factual (including what a recession is, and what the family budget is, and how that filters down into the decision about buying a new videogame).  Many children have been primed to argue down a limit set by a parent, as if that really changes the facts.

But I digress. I wanted to focus on the three main ways we find facts as adults. I don’t mean the TV, phone-a-friend and the Internet.

I mean that we are born with natural instincts about fact finding. This relates to how we gather and share information.  There are three main ways we relate to facts.

The first way is to SPECIFY.  This involves the drive to research the deep factual base before making a decision.  Specifying involves defining, probing, proving, calculating, and prioritizing.  By doing this research, a decision can be justified.

If there is TOO MUCH need to SPECIFY in a group, the task gets bogged down, the members may never believe there is enough information to act on, and this can result in the “paralysis of analysis”.  This prevents timelines and deadlines from being met.

The second way is to EXPLAIN.  This involves the reviewing of research, historical precedent, etc. but the drive is to decide when information gathering is sufficient and to draw to a close the research phase so that decisions can be reached and action can begin.

If there is TOO MUCH need to EXPLAIN in a group, there can be a lack of “sparks” in the process of the team, and not enough depth OR push toward action.  You see, this is why “middle of the road” is not necessarily the ultimate answer, as in fact that becomes a different kind of INERTIA.  The explainers in the team help to bridge the differences between the specifiers and the simplifiers, and that is a dynamic creative process which brings out the best in the team.

The third way is to SIMPLIFY.  This involves a quick review of the factual base but the drive is to use that as a “jumping off place” to explore, innovate, originate, question, reform, modify the status quo, and instigate change/transition.  The simplifiers do tend to push toward action, as action is the avenue in which simplifiers discover and experience THEIR learning process most easily.

If there is TOO MUCH need to SIMPLIFY in a group, this can be like having powerful acceleration with only a weak set of brakes.  This can lead to a spinning of wheels, with resulting loss of real progress.  It can cause false starts, having to regroup and begin again.  It can cause a group to venture too quickly into an area of risk with no “plan B” in place.

Hopefully you can see how vitally important all these ways of relating to facts really are in a group of people.  But you can probably imagine the amount of natural conflict that can occur among these three methods.  And this is just ONE OF the reasons why leaders need the Kolbe System, which is the most straightforward, immediate and blamefree way to manage fact finding conflict in a team of talented and motivated people.

I would welcome any questions you may have, and I would also welcome the opportunity to consult with you and your team.

Thanks for reading ZigZag--

Pam

Thanks for reading Zigzag. Please forward this Ezine to any friends who may share your interest.

Dr Pam is a psychologist, therapist, and Kolbe™ coach. She can be reached at www.instinctivecoach.com

Her office is located in Elkridge, MD. Her phone number is 410-995-0760.

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