Try to see it my way
Authors: Yogesh Upadhyaya and Manish Agarwal
Try this exercise: Build the world of an airline steward using simple phrases. Maybe, you come up with,
“Tea or Coffee?” Or
“In case of emergency landing…”. Or
“Please put your seat in an upright position and open your window shades.”
Now, try the same exercise for an Uber driver.
I have conducted this exercise for professionals many times. Almost every time, people build the world of a steward or an Uber driver entirely from their own point of view. That is, they think of phrases or words that the steward or Uber driver says to them. They don’t come up with phrases that stewards or Uber drivers may say to anyone other than their customers. However, with a bit of encouragement, people are able to change. For example, they may come up with an Uber driver telling his wife on the phone, “You have your dinner, I will be late”. The surprising part comes when I ask the participants to build the world of a business counterparty. These may be external counterparties such as customers. Or they may be other employees in their own company. Almost always, the participants are unable to build the world of the other side. This is especially so when the relationship is contentious.
Why is it difficult to see things from the point of view of others and what, if anything, can we do about it?
To begin, what do I mean by contentious business relationships? Let us take an example of a business-to-business services company. In this company, the sales guys were in a contentious relationship with the finance folk. The sales people were under pressure to get business and could agree to terms which could be bad for the company. The finance guys were tasked with ensuring that the company did not lose out on the deals that sales brought in. The two sides were always bickering.
We asked the sales people to build the world of the finance guys. We told them that the finance guys, standing next to them, would judge the quality of the world they built. The sales guys absolutely failed the test. In their world view, the finance guys were ‘nay saying obstacles’ to be overcome. At best they were bureaucratic simpletons who did not know how the real world worked. At worst, they were assh&$es.
This is not an isolated case. In a corporate bank, the product guys viewed Relationship Managers (RMs) as cowboys who would lie to get a deal done. Both, the product guys and the RMs, thought that the risk evaluation guys had no idea how the real world worked. Again, we could not easily persuade almost anyone to change their mind.
Why do we find it difficult to see someone else’s point of view? Let’s start with the most obvious reason.
We have a lot of practice seeing our own point of view
We go around the world seeing things from our own point of view. This has been true since our birth. My inner monologue is about my to-do list, or about how many readers I will get for this blog post, or about the sweltering heat of Mumbai in May. It is definitely not about whatever you are thinking right now. We don’t have practice seeing anyone else’s point of view.
But this does not explain why people find it easier to imagine the world of an airline steward than of someone they interact with regularly. A sales guy can build the world of an Uber driver more easily than the world of the finance person he interacts with daily.
When we press this sales guy, he comes up with a version of ‘understanding the counterparty’s point of view does not work in our industry.’
Ye Hamari industry me nahi chalta hai
Many people — mainly men — say that this ‘touchy feely’ stuff does not work in their business. Their business is too cut -throat for understanding someone else’s Point of View. For those people, I have a thought experiment.
Imagine you are trapped in a large dark building. You are armed with a gun. You know there is another person in the building who is eager to cut your throat. You have to kill him before he kills you. Wouldn’t you love to know how the other person is thinking? Wouldn’t you want to know the other person’s point of view?
The greatest generals in history had a way of getting into their opponents minds. They could anticipate what their opponents were going to do. They understood their opponent’s point of view. In modern times, we see great sportsmen do that. At the peak of his powers, it seemed that Rohit Sharma knew better than the bowler himself which kind of delivery he was going to bowl. Understanding someone else’s point of view does not mean being soft.
But let’s face it, if you are reading this piece, you are unlikely to be a warrior or a top tier sportsperson. You are likely to be a white collar professional. You are probably in a startup or an established company or an independent contractor. Forget killing, you have probably not hit anyone in anger in years. In other words, your business is unlikely to be as cut-throat as you think.
So why are you reluctant to see someone else’s point of view? I have a hypothesis.
You are probably not a sociopath
If we have a regular but contentious relationship with someone, it is easier for us emotionally if we don’t see their point of view. In our earlier example, it is easier for a product guy in a bank to think that Relationship Managers are mildly evil than to understand their point of view. Why is that?
We know that in a contentious relationship, we would have to say no to the other person. It is much easier to say no if we believe that the other side is bad or at least idiotic. It is much more difficult to say no when we can see where they are coming from. Most of us protect ourselves from this emotional difficulty by totally ignoring the other side’s point of view.
It is much easier to say no after drinking a nice hot cup of Righteous Indignation. Moreover, Righteous Indignation is addictive. This is why we drink it regularly via our television and phone screens.
So should you give up the daily cup (or five) of Righteous Indignation that you drink before dealing with your contentious relationship? Well it depends. Let me begin with the case for not doing it.
Are you tough enough to say no?
It takes skill and emotional fortitude to say no to someone you understand. It is also called being an adult. Unfortunately, adulting is tough. The problem gets compounded if we understand their point of view but they refuse to see our point of view. You understand where they are coming from but they think you are an ass$&$e! In this situation, calling the other side idiotic or evil or both is easier for us. Do not underestimate this difficulty.
“It’s business. Nothing personal.” Variants of this phrase are very common in gangster movies for a reason. Tough killers say this phrase to demonstrate how tough they are — they can kill even when they don’t hate the other guy.
Many of us may not be that tough. We may find it impossible to say no if we don’t dislike the other guy. If that is you, by all means drink your glass of Righteous Indignation every day. Especially, if you are stuck in a job where contentious relationships are the norm and solving an issue has no benefit. Also, figure out if you can change your job. Because as the lyrics of the song go,
“Life is very short, and there’s no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend.”
Others may want to read on.
Sometimes, peace of mind is all you get
Every few months, I get a call from my bank.
“Sir, my name is xyz” a young person says, “I have been assigned as your Relationship Manager. Can we meet some time?”
This has happened many many times. I can predict how the meeting will go. The RM would come to the meeting knowing absolutely nothing about me. They wouldn’t even have looked up my LinkedIn profile! They would have zero idea about my life situation or my financial goals. All they would be interested in is chipakoing a product that their bank is pushing. Why are the RMs so predictable?
In most banks, RMs get no credit for existing business. They are evaluated only on new business. So, they are under constant pressure to sell new products to clients. Banks may claim to have guardrails to ensure that the client’s interests are not compromised. However, the guardrails are more to protect the bank when the client’s interests are inevitably and egregiously compromised. To be fair, the bank is in no position to judge if a RM is protecting a client’s interests if doing nothing is in the client’s financial interests. As it often is.
This understanding of the bank’s and RMs’ point of view serves me only a bit. I use this knowledge to avoid meetings with RMs. However, when I do meet them, I have to say no to them. And yes, it is difficult for me to say no to them even while knowing that their requests often mean transferring money from my pocket to them.
It is indeed emotionally difficult to say no when you know that the other person is not evil.
Sometimes, knowing the other person’s POV can make things just a little bit better.
Maybe 10% better?
As a business owner earlier and now as an independent professional, I have repeatedly faced the deep frustration of not getting paid on time. Large corporations are especially bad. Over a period of time, I developed an understanding of the point of view of the various people involved. Consequently, I developed a set of practices which deals with this situation imperfectly but better than before. I will write a detailed piece on this some time but my primary insight was this: In a large company, many people are involved in processing your payment. For all these people, paying you is a very low priority. I am not saying that they don’t want to pay you. It is just that all of them are so busy all the time that taking care of any one particular payment is not a high priority for anyone. Simultaneously, people in large companies hate it when they are reminded of pending payments. This means that they will latch on to any excuse to get angry with you. I guess that nobody likes to be reminded that they are in the wrong.
So what do I do? First, I develop a personal relationship with as many senior people as I can. Second, in the initial contract negotiations, when they bargain on price, I tie any reductions in my fees with timely payments and even advance payments. Third, I don’t spend the money that I have not received. Therefore, delays don’t make me desperate and angry. Finally, I am consistent in my reminders and am unfailingly polite in my communication. I don’t give the other party any excuse to become angry. All this moves the needle just a little. More importantly, it keeps me cool.
Peace of mind is not something to be sneered at. However, once in a while, you come across a situation where knowing the other side’s POV is enormously rewarding.
Sometimes understanding the other side’s POV can be very rewarding
My software product company used to sell Wealth Management software. Our clients were large private banks. One of the challenges in the software business is that nobody knows how a product should be priced. Even after we had convinced a client that they should buy our product, we could have protracted negotiations which were ostensibly on price. This used to be very frustrating. Our competition was with companies like Infosys and Iflex at the higher end and companies that were much smaller than us on the other end. Potential clients would tell us that one of our competitors was pricing their product at a fraction of our price. We would tell the client representative how much better our product was and they would nod warily. The negotiations would drag on and on. Till we stumbled onto what the actual problem was.
The people we were talking to were already convinced. Their problem was how to convince their seniors in the bank. How could they say that 40 or 50 Lakh was the right price to pay? Especially, if there was a competitor with a selling price of Rs. 10 Lakh? Once we figured this out, we could suggest solutions. For example, we told a bank that they had 50 Relationship Managers (RM) who they paid around 50 Lakhs each. They should treat our software as the 51st RM who would make every other RM much more effective. The deal sailed through. Nobody in the bank knew how to price a Wealth Management product. But everyone loved a comparison that sounded reasonable.
So what should I do?
It depends.
- If you don’t want to tax yourself emotionally, then don’t do anything different. Especially, if it is unlikely that knowing the other person’s point of view will help much.
- If you are in a complex situation where a little give and take is possible, do spend the emotional and mental capital to understand the other side’s point of view. The payoffs could be immense.
Bonus exercise: Tell a story to a friend; something simple that happened to you. Then ask the friend to retell the story, from the perspective of another character in the story. For example, you talk about a taxi ride. Your friend then imagines how the taxi driver experienced the ride. It is fun, and it can be insightful. You can then graduate to stories from work situations or personal situations that matter to you.
___________________________
This article is part of the series — Go beyond Puzzle solving
“How to spot a bad expert” in this series has received a lot of attention.
Follow Yogesh on medium. Choose the option to get the stories delivered to your Inbox.
You can follow AskHow India (@AskHowIndia) or Yogesh (@YogeshUpadh) on twitter or on LinkedIn
Follow Manish Agarwal (@manishbgagarwal) or find him on LinkedIn
