So I was talking to a lawyer the other day. A couple of rungs before the general counsel was like, Large company. And it’s in the context of my coaching some important team. And she’s basically trying to bring to this group’s attention that they’re not doing enough about something and to explain to them what the risks are of it. Okay. And she’s, I would say, frustrated with her lack of impact in those conversations. She feels that people are basically dismissing her arguments. Right? Okay, I understand. And she says, in part, sometimes I think it’s because you also have this gender thing. They’re more likely to dismiss what I’m going to say because I’m a mom. Fine. So then when I ask her, so tell me the argument. Tell me what your reasoning is for why they should pay more attention to this and what are the potential consequences? Just lay it out for me. Imagine we had a couple of beers, fine. Just what’s the truth of this thing? She tells me. I’m like, wow. First of all, that reasoning is very strong, very clear, very compelling, and damn, you’re articulate. Like, wow, what an oppressive person.
And then I have this little tool that this guy, Chris Argers, invented that I mentioned earlier, that I converted into a developmental tool for leaders and people that he originally used as a research tool. And you just get people to write down, here’s what I actually said to the best of my memory. And it can’t be a characterization of what you said. I was honest, they were a bunch of defensive apples. No. It has to be, to the best of my memory, here’s what I said and here’s what they said. And I don’t I don’t care if they lie. I don’t care if they forget. It doesn’t matter. Because it turns out the place where our theories and use are stored in our brains is different from where our spouse theories are stored. This is what we’re implicitly that we were implicitly talking about earlier. The theories and use are the rules and algorithms, say, that actually determine how we behave. Our spouse theories are the ways we would like to behave. And these things are often in contradiction. So when you get people to write down what they actually said, it activate that part of the brain where your algorithm is actually stored.
That’s why I don’t care if they try to lie, because they can’t help but to betray themselves. They can’t help but to display the normal tactics in these conversations. So I looked at it. Of course, I asked to what degree does this actually portray how the conversation went down. She said, more or less, really close. Okay, great. I said, So all that great stuff you said, hardly any of it’s in this conversation. And she thought, and I said, Do you see that? She’s like, Yeah, I do see that. So you’re making yourself more dismissive by making a weaker argument. She’s like, Yeah, I do see that. And then I said, So why do you do it? She says, Well, as a woman, I’m afraid to come across as being too direct. And also, as a lawyer, my job is to advise and counsel, not to direct. I said, That’s fine, but your job is to give them access to your full thinking so they could decide for themselves what’s their best interest. She goes, Yeah. So what’s interesting, what happens, you can imagine, if she doesn’t realize that she has diluted the argument, and that’s the reason she feels dismissed, Then she has to find some other explanation.
I don’t blame her for landing on the gender explanation. Now, it doesn’t mean the gender explanation isn’t also true. It could be. But you’re not coming this clinically clean, because you’re part of the problem in ways you don’t realize. And it’s understandable why you’re not being more clear, because you’re worried about being dismissed. So the very thing you do to prevent yourself from being dismissed ensures you get dismissed.
