Judgement | Guy Harris: The Recovering Engineer

Archive for judgement

Dec
14

How Much Margin Do You Have?

by Guy Harris

A few days ago, I posted about the tragic death of a young lady who was part of my life when I was in college and she was a toddler. You can read that post here.

Sadly, I was unable to attend her funeral. I learned of the accident that took her life late on Thursday night and the funeral was on Saturday. I live in Indiana, and her funeral was in North Carolina.

My inability to get to North Carolina to lend my support to people who were a big part of my early adulthood saddened me equally as much as hearing of Krystal’s death.

In reflecting on the events of the last few days, I see that the problem is one of margin.

To explain what I mean, I’ll lean on my background as an engineer.

In my engineering design classes, I learned about the concept of design or safety margin — a factor built into design calculations to allow for minor errors, miscalculations, under estimations, and other variables that are difficult to accurately determine.

While I was in the Navy and learning to become an Engineering Officer, I learned about the specific margins that were built into both the submarine and the engineering plant to ensure safe operation.

Later, when I was working as a research engineer in the chemical industry, I used the concept of design margin as I developed new products and worked with customers to get our products qualified for their applications.

Safe engineering design always considers, allows for, and builds in some margin for safety.

This weekend, I became eminently aware of the lack of margin in my life. I didn’t have enough time margin to safely make the 12-hour one-way drive in the time I had between learning of Krystal’s death and her funeral. I didn’t have enough financial margin to jump on a plane and go.

Do I have enough time to live up to my immediate commitments? Yes. Do I have enough financial margin to meet my financial obligations? Yes.

And having enough to meet the minimum requirements does not create margin.

Just as the concept of margin applies to our schedule and our budgets, it also applies to our personal and professional relationships. For example, do you have enough margin in your relationships to…

Withstand a communication error?
Make it through a misunderstanding of intention?
Survive a missed appointment?
Last beyond a forgotten task?
Etc.

I don’t propose that I have a “silver bullet” answer for creating more margin. I do find myself thinking about it a lot the last few days.

I suppose that each person has to find his own way to create margin in his life. So, as we prepare to end 2010 and begin 2011, I’ll share the question with you that I’ve been asking myself:

What will you do, starting now, to create more time, financial, and relationship margin in your life?

This is a big question to consider, and it relates directly to how you set your goals for next year.

If you have suggestions for me or others reading this post that might help in this process, please leave a comment below.

If you have specific questions about setting better goals, my friend and colleague, Kevin Eikenberry, is leading a free teleseminar on December 21 to address goal setting issues. You can leave your question for him and register here.

Photo by Vincent van der Pas.

8 Categories : Reflections

Jul
21

Intentions – A Poem That Came to Me While Cleaning

by Guy Harris

I don’t know why this came to mind, but it did.

I was helping my wife clean our living room, and I was, as I often am, thinking about what I could write here. I was not thinking about my wife, my kids, or my professional colleagues.

I was just thinking. (Remember, I am a recovering engineer. I am almost always “thinking.”)

I started thinking about how we often misinterpret other people’s meaning, and this little rhyme popped (almost) fully formed into my mind.

So, I share it here with you today:

I’ll never know your real intent,
Until I ask you what you meant.
And, if you choose, in your reply,
To then, tell me the reason why.

3 Categories : Communication Skills, Resolving Conflict

Mar
23

How To Irritate Others With The DISC Model

by Guy Harris

Here are five sure-fire ways to irritate other people using the DISC model of human behavior:

Tell them how they’re feeling or what they’re thinking.
Explain to them why they did what they did or said what they said.
Decide for them what they will want from a given situation.
Analyze them and their behaviors.
Help them to be more like you.

I could continue with the list, but I’m sure you see the point. Any time we do any of the above using the DISC model, we are using the model as a weapon against the other person rather than as a tool to understand them more completely.

I teach the DISC model. I use the DISC model. I like the understanding it gives me of people with other viewpoints and perspectives. And, I recognize that it only reveals general patterns of behavior that apply to populations of people rather than absolutes that apply to individuals.

The model and the terms used as descriptors in the model come from statistical averages of population behaviors and perspectives. Using it to define, label, or box-in another person violates one of the first things I learned in my college statistics class:

Never use a population statistic to describe an individual observation.

I encourage you to learn how to understand other people. I even encourage you to study the DISC model as a simple way to learn how to see the world from another person’s perspective. I strongly discourage anyone from using the model as a weapon to harm, judge, or manipulate others.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hname/ / CC BY 2.0

3 Categories : Communication Skills, DISC Model

Nov
11

Easy Isn’t Necessarily Best

by Guy Harris

Yesterday, I stopped at a fast-food restaurant to grab a sandwich. When I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed six or seven cars in the drive through line and no one standing in line inside the building. So, I parked my car, walked inside, purchased my sandwich, and returned to my car in about two or three minutes.

When I exited the building, four or five of the cars originally in line when I arrived were still in line and the line had grown to something like ten cars. And still, there was no one waiting in line inside the building.

This situation occured on a sunny day with the temperatures near 60 F – a beautiful day for November in central Indiana.

At first, I thought how silly the picture was of people waiting in their cars in line for ten or fifteen minutes when they could be in and out of the parking lot in three to five minutes by simply going inside. Then I made the connection to leadership, communication, and conflict resolution.

People have a tendency to do what seems to be easiest even when it will not produce the fastest or most efficient results.

For example, we sometimes avoid a conflict resolution discussion because it seems easier to ignore the situation in hopes that it will go away. Generally, the situations get worse rather than better when left alone. So, by avoiding a brief conversation now, we buy ourselves a week or a month of hurt feelings and reduced effectiveness. It seems easier in the moment, but it costs us in the end.

Or, we fail to confront poor performance with our employees, children, or friends because we don’t want to experience the pain of resolving the issue. As a result, we get more of the poor performance in the future until we get frustrated enough to “deal with it” (probably in a highly elevated emotional state) in a way that escalates the frustration rather than resolving it.

Conflict conversations, confrontations, and efforts at resolution are not always easy. Avoiding (or sometimes condemning) can seem easier in the moment. Taking a lesson from the drive through example:

Easy isn’t necessarily best.

Effort, work, and emotional investment to resolve a conflict while it is small can pay huge dividends in time savings and preserved relationships.

1 Categories : Family Relationships, Reflections, Resolving Conflict

Sep
7

Why I Don’t Want to Be a Tolerant Person

by Guy Harris

Last week, I attended Shadow Day at my daughter’s school. On Shadow Day, parents attend classes with their children.

As I sat in her American Literature class listening to a discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic The Scarlet Letter, her teacher questioned the virtue of tolerance. In his brief comment on the topic, he referenced a talk he once heard by Elie Wiesel.

Elie Wiesel survived the concentration camps and Jewish persecution of World War II. On the day that my daughter’s teacher heard Wiesel speak, another member of the audience asked how he could be so tolerant of other people after all of the hardships he had endured. In his reply, Elie said that he used to try to be tolerant, and that he eventually realized that in his tolerance he was making himself better than other people. So, he now just wanted to understand.

Amen.

I often hear people speak of tolerance as if it is a high virtue. I acknowledge that tolerating someone is better than annihilating them, and I still don’t want to be a tolerant person. Like Elie Wiesel, I want to understand.

I’ll explain my reasoning by using some definitions from Dictionary.com.

Tolerant

inclined or disposed to tolerate; showing tolerance; forbearing: tolerant of errors.

In order to be tolerant, I must learn to tolerate.

Tolerate

to allow the existence, presence, practice, or act of without prohibition or hindrance; permit.

to endure without repugnance; put up with: I can tolerate laziness, but not incompetence.

When I look at these definitions, I see what Elie Wiesel spoke of in his answer. When I tolerate another person, I permit their existence. I endure their presence. When I permit someone’s perspective, I place myself in a superior position to them. When I endure something, I probably find it distasteful, painful, or annoying in some way.

I don’t want to permit other people to have their views. I don’t want to endure their presence. I don’t want to be tolerant.

Rather, I want to understand.

Understand

to perceive the meaning of; grasp the idea of; comprehend: to understand Spanish; I didn’t understand your question.

to be thoroughly familiar with; apprehend clearly the character, nature, or subtleties of: to understand a trade.

For example, my wife has a “female” view of the world and I have a “male” view of the world. These different perspectives often create different interpretations of events.

I want to live in peace with my wife. I want to live and work with her in a way that allows both of us to be happy with the relationship.

If I learn to tolerate her perspective, I will always carry a subtle judgment of it. I will permit her to be different. (As if she needed my permission.)

If, instead of tolerating her, I learn to understand her, I can live and work with her without the feeling that I am enduring something unpleasant. I can start to see and value what she sees.

In the realm of workplace conflict resolution, this concept applies equally well. When we tolerate other people, we are, in effect, judging them. We are filtering their views and perspectives in a way that says we permit them to exist. (Again, like they need our permission.)

When we understand people, we let go of the judgment, and we start to see people more clearly. We lower the filters and pretense that tend to mark tolerant relationships.

So, I don’t want to be a tolerant person. I want to be an understanding one.

5 Categories : Reflections