Last Thursday, Irma (my wife) showed me an exchange of messages on her phone. It was with one of our son’s classmate’s mother. Call her Elena. Irma was a bit upset that for every question she had asked, Elena was replying in one word – yes, no, ok, don’t know, let’s see. ‘Is she avoiding me’ kind of feeling. Friday morning the two met up again while dropping children off to school and Elena shared with Irma that she had just finished an intense regulatory inspection at work. Irma was surprised that Elena even responded to her messages.
What a shift in perspective overnight …
Some would say it’s all about the context … but let’s push a bit more. The Danish popular science author has another word for context and I think it evokes more imagination and thinking.
Exformation
When we think of all the information that we discard to arrive at a shared meaning, it is tempting to think of exformation. And moreover, exformation is unconscious. Just like Elena and Irma, we don’t even know what we are discarding and how it would affect our relationships. Many years ago, at the back deck of a ship I remember a conversation between the captain and the chief officer. The captain told the chief officer, ‘can we get rid of this pole’. The chief officer responded, ’but captain he is a good man.’
But over the years, in studying organisational communication I have imagined other ways in which the chief officer could respond. One particular image that comes to mind is this.
A ritual in meeting
So how do we get people to draw a balance between information and exformation. The answer lies in having a conversation. But what kind of a conversation? Let me share a story from last week.
Last Thursday, we gathered with a group of people to discuss the topic of exformation.There were more than 30 people from across the world and so, I decided to skip introductions and get to the topic of discussion. How sad that I did not practice what I set out to preach … But just before we finished, Tiffany asked if it would be a great idea to know each other before we leave the meeting.
So many participants introduced themselves, so many expressed their concerns and some even shared their own stories of ‘misunderstanding’. When the exformation was surfaced, it turned into a meeting where people felt connected. Even for those who cannot think beyond KPIs and deadlines, the last 10 minutes brought more value to the meeting than what we discussed before.
I-thou
In my years of social experiments, recording and observing people having conversations I can say that most people cannot tell the difference between communication and conversation. We come to a conversation to control the other, to talk our agenda (like I did last week), and to prove ourselves smarter than the other but we rarely create the space to meet with people.
Martin Buber speaks of conversation in the I-thou. The hyphen in the I-thou means everything.
The hyphen symbolises a meeting. In this meeting, I have the opportunity to leave the ‘I’ and move towards ‘you’? But once I leave the I, I am no one and I know nothing. That’s deeply uncomfortable but that’s also my only opportunity to meet, relate and learn with the other.
But what if the other person refuses to see the pole? In those moments, what questions do I ask? And how far do I go to meet the other person? That’s for you to decide. But when exformation is ignored, there is no conversation, no meeting, and no way to come to shared understanding.
Readings
I and Thou by Martin Buber
The User Illusion by Tor Noretranderr
