empathizing with resistance

Thanks Mike Corum for an illuminating post.

>Now I have to work on one that is a little hard for me at
>times, Respecting Those Who Resist.  Once I've begun doing that more, I 
>can Embrace the
>Resistance and even Join With the Resistance.  I'm probably talking about 
>another two years
>or more of development for myself and I honestly don't know if I'll make it.

A _little_ hard? A _little_ hard?  :-) I have not yet read Rick Maurer, but 
it sounds like I will really enjoy reading him. Thanks for the 
recommendation. But I do have some thoughts I would like to share about 
Respecting and "embracing" resistance, through the use of empathic 
practice.  I think that this goal of embracing and empathizing with 
resistance might actually be a crux in the adoption process.

How in the world does one respect what, on the surface, appears to be 
irrational behavior, let alone embrace it? For me the answer is beginning 
to emerge in the notion of honoring every person's internal reality, which 
is, in large part, emotionally driven and, yes, irrational.  However 
rational we may appear to be or not to be, the basic engine of our behavior 
is profoundly irrational. Let me try to defend that claim. :-)

We All Do It, At Least Sometimes
-------------------------------------------------
We would like to believe that we are rationally-motivated, and certainly we 
/can/ use reason to choose how to behave. We have that ability built into 
us. But in general I personally find that our use of reason to make choices 
is rare. Whether you are pro-XP or anti-XP or indifferent, if you probe 
your internal motivations deeply, you may find that you are choosing 
courses of action based on the following sorts of mechanisms:

1. Your choice of action feels good to do. You are acting on desire.
2. Your choice of action enables you to avoid something to which you are 
averse, something you are afraid of. You are acting from fear.

Yes, this sounds deterministic and mechanistic. And yes, I am 
oversimplifying a bit, to make a point. Just hear this out.

Let's say that one of these mechanisms "chooses a course of action for 
you," in a sense, and you then create and superimpose a rationalization, a 
story that defends your choice. The course of action you choose may be 
healthy for you and others, in which case your story probably sounds 
rational to others who choose to act in the same way. Or you may choose 
something unhealthy to do (for you or others), in which case your story may 
sound to others (and perhaps to you) like a rationalization -- irrational. 
It may sound like denial. You may not want to talk much about why you did 
whatever unhealthy thing you did, because it may be uncomfortable to even 
think about it. Does this sound at all familiar?

I think that this oversimplification is useful in analyzing resistance to 
cultural changes as drastic as XP, but only if we accept that indeed, all 
of us make many of our choices using mechanisms like those above, at a 
deeper level of the mind than the rational one. Certainly the entire 
advertising industry is successfully based on the premise that this is 
exactly how many of us operate, most of the time. Automobile advertising 
would be a lot different than it is if most of us were mostly rational 
about purchasing an expensive car. They would look more like spreadsheets, 
or lists of nutrient content in food.

So we may want to be rational, we may strive to be rational, and we may 
succeed much of the time. But we have been emotional creatures for many 
thousands of years longer than we have been rational ones (and this is not 
a bad thing, to my mind, but that is another discussion). As many folks are 
beginning to believe, we are swimming in internal pool of neuropeptides all 
the time, and they have powerful influences on us throughout our "body-minds."

I Am Doing it Right Now
-----------------------------------
Speaking for myself, at this moment I have a bunch of nasty corporate tax 
preparations I should be doing. I am not doing them right now because I am 
deeply averse to them. They terrify me beforehand, they enervate me in the 
process, and they feel like they have wasted my time after they are done. 
Instead I am writing this post because it feels great to do it. I get to 
talk about something I care about passionately, and I get to try to be 
creative. However, the nagging guilt over the tax accounting is back there 
in my head too, and at some point it will overwhelm my desire for the 
short-term creative charge, and I will heave a huge sigh and start slogging 
through the books. I am treading a line between desire and aversion.

Empathizing with Ubiquitous Irrational Mechanisms
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
If we can make the leap and accept that we all act this way much of the 
time, then it provides us with a genuinely useful tool for empathizing 
with, and indeed embracing, those who resist paths that we strongly believe 
to be healthy, because they are just doing the same sorts of things we do, 
in a different context.

A seemingly irrational resistance to trying an XP practice (say pairing) in 
good faith, or accepting clearly successful results as genuine, or any such 
thing, almost certainly involves someone making an emotionally-based choice 
to avoid doing something they are afraid of, or to continue to do something 
that makes them feel good, or both. They may offer reasons that sound 
reasonable or bizarre. In any case, they are making an unhealthy choice for 
themselves and their team.

So what!?  Every one of us makes irrational, unhealthy choices in our 
lives. Who has not headed blindly into a bad relationship at some point or 
other?  Who always makes healthy food choices, or indeed healthy lifestyle 
choices? Like it or not, our little boats of reason float on vast, dark 
seas of emotion.

And I suspect that there is tremendous opportunity for empathy and 
understanding in that realization. We all do it, so we should all be able 
to empathize with it. The contexts are different, but the mechanisms are 
the same. We tend to do the things that make us feel good, and we tend to 
avoid the things that make us feel bad. We act on desire and fear. We are 
all in the same sorts of little boats, muddling around together.

So why is it so fricking hard to be this empathetic? Perhaps because it 
feels _really_bad when someone continues to make an unhealthy choice that 
affects our healthy choices. When someone chooses to be an obstacle to a 
course of action that I strongly believe to be healthy and proper for me 
and others, it pisses me off. That, at least, is my first reaction. I find 
that reaching below the "threshold of reactivity" of that anger (or 
frustration, or irritability, or disgust) takes practice. I am no expert at 
it yet, but I am seeing some results. Sometimes I say an angry thing, and 
sometimes I bite my tongue, feel the anger, and continue to listen. I think 
it is absolutely necessary to learn to reach below these topmost emotional 
levels to get to empathetic understanding. I suspect that we can use 
patterns of emotional awareness to do that, and big changes can come from 
empathetic responses.


Mechanisms for Reaching Empathetic Reaction
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"OK. This person continues to refuse to even TRY to share the codebase. His 
arguments are bizarre and pathetic. Blah blah blah! He is REALLY pissing me 
off. Why am I pissed off? Because this moron is interfering with our 
ability to get this team and this code into a healthy state! This PERSON is 
an OBSTACLE to project and team success!

Well, OK, wait. This person is probably acting irrationally, as I often do, 
out of desire and fear. They might be scared that if we all look at their 
code, we will discover bad habits or ignorance. That's reasonable. I was 
scared of that too. And maybe they just really, really like working 
completely alone, and cannot imagine working closely with other people. 
Maybe they are afraid of being slowed down. Hmm. OK, so perhaps they are 
acting out of fear, which all of us sometimes do. Nobody is courageous 24x7.

I know that I have made irrational, unhealthy choices. In fact, come to 
think of it, I have made some choices with far more dire consequences than 
the relative health of a software development team. Hmmm. I would rather 
not think anymore about those. In any case, maybe I should reach down and 
try to find an empathetic response.

Sheesh. I'm looking for some empathy down there inside me, but I am not 
finding much. I'm still pretty pissed, and I might say something 
irrevocably nasty. Is there anything I really like about this person? Any 
spark I admire? Well, yeah, there are several. Let me look at that larger 
context for a minute....

And have I really listened completely to all of this person's arguments, 
looking them straight in the eyes, devoting all my attention?  Well, I've 
tried. Let's go try some more. Ugh."

Empathy Creates Space for Reason
----------------------------------------------------
I find that magic can happen when I deeply empathize with someone who is 
driving me crazy, like, just for instance, my spouse. If I can really 
listen, deeply listen, and resist the powerful, deeply-motivated urges to 
say snide things, or take cheap shots, or otherwise push her buttons (which 
are arrayed before my subconscious mind like the comfortable cockpit of a 
powerful and dangerous machine), then pretty soon, once we have traversed 
her fears and my fears together, we both start saying pretty rational, 
healthy things. Neither of us is making dire predictions or laying out 
ultimatums any longer.

After we traverse the fears _together_, we start thinking and behaving more 
collectively and creatively. We have more courage, once we have both been 
listened to. Interesting options for surmounting joint obstacles, or 
reaching useful points of compromise, begin to magically appear.

And I do think that that is a useful pattern: to use deep listening to 
traverse fears and irrationality together, suppressing angry, 
confrontational urges all the way. Then looking for and pouncing on a 
period of rational give and take, using that "honeymoon" to make 
collectively healthy decisions together.

Gotta Go; Tax Docs Are Calling
----------------------------------------------
End of post. The tax documents are using long fingernails to gouge tracks 
of guilt and shame in my back. Or, hmm, maybe I should have lunch 
first?  It is noon, after all. How could lunch be an unhealthy choice?  :-)


--Patrick

------

www.adaptionsoft.com


 

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