Who exactly is “me”?

Below is a lightly edited and polished transcript of Season 1, Episode 4 of the Forging Common Ground podcast, released today.

—

Hi everyone, this is Forging Common Ground. If it's your first time, welcome. If it's not, welcome back.

I'll start with a special thanks to the listeners who've written in with your questions and comments and feedback. You're helping to turn this dream of mine of dialogue into a reality, and I want you to know how much I appreciate it.

As usual, we've got two topics today. First, I'll share a listener response to Episode 3, which was the previous episode, where we got into communication styles and brain reactions to communication styles we don't necessarily like. And also I will share with you some of my thoughts in response to that listener.

And then the second topic has to do with something I mentioned in the last episode. Where I mentioned a potential topic for a future episode. Well, the future is now, because I'm going to address it here in this episode, and that topic is, what do I mean by “me”?

So let's get right into it.

A listener wrote to me about some experiences he had as a direct communicator working in an indirect-communicating culture. This is a white U. S. American man living and working in China. Some years ago he worked for a U.S.-based study abroad provider in China. One of his jobs was monitoring teaching quality, which meant delivering news — sometimes good news, sometimes bad news — to the teachers, all of whom were Chinese.

When the news was good, he would use direct communication, like, “The students really liked such and such about your teaching,” or, “They think you're really cool.”

When the news was bad, though, he would shift to indirect communication. He gave me the following example, which is probably a little bit exaggerated for effect, but you'll get the point:

Some of the students, not all, sorta felt a little bit like maybe you didn't quite respect their opinions. Which I know that you do, respect their opinions. I know that. But some, not all, sorta felt that way. So don't worry too much about it. Overall, it's not a problem. Just be aware of that next time you teach the class.

The listener then reflected that he feels like he should have communicated more directly with these teachers in order to bring about the main goal, which was better teaching.

Implied, but not stated, by the listener is that his indirect communication strategy did not, in fact, lead to better teaching. He did use a bridging strategy that I mentioned last episode — hedging. A lot of hedging. But he seems to think the hedging softened his message so much that the desired behavior change didn't happen.

Which got me thinking, and generated a response to the listener.

I told him there must be ways to communicate negative feedback effectively in indirect environments, and that an experienced Chinese manager of Chinese faculty should be able to communicate the need for improvement in highly indirect and culturally decodable ways. But how the heck are we direct communicators supposed to learn those ways?

This is the challenge that I alluded to in the last episode: when directly stating the issue in words won't get the job done, what can we turn to in the vast, expansive space of all the possible other ways of communicating a message?

For direct communicators like me, all I really know is that I want to minimize shame and embarrassment, based on the main values underpinning indirect communication. How might I do this while still getting across the key message that things aren’t great and something needs to change?

And if that weren’t challenging enough, what about the complex power dynamics involved?

So yeah, this is a hard one. Thankfully, it’s an outlier. Few communication challenges are this thorny and multifaceted.

The take-home message from all of this isn’t that we're doomed to live in separate worlds, never to be bridged. Quite the contrary. Instead, if we want to get more skilled at forging common ground, what we need is to be constantly upskilling ourselves with the tools of self-awareness, other-awareness, and bridging. That is, knowing our own styles and the values that drive them; knowing others’ styles and the values that drive them; and changing our behavior in specific ways that bridge to the values of others.

That's it for topic one.

Moving on to topic two. In our last episode, I spent some time talking about recognizing that when I’m annoyed by someone else’s communication style, the source of annoyance is me. I think a lot of us get hung up right there when we are trying to forge common ground.

Why? Why do we get hung up there? Because we’re used to thinking of ourselves as monoliths — when in reality, each of us is a dizzyingly complex constellation of perceptions, thoughts, feelings, preferences, loves, hopes, dislikes, and much more.

Because we aren’t used to thinking of ourselves this way, at least moment to moment, when we come face to face with something about ourselves that we might not be happy with, the instinct is to avoid — most likely because we feel some form of shame, which can turn quickly into defensiveness. It’s almost as if our identities are like long strings of dominoes, and if we tip over the very first domino, our entire identity will come tumbling down.

But of course that’s not how human identity actually works. It’s just how we’re used to thinking and talking about human identity. There’s me, and then there’s everybody else. Our internal complexity gets lost.

When I’ve managed to do it, I have found it extremely helpful to try and disentangle my thoughts and feelings and reactions, and even my actions, from my sense of who I am.

I’ve found it especially helpful when trying to gain insight into how my actions have harmed others, either individually or systemically.

Take racism. How could racism not have taken root deeply into every pore, every corner of my being, given the society and the world that I grew up in and continue to live in? Racism is literally wired into me through the countless connections among the neurons in my brain and body.

Does that mean that I am “a racist”? I don’t think that’s a helpful question. Look at how, at least in the United States, when a public figure is accused of racism, their defenses usually revolve around what a “good person” they are. Our binary thinking has taught us that there is a kind of person called a racist. And that kind of person is bad. I, obviously, am a good person. Therefore, I cannot possibly be a racist. So your accusations are obviously false.

No learning happens. No growth happens. Our monolithic view of the self has seen to that.

I think some more helpful questions are:

• How does racism live inside of me?

• How can I become ever more conscious of how racism lives inside of me and how I might perpetuate racism without knowing that I’m doing it?

• Given all of this, what can I actually do to interrupt the split-second process of racist thought leading to racist words or other behaviors?

To me, that enables a reclaiming of agency. I no longer need to worry about what kind of person I am. Instead, I can focus on the specific processes unfolding in my brain and body, and take steps to address those.

Okay, that’s it for this week’s topics. Here are my usual questions for you:

• What are you learning?

• What questions do you have?

• Do you disagree with anything I’ve said?

• Are you bothered by anything I’ve said?

Or anything else you’d care to share.

As always, write me at common@jasonpatent.com, or fill out the feedback form that is linked in the show notes.

And I'd like to extend a special invitation to you if you haven't yet sent me anything. I promise it’ll do you no harm to send something in.

Thank you again for coming. Until next time, let's keep forging common ground.