ATTITUDE VS. EXPERIENCE: WHICH IS MORE VALUABLE?

A debate about hiring for attitude versus aptitude has developed over the years. Nearly every job posting includes the type of experience an employer is seeking, which makes sense considering that companies want to locate applicants who have already demonstrated a certain level of skill in that particular industry or role. 

Both the experience (hard skills) and the attitude (soft skills) are given high priority in the initial job requirements. The debate comes to light during the interview and hiring process.

Although the initial requirements highlight soft skills and personality traits as important parts of the job applicant’s qualifications, during interviews, many hiring managers focus on hard skills and experience because they are easier to discuss and judge. As a result, many applicants end up being hired based exclusively on their experience rather than on their attitude. Is it better to hire people on the basis of their experience or their potential? If we believe experience is preferable, and that age equates with experience, there’s no better time than now. But experience is not the issue. The question is, experience of what?

The problem of hiring on the basis of experience gained in a former job is the assumption that it parallels what is needed in the new job. Organisational cultures and situations can and do differ dramatically. There is a litany of highly competent executives like Bob Nardelli, who excelled at GE, but was unable to duplicate that success at Home Depot. Experience is situation-specific.

Experience vs Potential

Experience also tends to equate with baggage. Behaviour is learned. We do what we do on the basis of it having led to success in the past. We’ve all been annoyed by people who insist on telling us how things were done in their last company or last job. There are benefits to learning how other people do things, but the underlying message is that what we’re doing is no good, and that can be demoralising.

So what about hiring on potential? This, too, comes with some small print. “Potential”, may also get translated as “lack of directly applicable experience”. That means giving the individual time to learn, which implies training, coaching and the provision of development opportunities. This one of the reasons many companies fall back on what they hope is the quicker-fix solution of hiring so-called experienced people — it takes less effort.

There are a number of companies that have successfully hired for potential though, notably Southwest Airlines, the originator of the discount airline model. Southwest claims it hires for “attitude” — motivation, energy, keenness, and team spirit. But Southwest doesn’t make the mistake of thinking that’s enough. It follows up with intensive skills and culture training. People learn what behaviour is acceptable and rewarded. Very few organisations make a conscious effort to do this. Instead, people have to learn the hard way.

If we wish to hire people for their potential, we need to define the core competencies for the roles in question. These are things like a demonstrated ability to motivate people, being able to close sales, a record of building effective teams, or being able to make and stand by hard decisions. Either people have done these things or they haven’t. They can be tested and observed. Assessing potential doesn’t have to be subjective — it manifests itself in observable behaviour.

But as James Callaghan, a former British Prime Minister, once said: “Some people, however long their experience or strong their intellect, are temperamentally incapable of reaching firm decisions.” No amount of experience can change that.

What gets us Hired – Attitude or experience?

For recruiters, the longstanding question remains – who makes for a better hire – someone with the perfect experience, or someone with the right attitude?

A positive attitude can transform a workplace. Employers value a positive attitude because of the impact it can have. It’s important to remember that any role – no matter how big or small – gives an opportunity to make a positive impact through the way we work. Employers are looking for people who add to the culture. Workplace culture is important to employers, and the benefits we bring to the collective culture often matter more than our experience and qualifications. The good news is that means there’s more flexibility in how we present ourselves during a job search. If employers can’t imagine sitting beside us and working on a project, then it’s really hard to get hired. So if we don’t show our personality, then it’s difficult for them to choose us over somebody who’s got the same qualifications or experience.

Exhibiting a great attitude at Work

It’s not always easy to show employers how we think, but a great attitude can go a long way. Some ways in which we can show this are:

Knowing how to show our enthusiasm to employers can make a huge difference to whether we are considered for a role. A great attitude can help us stand out – even if we are up against others who may be more qualified or experienced.

Hiring for Attitude

Although it’s clear that attitude should play a major role in the hiring process, there may be some instances when skills and experience really are of utmost importance. In that case, we may want to consider hiring freelancers to design websites, or to create content or code, for example. Here are a few questions we can raise when determining whether attitude or skill set may be more important:

Although this isn’t a comprehensive list, these questions can help to determine what to evaluate during the hiring process. Certain ways in which we can evaluate job applicants’ attitudes during the hiring process may be:

A) Ascertaining what type of attitude is needed for the job. Different attitudes are better suited for particular roles and teams, so it’s important to clearly identify what type of employee attitude is needed for the specific position you are hiring for. For example, when hiring for a sales role, you might want an employee who is charismatic and doesn’t take no for an answer. However, this type of attitude may not be necessary for a graphic design role.

B) Posing questions that reveal attitude. It can be helpful to ask questions like, “Can you tell me about a time you failed?” But instead of focusing on the specific details of their failure, listen to how they frame their response. Do they take ownership of the failure and show a growth mentality, or do they blame others and speak bitterly?

C) Solicit Assistance from our Team. We can get a more holistic view of someone’s attitude by having multiple people assess it. For example, how did they treat the receptionist when they checked in? We can also give the candidate a tour of our office so they can meet other employees, or have select employees sit in on an interview, to assess whether the candidate is a good fit for the company culture.

D) Favouring Internal Promotions & Employee Referrals. It is easier to understand an employee’s attitude if they already work for you. Instead of taking a risk on a new hire, it may be helpful to promote from within your company. Employee referrals are also a great way to gather insight on candidates’ attitudes.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

DECISION INTELLIGENCE FRAMEWORKS: THE OODA LOOP & SEAL – CHAPTER 02

***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: Decision Intelligence and its meaning, The OODA Loop, How The OODA Loop Works: The Four Steps, Success Of The OODA Loop)

Link to Chapter 01:

DECISION INTELLIGENCE FRAMEWORKS: THE OODA LOOP & SEAL – CHAPTER 01

Uses Of The OODA Loop

In general, military planning models are often applied to uses outside of their original context due to their effectiveness in extreme situations. The OODA loop has been adapted to become an important concept in various fields such as business, game theory, information security, law enforcement, litigation, marketing and strategy. Professionals find this compelling because of its common-sense approach to decision-making and its emphasis on staying competitive.

With technology being used everywhere and more emphasis being placed on a company’s ability to collect feedback and analyze competition, this method is now a common approach applied in organizations. In business, OODA loops typically examine what is happening externally and how results are performing to become more agile. Similarly, an organization with a security operations centre (SOC), computer emergency readiness team (CERT) or computer security incident response team (CSIRT) may use an OODA loop cycle to develop an organization’s incident response plan.

Additionally, due to the growth of data analytics in business, the OODA loop is a popular method for handling an influx of constantly emerging information. Companies can achieve better situational awareness when they implement the observe and orient steps to organize data in a way that accurately depicts the business environment. Once the data is placed in context, they can make smarter organizational decisions and actions.

Examples Of The OODA Loop

In its simplest form, the OODA loop is employed by all individuals every day when making a decision.

More complex, higher-stakes versions of the OODA loop in everyday life can be seen when creating a retirement savings plan or buying a home.

Alternatives To The OODA Loop

A few ideas that can be combined with the OODA loop include:

Plan, do, check, act (PDCA) cycle- This is a model geared towards continuous improvement that is also broken into four parts. The process starts by identifying a problem and gathering relevant data to the cause of the problem. Then, this information is used to develop and implement a solution. The results are then confirmed, or checked, before documented and used to make recommendations for further PDCA cycles.

Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis– This is a framework used in business to identify and analyze any internal or external factors that could affect the success of a project.

Getting things done (GTD) method– This is a time management model that helps organizations break larger projects into smaller, actionable tasks. The GTD method is a five step process that is also sometimes referred to by the steps: collect, process, organize, plan and do. All material should be gathered, analyzed and categorized before being transforming into an action plan that is then carried out.

Objectives and Key Results– OKRs are frequently set and evaluated continuously during the project lifecycle to make sure everything gets done on time. They also act as future references to monitor how well you executed your projects.

Porter’s Five Forces– Porter’s Five Forces is a model that identifies and analyzes five competitive forces that shape every industry and helps determine an industry’s weaknesses and strengths. Five Forces analysis is frequently used to identify an industry’s structure to determine corporate strategy and in decision making. 

SOAR Analysis– This is a framework for identifying Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results. It works in any business involved in any marketplace. Unlike some other frameworks, SOAR marries up fact finding about the company and position, alongside the desires of the stakeholders to aid better decision intelligence.

Decision Intelligence and Technology

During the recent decade, we saw a proliferation of data lake or data hub technologies. In spite of substantial innovations in dealing with three V’s of big data (Volume, Variety, and Velocity), we have yet to see any noticeable impact on the decision-action capability of organizations.

That does not imply that handling and managing data is unimportant for decision intelligence, however, we can safely conclude that it need not be the first step and some crucial piece is missing in crafting a decision intelligence system. A well-designed decision intelligence system is less dependent on data as one might think, as it can help make effective decisions even with limited data and can tolerate errors and inconsistencies as well as deal with high degrees of uncertainty.

Decision making being a cognitive function, we need a deeper understanding of it, so that we can better augment and support it by intelligent automation. Without this, it will be impossible to build an effective decision intelligence system. A decision intelligence system must be built around a sound decision making framework. Human and artificial agents can then collaborate following the structure and discipline of the framework.

The purpose and scope of decision intelligence automation is to implement artificial intelligence agents operating by the directives of a decision making framework. The least a framework does is to provide a structure and discipline without which an organization is bound to stay at the lowest level of decision intelligence maturity.

Decision Intelligence Frameworks Today

Early frameworks assumed that decision-making occurs at conscious level of processing guided by rational behavior. Today’s understanding of decision-making theories is much more nuanced:-

The SEAL Decision Model- Evolved specifically for designing human-machine collaborative decision intelligence systems, this stands for sense, explore, act, and learn. Though still transformational in nature, SEAL is designed to support and augment fundamental cognitive processes of human decision making rather than imposing on people to learn unfamiliar paradigms.

On first glance, SEAL may appear similar to OODA, since four elements of OODA can be loosely mapped to elements of SEAL as follows:

Human-Machine Collaboration In Decision Intelligence

The details under these elements are different because of the intent of SEAL to achieve a man machine symbiosis by reducing cognitive burden of decision makers and due to its continuous business optimization focus by explicit incorporation of feedback loops and learning. Some of these differences are:

Unlike Observe in OODA which is focused on sensing the current situation with the reactive intent, Sense in SEAL is proactive by design and predicts future situations that qualify as opportunities early so that organizations have ample time to become ready to react.

Sense agents may reveal multiple opportunities from the same snapshot of observation, thereby, requiring branching of subsequent activity to address them concurrently. Sense in SEAL requires active collaboration among human and machine agents as neither of them on their own can handle massive amount of data and make sense out of it.

Selected alternatives (similar to OODA hypotheses) move to the Action phase where actions are actually executed either manually or via a process automation substrate.

Learning happens at multiple levels – for adaption and fine tuning of predictive models and man-machine interaction. At a macro level, it is about understanding and improving the efficacy of action alternatives executed during ACT phase.

In summary, while OODA and SEAL are similar in emphasizing that a disciplined and facts based approach to decision making is essential for sustainable success in any endeavor, SEAL provides a comprehensive framework for implementing a human-machine decision intelligence system.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

DECISION INTELLIGENCE FRAMEWORKS: THE OODA LOOP & SEAL – CHAPTER 01

All of us, without exception, would love to tame the future and tilt odds in our favor all the time. This lofty aspiration and our incessant effort toward making right choices is what sets us apart from animal species. Decision making is a basic cognitive process of human behavior. Far from perfect, our prowess for decision making stands exposed more than ever in the hyper connected and rapidly changing world we live in.

Decision Intelligence: How can it help?

There is hardly any organization today that does not aspire to power their decisions and actions with intelligence. Enough evidence exists that those who can harness their organizational intelligence and align it to desired outcomes accrue a substantial advantage.

Over the decades of automation, significant strides have been made in codifying human experiential knowledge as well as extracting hidden knowledge from transactional data footprints.

The purview of decision intelligence is to explore outcome-focused and human-in-the-loop approaches to decision automation. A decision intelligence system is a man-machine collaborative system designed to enable and mature decision-action capability in an organization. A decision intelligence system plays a dual role:

The methodical design of a decision intelligence system must hinge around a framework — a mental model of decision making. The framework not only helps in defining scope and boundary of the system but determines the extent to which the system can be useful and in what situations.

A Story

In 1961, Col.  John Boyd wrote “Aerial Attack Study”, which spoke about the best dogfighting tactics. In dogfights (close-range aerial battles), fighter pilots need to move at high speeds, avoid enemies while tracking them and keeping a contextual knowledge of objectives, terrains, fuel and other variables. His OODA loop was a concept designed for rational thinking in such chaotic situations.

He said that ambiguity will always be there. Our inability to properly make sense of our changing reality is the bigger hindrance. When circumstances change, we often fail to shift our perspective and continue to try to see the world as we feel it should be. Most important thing is to orient – be connected to reality and act accordingly.

While this concept has been used extensively in corporates, sports and of course military outfits, it can also be used just as well by individuals for critical thinking & effective decision making to beat the competition.

The OODA Loop

The OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) is a four-step approach to decision-making that focuses on filtering available information, putting it in context and quickly making the most appropriate decision while also understanding that changes can be made as more data becomes available.

The strategy is applicable at an individual level as well as an organizational level. It is particularly useful in scenarios where competition is involved and where the ability to react to changing circumstances faster than an opponent leads to an advantage. Many modern environments can be described as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, or VUCA. Surviving and winning in this type of situation rests upon making better decisions. However, improving the quality of decision-making is something most organizations fail to do.

For example, if a company continues to make choices that do not see a positive return, they are failing to learn from their experiences. The OODA loop acknowledges this habit and provides an approach help make improvements.

OODA Loop Related Terminology

Before the OODA loop can be fully understood, a few related concepts need to be introduced which will aid in understanding it better:

1. Maneuver warfare– This is a strategy used in the military that emphasizes disrupting the enemy’s decision-making skills in order to defeat them. Maneuver warfare revolves around the ideas of surprise and deception. The concept of the OODA loop was derived from the strategy of maneuver warfare.
2. Mental models– These are representations or explanations of human behavior that exist on a personal, internal level. A person can generate a mental model to understand their thought processes, decisions and consequences. Mental models are a part of the orientation step of the OODA loop.
3. Situational awareness– This is the comprehension of all environmental stimuli. It involves perceiving all components of a situation, understanding what they mean and using them to make future judgements. Achieving situational awareness is crucial for most decision-making processes, including the OODA loop.
4. Reaction time– This refers to the time that elapses between a stimulus and the response given to that stimulus. A primary goal in the OODA loop is to minimize an individual or organization’s reaction time.

How The OODA Loop Works: The Four Steps

Similar to other problem-solving methods, the OODA loop is an interactive, iterative process that entails repeating the cycle, observing and measuring results, reviewing and revising the ­­initial decision and advancing to the next step. While the process is not always simple or linear, the four separate steps involved may be explained in organizational context or individual context as follows:

1. Observe: The first step is to identify the problem or threat and gain an overall understanding of the internal and external environment. In the corporate world, this can be equated to data gathering, where all information on the situation (organizational state, competitors, market, etc.,) is collected. The key point here is to recognize that the world is complex. All data is a snapshot in time and must be treated as such. Therefore, entities must gather whatever information is available as quickly as possible in order to be prepared to make decisions based on it.
2. Orient: This involves reflecting on what has been found during observations and considering what should be done next. It requires a significant level of situational awareness and understanding to make a conscious decision. Since some decisions are unconscious, or instinctual, this step involves considering what and why decisions are made prior to choosing a course of action. When applied on an individual level, this step can be done by creating mental models or mental rehearsal drills to place information into narratives that shape judgement. In organizational applications, situational models can be created with machine learning (ML) tools to identify potential outcomes while removing any bias.
3. Decide: This phase makes suggestions towards an action or response plan, taking into consideration all the potential outcomes. This can be accomplished through meetings or discussions that are focused around creating a roadmap for the entire organization.
4. Act: This pertains to carrying out the decision and related changes that need to be made in response to the decision. This step may also include any testing that is required before officially carrying out an action.

These phases have been broken out for the purposes of explanation, but in some real world scenarios they might happen in a fraction of a second. The four steps of the OODA Loop work together in a cycle.

Success Of the OODA Loop

Factor 01

One key to the success of the OODA loop is to make it as short as possible, minimizing reaction times in high-stakes situations. In the OODA loop’s simplest form, there is only one stimulus and one response, but that is not always the case. Hick’s Law can be applied to the reaction time of an OODA loop that has more than one stimulus or response, stating that when there are multiple options available in response to a stimulus, reaction time is slowed down.

Factor 02

The ability to make decisions faster than an opponent is important, but it is not only about speed. Tempo is also critical as the ability to rapidly speed up and slow down can generate unpredictability. Being unpredictable makes it difficult for opponents to understand and orientate themselves to what will happen next. Cycling through an OODA loop with more tempo than an opponent gives an organization more control of the environment and a better chance of succeeding.

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Uses of the OODA Loop, Examples in Business, Alternatives, Decision Intelligence and Technology, Human-Machine Collaboration In Decision Intelligence)

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

HENRI FAYOL VS ABRAHAM MASLOW: BEHAVIOURAL PERSPECTIVE ON LEADERSHIP

As our career progresses, we may find we do fewer technical tasks and spend more time guiding a team or planning strategy. While that’s often a given today, in the 19th century most companies promoted the best technicians. But Henri Fayol recognized that the skills that made them good at their jobs did not necessarily make them good managers.

Who Was Henri Fayol?

Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management identified the skills that were needed to manage well. While inspiring much of today’s management theory, they offer tips that we can still implement in our lives and organizations. Fayol also created a list of the five Primary Functions of Management, which go hand in hand with the Principles.

What Is Administrative Theory?

Fayol called managerial skills “administrative functions.” In his 1916 book, “Administration Industrielle et Générale,” he shared his experiences of managing a workforce. Fayol’s book – and his 14 Principles of Management – helped to form what became known as Administrative Theory. It looks at the organization from the top down, and sets out steps for managers to get the best from employees and to run a business efficiently.

Caveat: . . . . . . . . . . Administrative Theory is characterized by people “on the ground” who share personal experiences, improve practices, and help others to run an organization. This contrasts with the Scientific Management Ideas led by Frederick Taylor , which experimented with how individuals work to boost productivity.

The 14 Principles of Management: A Revisit

By focusing on administrative over technical skills, the Principles are some of the earliest examples of treating management as a profession. They are:

What are Fayol’s Five Functions of Management?

While Fayol’s 14 Principles look at the detail of day-to-day management, his Five Functions of Management provide the big picture of how managers should spend their time. They are:

Is Fayolism Still Relevant Today?

Fayol highlighted the differences between managerial and technical skills. What’s more, he was one of the first to recognize that “manager” is a profession – one whose skills need to be researched, taught and developed. We only have to look at the language he used to see that Fayol was writing over 100 years ago. For example, he refers to employees as “men.”

But, without the contributions of these pioneers, such as Fayol, we would probably be teaching industrial engineering, sociology, economics, or perhaps ergonomics to those who aspire to manage. To be doing so would push us back to the 19th century, when technical know-how reigned supreme as a path to managerial responsibility. When we look closer, we discover that many of Fayol’s points are fresh and relevant. Such as:

Some of these ideas may seem a bit obvious, but at the time they were ground breaking. And the fact that they’ve stuck shows just how well Fayol’s Principles work.

Criticism Of Fayol’s Principles Of Management

That’s not to say that everyone is a fan of Fayol’s Administrative Theory. Some detractors claim that:

The Interlinks Between the Theories Of Henry Fayol & Abraham Maslow

Fayol’s perspective of the overall success of an organization was to include the formulation of goals, strategies and plans and to work through others to ensure that these activities were implement. These principles also had to be supplemented and supported by discipline and anticipation. Fayol also believed that management could be taught and was concerned about improving the quality of management.

Maslow’s theory of motivation, on the other hand, took a more psychological approach, which focused on employee motivation. This theory proposed that within every person lied a hierarchy of five needs – starting with physiological needs and ascending to safety, social, esteem and finally, self-actualization needs. Hence, in order to motivate a person, Maslow stated that lowest level needs must be substantially satisfied before the next level can be activated and so on.

Application of Fayol’s Concepts

Fayol believed that the responsibility of general management is to lead the enterprise toward its objective by making effective and efficient use of available resources.

Fayol’s five functions are the rules of his administrative doctrine. He had shown sustained effort that his administrative principles could be applied to all social organizations from the family to the state. He stressed that the 14 principles must be flexible and adaptable to the situation at hand. The principles of management were aimed at helping managers manage more effectively.

Application of Maslow’s Concepts

In Maslow’s theory, it is assumed that when an individual has the knowledge and skills to perform his or her job, a manager can influence their motivation to achieve levels of excellence. Maslow’s five needs are arranged in a hierarchy of importance that can be described as prepotency. The higher-level needs are not important and will not manifest till lower-needs are met and satisfied. This hierarchy can also be divided into two orders of needs. The lower-order needs are physiological, safety and social concerns, and the higher-order needs are esteem and self-actualization concerns.

Comparisons

Fayol’s ideas of the five functions and 14 principles are good frameworks for managers to follow if they want to manage more efficiently and effectively. Maslow’s ideas on how an individual behaves in a working environment has helped us understand the importance of motivation complementing administration from a managerial point of view. These two concepts complement each other as they help managers better manage administratively and psychologically. It depicted how effectively and efficiently a workplace should function and how employees should be motivated to commit and perform at their best. Hence, Fayol and Maslow’s ideas and concepts have indeed helped us understand the job of getting things done through people.

The Interlinks: Management, Leadership And Transformational Leadership

Management is about the mind. It is the manager’s job to stay focused on the task and goals, to set action plans, thereby helping followers deal with complexity. Leadership is more about the heart, or staying focused on the people and their individual characteristics, creating a shared vision that helps followers to participate in a change process. Transformational leadership is about breaking down resistance to change. This is done both through “assigning meaning to change” and through the change within the leader (him)/(her)self.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

CONTENTIOUS TOPICS AT WORK— BEHAVIORAL AND COGNITIVE IMPACT

Both science and common sense tell us we should avoid discussing topics at work that incite emotion and make us irrational. Hundreds of behavioral science studies show that people rarely understand the true intentions of others. Two main reasons exist. On one hand, we all exhibit thinking biases, and these biases distort how we interpret what others tell us. On the other hand, even if we as listeners take pains to counter our biases and think correctly, emotions aroused by controversial, hot-button topics, can deplete abilities to reason. This two-fold assault on the mental strength or cognitive control can lead to misunderstandings and getting viewed as a threat.

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For all those reasons, it is essential we appreciate the consequences of raising, controversial, hot button topics in the wrong place or at the wrong time—especially at work. Unfortunately, many of us undermine the efforts to bring about meaningful change in organizations by deferring to non-empirical tactics that ignore the cultural and emotional contexts of where we work. When serious issues do need to be discussed (e.g., harassment, fraud, discrimination, incompetence, etc.), informal discussions do not do them justice. Otherwise, people’s mental hang-ups and cognitive biases will creep in.

Take, for example, a work environment where status quo bias makes people resistant to change. Assuming we ignore this fact and decide to raise the issue of weight-discrimination (bias against overweight people) during a team remote call meeting aimed at launching a new product line. Even though the problem does not impact the main agenda, we specifically refer to a colleague, also on the call, who is struggling with his/her weight. The result may be that everyone in attendance will feel uncomfortable, even the overweight colleague, and that might even be needed—to rock the boat, point out the elephant in the room, dispense justice, etc. Undeniably, according to science—and to common sense—the efforts will backfire.

In the end, they will deny the accusations and perhaps even gear up to retaliate against us and overweight colleagues.

Some Ways To Craft An Approach For Discussing Controversial Topics At Work:

A) Making sure there really is a quantifiable problem:- . . . There is a fallacy commonly observed in behavioural science known as mind projection- when we believe everyone around us has the same worldview we possess. As in the above example, if we believe weight discrimination at our company exists, and we believe everyone else sees the same thing but is not acknowledging it—even overweight colleagues. This assumes that we know something and the rest of those most affected do not—and that’s just plain arrogance.

Also, a bias known as fundamental attribution may be leading us to assign meaning and context to what others do when that meaning is not there. All that is not to say the discrimination does not exist. Rather, it’s to say we need make sure it exists beyond the example we have lemon-picked. Indeed, lemon-picking itself hints of a common bias known as confirmation, which can work against us. For example, we might assert a problem exists while others can pick an example to suggest it does not. The only way to prevent this stalemate is to gather the facts and data first—perhaps by side-barring those who might be affected and seeing if there really is a problem.

B) Finding out what the affected colleagues want:- . . . A defining aspect of emotional intelligence involves understanding the emotional states of others. Before raising a controversial issue, we should probe to see how those most affected by it will feel by us discussing it. In other words, just because it is a problem does not mean other people affected want it resolved or that they want us to resolve it. It is surprising how many otherwise socially adjusted people insist on raising hot-button issues to create discomfort or to label themselves as “straight shooters”.

In doing so, they follow the misguided belief that their actions aid improvement, team cohesion or performance. More often, raising an issue that embarrasses or adversely impacts the affected—without first gaining their buy-in—will do more harm than good. The buy-in and a gauge of fallout of the affected is extremely essential.

C) Examine the context:- . . . The next thing is to choose the right context. In the above example, bringing up weight discrimination was out of context because the focus of attention by the team was on a business matter. Numerous studies have shown that when primed to focus on business objectives, we discount ethical and moral issues. This bounded ethicality effect suggests due attention will not be paid to an ethical issue when raised completely out-of-context. Not only are people likely to ignore the issue, but they may also defend their positions despite the evidence presented. However, if the context of discussion is ethical, ethical issues will be given due consideration. The best way to broach a controversial issue is to first ensure all minds are focused away from financial goals and objectives.

D) Frame the solutions:- . . . Under framing (another behavioural bias) our decisions (and thinking) change based upon how information is presented to us. How we raise controversial issues matters in terms of how people will respond. Evidence shows human beings respond in vague ways to problems (as each has their own solution) but they can typically agree on (or reject) a solution. So, if we want a person to accept the facts and/or case that is being putting forward, one way could be to devise a solution and frame it in a way they will understand and value. The solutions need to be framed on the basis of how the organization works (Organisation culture). For example, in a goal-driven organization, we could try to structure the solution in a way that outlines clear metrics and goals for eliminating the problem. In a more fluid organization, we could offer metrics that will be reviewed periodically as a sort of “health check”.

E) When in doubt, avoid discussing controversial topics:- . . . If, despite all efforts, we do not see the supporting data, the buy-in of the affected or the context appropriate for raising an issue—it is advisable not to discuss it—at least, not informally. There is always the possibility we could be completely wrong about an issue, despite our gut feelings. An issue might be prevalent in our industry, but we do not see evidence it exists in our company. It might exist elsewhere in the organization, but not in our division. The point of not raising it is not to avoid rocking the boat but to avoid tipping it over unnecessarily.

Topics Best Avoided In Discussions at the Workplace-

In the end, there is a time and place for discussing controversial, hot-button topics at work, but seldom is there room for doing so informally. People are not robots, they have feelings, emotions and biases. Assuming that raising an issue is so important that these factors can be ignored is akin to creating more problems rather than solving them. Certain topics are best avoided in discussions at the workplace. This is because they infringe into human behaviors that are rarely understood. Some of these are:

Understanding this, we must appreciate that everyone experiences and reacts to fear differently. For many, fear creates irrationality. It leads them to either freeze or do erratic things or a combination of both. In most cases, a person in fear does not fully understand or even remember their own behaviour—even when it resulted in creating major problems.

For all those reasons and more, highlighting strange or panic behavior in the office place, among colleagues or even in your surrounding neighborhood increases tension, stress and creates more problems. Undoubtedly, vetting concerns around serious issues around the water-cooler can often make things worse. Either we should bring them up only with close friends, one-on-one, or in a formal setting—where facts, data and those affected by the problem can be gathered. Of course, because the above list of topics reflects what is typically covered on the landing pages of most news outlets, we might wonder what then can be discussed. Lots of things—but especially topics that are not emotionally charged or, if emotional, have common, sympathetic markers- make good discussion topics. These include:

At the end of the day, few of us are paid to discuss hot-button, taboo topics at work. Yet, most of us should understand the extreme risk of doing so.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa