To Understand Why People Behave The Way They Do, Place Them In These 3 Buckets

Behavioural, Circumstantial and Structural

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are — Donald Miller

As people, we are very complicated. As much as we discuss the concepts of rationality and developing an evolved thinking, quite often we do the exact opposite. The funny part is that this notion is even more difficult to accept when someone you know behaves in a manner that you find unexpected or unorthodox.

Take some of the simple examples. You may have come across someone at work who lashed out at you, and you aren’t able to think of what may have triggered that. Maybe on the home front, anything you say or suggest may come off as criticism for your partner, and they might take offence to it even though you did not intend to make her or him feel that way.

In my personal experience, these situations usually get amplified when the person at the receiving end of irrational behaviour reacts in the same manner. This is where Newton’s third law of motion also holds in our relationships. ‘For every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction’.

This then results in people talking at each other and not to each other.

Mainly because now both the people involved want to convey their point without wanting to understand the other person’s perspectives or feelings. Ultimately the argument then becomes about who was right or wrong and not about what was bothering you two in the first place.

While it did take me some time to understand the flaw in simply reacting to the words spoken at me, eventually it occurred to me that if I tried to focus on what made the person say that, it might help me understand the root cause of the problem.

So here is what I do now to help me address these situations better. I try and categorise the issue someone is facing into three buckets. Doing so helps me not only compartmentalize the problem; it also helps process the problem from a rational standpoint. It tends to remove the emotional jolt the words give me and helps me look at it from a pragmatic point of view.

Circumstantial

People who usually fit into this bucket are those that tend to make generalised or stereotypical statements. This is because one circumstance may have had a large impact on their lives that it has pushed them into addressing all such experiences in the future with a blanket approach.

Some of the statements one might tend to hear from people who fit into this bucket are:

• People who have had a bad experience in their relationships and make statements along the lines of ‘all men or women are the same’.
• People who set a high expectation from events in their life and feel let down when things do not go as planned usually tend to revolt at similar situations in the future.

Behavioural

If you have ever come across someone unable to explain the reasons for their actions, no matter big or small and respond with statements such as, ‘this is who I am, and I can’t change that’ or something along those lines, it is a clear indication for me that they would fit in this bucket. The reason being, when people are questioned about the rationality of their decisions and are unable to justify it, they tend to get defensive about their position.

This is a prevalent behavioural trait I have observed in people. Our lack of willingness to accept when we have gone wrong is not always strong across all situations in life. This is one of the reasons we tend to make statements that make us feel protective about who we are as individuals.

People do not have a calculated understanding at times and hence go back to their most basic protective behaviours to feel safeguarded.

Structural

I think at some point, all of us have got into a heated debate or argument with someone as the differences in opinion between the two were just too vast. You might feel that the person at the other end is not willing to understand your point of view, and they might feel the same from their side of the table.

This is where I choose to place people in the third bucket. When two or more headstrong people are having a discussion, we usually forget that the goal is collective progress from the current situation and not satisfying our individual goals and desires.

By placing people in this bucket, it helps me change my approach to the current situation and look at from a more mediating perspective that more often than not helps both sides find a middle ground.

Takeaways from this approach

Some of the tangible benefits I have gained from this approach are:

• Helps me understand people on a deeper level while interacting with them which leads to having more productive conversations with them.
• I have been more in control of the narrative as I can distinguish the reactions of people by compartmentalizing them in my head. This has led to me being able to put my point across successfully without making the person feel that they are losing out by agreeing.
• This approach has increased my Emotional Intelligence in areas concerning other individuals and their feelings. I am thus able to address conflicts in opinions in a much calmer way and have learnt to manoeuvre my way across from awkward situations a lot better.