Why We Need More Mixed Messages
And why ‘the other side of the story’ never works.
Today, we pride ourselves for living in a cancel culture.
But have we taken this too far?
Today, you are either with us or against us. Democrat or republican. Racist or anti-racist. For or against abortion. Believe in god or you don’t believe in god. Biased or unbiased.
Recently, a leader of a major global organization was asked to leave immediately, after a 30+ year career, for voicing what was seen to be a ‘wrong’ opinion. A tv host leading a wildly successful show for over a decade is told to step aside after sharing his opinion on a participant.
These examples are everywhere. Some are warranted. But if we are sometimes wrong?
When have we become such a binary world?
When has it become either wrong or right and nothing in between?
The world is not binary. The world is a spectrum.
Do you enjoy being wrong?
I used to enjoy being right. It feels good to win an argument, to know you are validated, you managed to convince your friend of your plan, or a colleague of your opinion, or a partner of your idea. After a while, I got bored of it.
Once I came to this realization, my life changed.
I was wrong a lot more times.
Unlike traits we are born with, such as our eye colour, our height, or our cultural background, beliefs and opinions can change. If we allow them to.
Finding out you were right is fun. However, it teaches you nothing new. Finding out you were wrong, means you are now a little bit less wrong than you were before. The key to this is, to enjoy being wrong.
And no one is better at doing so, than one of the topic forecasters in the world — Jean-Pierre Buegoms. Jean-Pierre enjoyed entering into prediction contests, and he excelled at them. He often registered predictions which shocked his opponents. For example, Jean-Pierre predicted that Donald Trump had a 68% chance of being the U.S. president, at a time when Trump’s odds were just at 6%, and when it was still around 8 months before the elections.
What’s his secret? He very often changes his opinions. He changes his ideologies, his beliefs. Jean-Pierre describes himself as “passionately dispassionate”. It turns out, the traits of those best able to forecast, were not grit, intelligence, or even how well educated one is. It was the ability to change their minds. It was how often they were able to go back and question their answers. It was their curiousity to learn if they are wrong.
Having a curiousity to learn, and listening with intention of seeking others’ perspectives as opposed to with the intention of them taking your own, hoping to be proven wrong, is what it means to have a scientist’s mind.
If you still really want to be right, then think of being wrong as taking one more step towards being right — you have now eliminated one more hurdle in your path to be right. Make the experience a fun one.
Cancel binary bias.
On any issue, you have two choices. You can either simplify the issue to the listener or ‘complexify’ it.
The answer, to most people’s surprise, is to complexify it, to embrace the complexity of the spectrum.
There are two types of people in the world, those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. — Robert Benchley
Ask yourself, how often have you seen political debates or discussions across the family table at Thanksgiving, resulting in anyone changing their minds? Or anyone able to convince the listeners to see ‘the other side of the story’?
It turns out, showing the other side is not enough. It is not effective nor sufficient to show someone there is another side. In fact, as Adam Grant lays out in his most recent book, doing so will have the opposite effect. When hearing an opposing opinion, you are more likely to stick to yours.
The solution is not to show the other side, it is to show many other sides.
When you show the complexity of an issue, such as gun control or abortion or others, you provide a sense of humility to the conversation. You are more likely to get someone to question their own opinion when you show there are many. It helps people see it is not black and white.
It is easy to fall prey to the temptation of simplifying the world. It is a natural impulse. This is where the skill of rethinking, changing our minds, and enjoying being wrong, will come into play. It is a habit and a practice.
When you start to see how opinions on a topic can be on a spectrum, you can slowly move along the spectrum, slowly changing your mind. If you start at white, it is a lot more difficult to jump directly to black, and a lot easier to move across shades of grey.
But does admitting to complexities weaken your opinion?
The hidden secret of mixed messaging.
It turns out, admitting complexities, ‘muddying the message’, and providing mixed messaging in your argument, is the best way to get someone to listen to a differing opinion.
As I shared in my article on secrets to winning a debate, your goal in any conversation is to be curious to find common grounds. If the listener does not believe you are open to change, they never will change themselves. One of the ways you can do this, is to include factors and evidence to differing opinions; people are better listeners when they see you do not claim to know everything. In other words, include mixed messaging.
Openly sharing not knowing all the answers, highlighting caveats and contingencies, and accepting it is not either/or, but it is both/and, will have the opposite impact of what you may have always been led to belief: it will not reduce the strength of your opinion, it will allow your listener to open their mind to the possibility they could be wrong.
When in doubt, stick with a mixed message.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. — F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It was over 100 years ago when Fitzgerald came upon this realization — to strive for the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time. In other words, accepting opposing beliefs or opinions as , and the skill to accept them in a discussion, and see the possibility of evolution of ideas.
In summary?
As you have your next conversation or read the next article, a few things you can keep in mind;
- Be passionately dispassionate
- Separate your identity from your beliefs
- Focus on perspective seeking, not perspective-taking
- Enjoy being wrong!