Why is it so difficult to work with my manager or problems in communicating with former humanities specialists in IT
Hello, my name is Serafima Chekulaeva, I mentor for products, managers and entrepreneursand in the recent past – product manager at Tinkoff and VKontakte.
I come from the humanitarian field and profession – a former journalist. I think you have a lot of colleagues who are former humanities scholars, because IT is trending – cool earnings, high pace of development, prestige. And it’s often non-technical people who move into IT as managers.
Today I want to look at an example of one of the fundamental problems in communicating with such former humanities students, which is caused by their lack of mathematical thinking. Namely, this the problem of perceiving the world as black and white, in which there is only one truth.
The problem of such thinking in practice pretends to be communicative, because it looks as if a person simply does not hear and does not respect the opinions of his interlocutors in communication. Therefore, such managers are often sent to download abstract soft skills, without understanding how to explain to them what exactly is wrong in their interaction with them.
Let’s introduce some concepts
Thinking – an indirect and generalized way of reflecting reality, the result of which is thought. We will keep in mind the algorithms of cause-and-effect relationships and logical chains.
Communication – the process of exchanging information between two people using different communication channels, through a common system of signs. Let’s keep in mind the process of interaction between two people using speech.
That is, thinking is WHAT we say, and communication is HOW we say.
It seems the difference is very clear. Where then do the problems come from in identifying the problem area?
The reason is that we do not see what is happening in a person’s head, how exactly his thinking occurs. We see only the result and react to it – whether we like it or not, how they interact with us. That is why problems in interaction are called communication or software, and not mental.
What does this look like in practice?
Let’s consider this problem using the example of an invited guest – manager Vasya.
Manager Vasya is sitting with a team of colleagues, everyone is throwing out ideas while discussing the further development of the product.
At the same time, someone comes up with ideas that, in Vasya’s opinion, are terrible – stupid, or even harmful to the product in general. And – oh my God – someone even supports them in this circle!
An alarm begins in Vasya’s head: it seems to him that this is very, very dangerous for implementation and even thinking around, but he is a manager, his mission is to protect the product for users!
Therefore, he stands on the barricades as quickly as possible to explain to everyone why they are wrong when they propose such stupid ideas.
And his whole argument centers around how correct to do and what to do as proposed wrong.
Vasya is sure that truth must be defended, because how can others not see her at all! And if they can, now he’ll show it to them!
When such meetings “You are wrong!” things become too much for Vasya, his colleagues begin to avoid discussing things with him as much as possible. They believe that this will cost them morally and the outcome is unlikely to be positive. When they are asked about this decision, they usually diagnose Vasya as “He thinks that he is the most right/smart” and “It is impossible to agree with him” and “He argues for the sake of arguing.”
Vasya perceives these assessments as “They just can’t convince me, they don’t have enough arguments” or “What rats they are, they whisper behind my back, go to my subordinates or even over my head.”
As a result, Vasya becomes more negatively disposed towards his colleagues and this strengthens the rigidity of his positions on any issue.
Why is this happening? Because warm personal relationships usually increase flexibility and the desire to find at least some kind of compromise, even among rigid people, while hostile ones, on the contrary, reduce it. Therefore, over time, Vasya begins to think that everyone around him is a bit of an idiot and that no one can be trusted.
What happens next? His manager, to whom everyone around him has already complained about him, comes to Vasya and invites Vasya to change his behavior pattern.
If Vasya does not realize that behind his behavior there is an incorrect pattern of thinking, and not abstract disrespect for his colleagues, then he begins to try to mimic the expected behavior, constantly bargaining with himself: “Should I argue now or not?” or “Can you argue with this or will he complain?”
Naturally, Vasya doesn’t guess because he doesn’t understand the fundamental principle of what exactly his communication problem is. Therefore, it often rolls back to old behavior patterns and provokes new conflicts.
Vasya can go even further and try to make friends with everyone so that they are convinced and are on his side more often, or at least do not complain about him.
But the attempts will not be crowned with success. The fact is that colleagues are our forced environment, they are not the circle of friends we choose. Therefore, by default, it does not consist of those people with whom we have a high level of match and a base of common interests that allows us to level out difficulties in communication.
Fundamental to building a friendly working relationship is showing respect for each other. But Vasya cannot give his interlocutor the opportunity to have an opinion different from the truth that is united in his picture of the world, so his interlocutors will never be able to feel that they are respected. And this completely kills the opportunity to get closer to colleagues and resolve professional contradictions.
Vasya gets even angrier – he tries in the name of the product and users to make sure everything is right, he literally makes an extra effort on himself to meet his colleagues halfway! Vasya has to devalue his colleagues and their opinions even more… Along the way, he constantly becomes frustrated and upset, because it seems to him that he is not appreciated and understood.
This brings Vasya to a new circle of the scheme, only the consequences are stronger and worse each time.
In the end, Vasya thinks that he doesn’t feel good in this company, the people here aren’t very good, and in general, they don’t appreciate him. We need to find another job worthy of him, in which his concern for the project and himself will be appreciated.
And… at a new job everything happens all over again.
What do Vasya usually have such disputes around?
How to make features correctly, what is best for users and business
Development approaches
Approaches to team processes
Where is whose responsibility and what profession/role has what job description?
That is, the main disputes occur around things in which there are debatable (not factual) truths and there is no single correct answer, everything very much depends on the context.
If there were only one correct answer to the question “how to launch successful products,” the statistics on startups would not be 98 to 2, of which only 2% are success.
There are certainly approaches that have proven themselves better. But there are approaches that have been proven not to be very effective.
However, there is no single truth and only correct approaches, even if some of them are super fashionable.
And this is the main problem of the above-described Vasya – in his worldview there is only this one and only correct truth.
It seems that such a person is incapable of compromise?..
Why is compromise impossible for Vasya?
Because the only way for such Vasya to reconsider his position is to admit his position is incorrect or does not take into account everything, and rewrite his own position taking into account what was accepted by him as the new “true”.
Such a person does not have the opportunity to admit that everyone can be right in their own way, to a greater or lesser extent, and that different approaches have a right to exist, because such a possibility is not inherent in his system of thinking.
And this will be the key problem for such a manager, Vasya, because this is exactly what any manager should differ from a performer and any performer who wants to become a manager – the ability to make constructive compromises. Especially in a corporation.
Where does Vasya get the idea that truth is the only one?
Strictly speaking, it is much easier to have such a picture of the world in our lives, because from childhood we are taught binary concepts – “good” or “bad”, “beautiful” or “ugly”, “tasty” or “tasteless”.
It is much more difficult to have a picture of the world with shades of gray – to do this you need to overcome your own illiteracy. That is, I believe that the root of Vasya’s problem that I described is a simple lack of education.
The nature of the world is probabilistic. But Vasya, who does not understand the principle of how to change thinking to probabilistic (because – spoiler – is not really familiar with the theory of probability), also does not understand how to apply it to the world around him. Therefore, Vasya simply cannot interpret the world in the way he actually sees it. That is, Vasya is not blind, it’s just that at this point his reflection breaks down, and he begins to unconsciously distort what he sees. Because he cannot classify halftones as black or white, and he really needs to have a coherent, binary picture of the world. All Vasyas need it because they still really want to understand and predict the world, like all people.
If people like Vasya are not satisfied with the results of their activities or decisions made, they often engage in endless analysis, framing and systematization without attempting to validate the elements of the system and their relationships. They may confuse causation with correlation, which each time triggers a new cycle of analysis of situations that did not end with a 100% expected result.
At the same time, the expectations of such Vasya are always either too high or low, because they are guided by the 1-0 system. That is, their expectation of a positive outcome is an expectation of exclusively 100% positivity, in no way lower than this figure. And failure is a complete failure, also 100%.
In reality, we observe, quoting Maxim Dorofeev, that “in our world, not everything is everywhere and always, but some things are sometimes in places.”
“The task will definitely be completed by this time,” says the team lead, but this is just a probability, not 1-0
“This person is definitely not suitable for the role of manager” is also just a probability
It is much more practical to look at things from the point of view of their effectiveness or ineffectiveness, that is, compliance with goals.
The only case when it makes sense to reason in the format of “this is right” or “wrong”, it seems to me, concerns ethical issues. But, of course, I won’t raise them today.
What to do if Vasya is your manager or subordinate?
The best technique for communicating with Vasya in order to bypass the barriers of his thinking is to ask him questions. Friendly and sympathetically, but regularly, so that before meeting you he learns to gradually ask them to himself.
“Tell me how you came to this judgment?”
“Why do you think that this is the only correct option? What other options could there be?”
“What other reasons do you think there could be for this?”
Answers to such questions can help Vasya think about the nature of his beliefs and how, often, they are based on shaky arguments that have not been tested in practice.
If you are Vasya’s leader, you have the right to exert a little authority and draw Vasya’s attention to the following: when she expresses her thoughts, let her often say “in my opinion,” “I think so,” “it seems to me.” The more often he pronounces these words, the deeper into his consciousness the fact that the thoughts he expresses are his opinion, not the truth. He will be furious and say that you are getting to the bottom of the formulations, but these formulations are the very salt for his healing.
The combination of these actions may not bring Vasya to the final point of enlightenment. But it may help you to tolerate the thought that Vasya is not an evil bad person and does not communicate with you like that out of arrogance. But simply because they haven’t yet introduced him to another system of thinking. The main thing is that Vasya has a tendency to change and is motivated to do it. Then, over time, everyone will feel much better.
What to do if Vasya is you?
Firstly, I understand you perfectly and hug you, because I was there myself. It’s probably very difficult for you, because you just can’t understand the source of your problems in communication and work, no matter how hard you try.
Secondly, thinking can be restructured, and in a relatively short period of time – exactly up to six months.
Where should you go to upgrade your thinking?
Forum Less Wrong and a translation of articles from it in the form of the book “Rationality: From AI to Zombies” by the American professor Yudkowsky. He also wrote the book “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rational Thinking” – it is also often recommended to read.
Kahneman “Think slow, decide fast”
Joseph O’Connor “The Art of Systems Thinking”
Maxim Dorofeev “Path of the Jedi”
Video interview with Ilya Krasinsky about the principles of thinking
PS To be honest, the title is clickbait, because this problem occurs not only among humanities scholars 🙂
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Have you met such Vasyas at work?
Can you recommend anything else to the Vasyas themselves or to those who work with them?
