Interpretations of The Fifth Discipline Part 3
I read The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge. Last published in 2006, this is a well-known book for learning about Systems Thinking and applying those principles to both your work and your personal life. In part of the book, he touches upon this idea of defensiveness. It’s an important topic when talking about interpersonal relationships between authors and especially for critique groups.
Mr. Senge asks, “What are we taught growing up and throughout our lives? To be right.” To avoid embarrassment by being wrong. If a teacher calls on us, we are hesitant to answer for fear of ridicule. We don’t want to send our book out into the world because what if no one likes it? We hold our reservations in so that no one can examine our ideas closely, lest they find fault with us. Those ideas can be in a non-fiction book, a fiction book or even just where to go for coffee with an author friend.
He asks how you respond to a new idea that you don’t have time for. We’re all busy. We have writing, chores, errands. Some of us have day jobs. So, you see something new that perhaps came to you through an acquaintance and you say, “that’s interesting,” and you move on, promising yourself you’ll investigate it later. Or someone you like brings a new idea to the group and you protect them from criticism for their own sake. Or you bring an idea to someone with a higher authority than you and they greet you with, “What do you want? I’m busy.” causing you to back down. You might ignore difficult subjects to avoid confrontation. I know I do. Senge says these are all defensive routines that we learn throughout our lives that don’t help us form and share our own visions. And it’s all about visions, which I’ll cover in another article. We do this so we don’t come across as weak or incompetent. It all goes back to being right to avoid embarrassment.
Now, we might recognize this going on and confront people for being defensive, but we only get more defensiveness by doing that. We must realize that we are part of the problem and address our own behaviors. And I know, I’m yet another person giving you work to do when others could change, but realistically, the only person we can truly change is ourselves. We can ask others to change, and they may, given fresh evidence. But it’s really on us most of the time. We can change defensiveness by being vulnerable, by showing others it’s safe to be vulnerable, too. Then we can express our assumptions about an idea, our thinking on a topic, and learn together instead of trying to teach each other.
How do we learn? By reflecting on what is. I remember seeing an old commercial, I think it was for cigarettes, that said, “What you can’t see, can hurt you,” which was completely contradictory to Looney Tunes where things ignored, like gravity, didn’t affect you until you noticed them. What Senge is saying here, though, is if you don’t know about it, you can’t address it. This goes back to the other article on dragging your demons out of the shadows to give them less power over you. Now, how do you learn from others? You need to know what they’re thinking about the same issue. What are their assumptions? How do those compare to your own? “Understanding comes from dialogue. Dialogue comes from collaborative intention.” You can look at an issue from all sides and agree that we see it from different angles. We lay our assumptions out so we can have a dialogue on what we mean. Discussion, on the other hand, is where one person wants to push their own visions, read “agenda”, and “win” by making convincing arguments. A lot of conversation is about who’s on top, who’s winning, who’s right and who’s wrong.
We must separate out discussions and dialogue. There is a time to get at the root of something through dialogue, and there is a time to decide on something through discussion. Wrapping back around to critique groups, you want to dialogue about your intent, your vision, for your work. A healthy group will help you bring your vision forward by understanding assumptions about the work you presented on both sides of the critique. A challenging group will discuss with you what you did wrong and why you should fix it. So, dear reader, dialogue and then discuss. Don’t be embarrassed to be vulnerable and to share your vision with others and listen to other people’s visions.
