And I probably shouldn’t have expected an event to coalesce naturally from the mailing list. I have a strong “egalitarian” instinct that if I’m trying to do something with a group and in some sense for the benefit of everyone in the group, then I shouldn’t be too “bossy” in terms of unilaterally declaring what we’re all going to do. But if I leave it up to the group to discuss, it seems like they generally…don’t.
This reminds me of a habit that I used to have for a long time, and which I’m still unlearning: when asked for a choice (like “what should we eat” or “which of these meeting places do you prefer”), I frequently replied with some variant of “no preference”. And I used to think that this was polite—that I was giving the other person the choice.
But frequently the other person just wants a decision. If they ask me to decide, and I push the decision back to them, I’m not being polite, I’m refusing to cooperate. Someone has to make the decision eventually, but if everyone defers it to someone else, it’s not ever going to happen.
This becomes even more obvious in situations with more than two people trying to e.g. decide what to do or where to go together; frequently everyone tries to be polite and not express too strong of an opinion. With the result that it takes a long time to make a decision, with everyone making tentative suggestions and nobody expressing a firm opinion.
As a result, I’ve been trying to reframe things in my head—to internalize that making decisions is a chore, and being the one to say “okay, let’s go with this” if people seem undecided is doing them a favor. It’s still frequently unpleasant, since there’s that lingering doubt of did someone dislike this decision, are they unhappy with me when they would actually have preferred something else but just didn’t speak up...
But it being unpleasant is exactly why freeing others from the burden of doing it, is doing them a favor.
Your mailing list example seems similar—spending time discussing the right time, or even proposing times that they might like, requires paying a cost of time and attention. The correct way to think about it, I believe, is that you’ll do people a favor by reducing the amount of effort that they need to spend in order to participate. If you just propose a few times that are good for you, that people can say yes or no to, then that costs them much less and is more likely to get a response. I thought that this article put it pretty well:
Ever wonder why people reply more if you ask them for a meeting at 2pm on Tuesday, than if you offer to talk at whatever happens to be the most convenient time in the next month? The first requires a two-second check of the calendar; the latter implicitly asks them to solve a vexing optimisation problem.
This is an excellent description of the phenomenon. I have found that a lot of these sorts of problems dissolve if I view my contribution to the group as reducing the information load.
I am tempted to declare that the whole of leadership.
Not the whole, though. Activism has at least two dimensions—one of “human capital”, the other of “change in the world”, so the leader has to balance one against the other.
Ever wonder why people reply more if you ask them for a meeting at 2pm on Tuesday, than if you offer to talk at whatever happens to be the most convenient time in the next month? The first requires a two-second check of the calendar; the latter implicitly asks them to solve a vexing optimisation problem.
My experience is that this also makes people more likely to show up at the agreed time (using this method was suggested to me when I was working with students who were notoriously bad at showing up).
Possibly phrasing it this way creates an artificial significance to the time suggested, I don’t know, but it does seem to work. I generally offer as few options as is reasonable given other constraints.
when asked for a choice (like “what should we eat” or “which of these meeting places do you prefer”), I frequently replied with some variant of “no preference”.
With some people, I once had a norm that the answer in such situations always consists of two parts: (1) the choice, you have to make one; and (2) a number from 1 to 10 expressing how strongly you prefer this choice.
With the right kind of person, this works quite well. You can have e.g. “option A, strength 2” and “option B, strength 4″, then go with option B without feeling guilty, but perhaps acknowledging a small debt towards the person who wanted A. (The debt will probably be erased soon when the next decision goes the other direction, but if it happens to accumulate, you can discuss that explicitly.)
This reminds me of a habit that I used to have for a long time, and which I’m still unlearning: when asked for a choice (like “what should we eat” or “which of these meeting places do you prefer”), I frequently replied with some variant of “no preference”. And I used to think that this was polite—that I was giving the other person the choice.
But frequently the other person just wants a decision. If they ask me to decide, and I push the decision back to them, I’m not being polite, I’m refusing to cooperate. Someone has to make the decision eventually, but if everyone defers it to someone else, it’s not ever going to happen.
This becomes even more obvious in situations with more than two people trying to e.g. decide what to do or where to go together; frequently everyone tries to be polite and not express too strong of an opinion. With the result that it takes a long time to make a decision, with everyone making tentative suggestions and nobody expressing a firm opinion.
As a result, I’ve been trying to reframe things in my head—to internalize that making decisions is a chore, and being the one to say “okay, let’s go with this” if people seem undecided is doing them a favor. It’s still frequently unpleasant, since there’s that lingering doubt of did someone dislike this decision, are they unhappy with me when they would actually have preferred something else but just didn’t speak up...
But it being unpleasant is exactly why freeing others from the burden of doing it, is doing them a favor.
Your mailing list example seems similar—spending time discussing the right time, or even proposing times that they might like, requires paying a cost of time and attention. The correct way to think about it, I believe, is that you’ll do people a favor by reducing the amount of effort that they need to spend in order to participate. If you just propose a few times that are good for you, that people can say yes or no to, then that costs them much less and is more likely to get a response. I thought that this article put it pretty well:
This is an excellent description of the phenomenon. I have found that a lot of these sorts of problems dissolve if I view my contribution to the group as reducing the information load.
I am tempted to declare that the whole of leadership.
Not the whole, though. Activism has at least two dimensions—one of “human capital”, the other of “change in the world”, so the leader has to balance one against the other.
My experience is that this also makes people more likely to show up at the agreed time (using this method was suggested to me when I was working with students who were notoriously bad at showing up).
Possibly phrasing it this way creates an artificial significance to the time suggested, I don’t know, but it does seem to work. I generally offer as few options as is reasonable given other constraints.
With some people, I once had a norm that the answer in such situations always consists of two parts: (1) the choice, you have to make one; and (2) a number from 1 to 10 expressing how strongly you prefer this choice.
With the right kind of person, this works quite well. You can have e.g. “option A, strength 2” and “option B, strength 4″, then go with option B without feeling guilty, but perhaps acknowledging a small debt towards the person who wanted A. (The debt will probably be erased soon when the next decision goes the other direction, but if it happens to accumulate, you can discuss that explicitly.)