Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:
We can become so convinced that we have the answer that we stop examining whether we’re asking the right question. A recent exchange about politics and relationships reminded me how easily we substitute familiar principles and solutions for the understanding needed to determine whether they actually apply.
I encountered a statement about politics and relationships.
It was provocative, suggesting that politics sometimes should end relationships and asking whether abolitionists and slave owners would have sat down to dinner together after a day’s work.
I had seen it alongside commentary that made a more specific argument. Not every political disagreement is simply a difference of opinion. Some positions have real consequences for people’s rights, dignity and safety. I shared the image and the accompanying commentary on Facebook, but as two separate posts.
Someone responded to the image.
How do you change someone’s mind, he asked, by making them an enemy or by being their friend?
I thought it was a fair question. Relationships can create opportunities for people to reconsider their beliefs. Dialogue can open doors that confrontation sometimes closes. So I offered the context from the accompanying commentary, hoping to clarify the distinction being made.
His reply began, “I don’t think it matters.”
He referred to Daryl Davis, a Black man known for befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan, and concluded that love was the answer. Vilifying and ostracizing people, he argued, would not change their minds.
I kept returning to that response.
It wasn’t because I disagree with the importance of love, nor was it because I dismiss the possibility of changing someone’s thinking through friendship; but more so, because I wondered whether we had established what problem we were actually trying to address.
If the question is how to influence someone who holds harmful beliefs, friendship and dialogue may indeed be part of the answer.
But what if the question is whether someone should feel obligated to maintain a relationship with a person whose beliefs or political choices threaten their rights, dignity or safety?
Are we still answering the same question?
And how did choosing not to maintain a relationship become equivalent to vilifying or ostracizing someone? Those are not necessarily the same things.
Daryl Davis chose to engage with people whose beliefs were fundamentally opposed to his own humanity and equality. His approach offers an example of what an individual can choose to do. But does it establish what everyone else should be expected to do?
And then there’s the assertion that love is the answer.
What does love mean in these circumstances?
- Does it mean maintaining relationships regardless of their impact?
- Does it require overlooking harm?
- Can love include confrontation, accountability, boundaries and self-respect?
- Can we love people and still decide that we do not want them in our lives?
These questions matter because principles, however admirable, do not automatically tell us how to respond to every situation.
I eventually decided to discontinue the exchange.
Not because I considered the other person an enemy or wanted to punish him for holding a different view. I simply decided that continuing the discussion wasn’t something I needed to do.
My decision brought me back to something I encounter regularly in my work.
- An employee is described as difficult. The solution is disciplinary action.
- A team is underperforming. The solution is training.
- People are resisting change. The solution is better communication.
- Customers are leaving. The solution is another customer service initiative.
Each response might be entirely appropriate, but what have we established about the circumstances producing the problem?
What if the employee is responding to inconsistent expectations? What if the team’s performance is being constrained by its structure? What if resistance reflects legitimate concerns about a decision? What if customers are leaving for reasons that have nothing to do with service?
We often reach for familiar answers because they provide a sense of certainty.
They give us something to do. And sometimes, having something to do feels more reassuring than acknowledging that we don’t yet understand what’s happening.
But a principle is not a diagnosis. Neither is an example of something that worked elsewhere.
Experience is valuable. Principles can guide us. Examples can broaden our thinking. None of them eliminates the need to understand the particular situation we’re facing.
And that understanding must include the experiences and circumstances of the people involved, not simply the perspective from which we happen to be viewing the problem. What one person can freely choose to do may represent a considerable personal cost for another.
I began with a conversation about politics and relationships and found myself considering something much broader.
How readily we accept an explanation, attach a familiar solution and move forward without examining the assumptions connecting the two.
How easily we turn one person’s experience into a general prescription, and how often we become so committed to an answer that we stop being curious about the question.
What happens when the answer comes before the understanding?
We risk solving the problem we’ve assumed rather than the one we actually have, and often we become so invested in defending our answer that we fail to recognize what we have yet to understand.
Strategic Reflection Prompt
Where in your work, leadership or personal relationships might you be relying on an answer you believe in without first examining whether it addresses the problem you’re actually facing?
I’m Giselle Hudson, The Pre-Fixer™.
For nearly three decades, I’ve worked with business owners and leaders across the Caribbean who carry important decisions largely on their own, often when problems keep returning, solutions fall short, or implementation stalls.
When I ask business owners what problem they can’t seem to solve, the answer is usually “people.” So I ask them to tell me more, because people and businesses are rarely as simple as they first appear.
I help them understand what’s really causing the problem before they spend more trying to fix it. And where needed, I help design the solution and guide their teams to put it into practice.
Get Clarity before the Fix.
What are you trying to make sense of right now?
