Boxes And Balances. The Problem With Labels.

 

Someone explained to me how he categorized the behavior of people. He used that to deal with people he considered difficult to deal with. It seemed he had a lot of "problematic" stakeholders. He talked about "the tank", "the sniper", "whiners", "grenades" and many more flattering labels.

I felt very unpleasant when he discussed how he disabled the big fat tank. Supposedly his team leader. It's not that I have issues with the use of labels. Heck. It seemed to be working for him. He was so happy with the results, he was telling me about it. So. There.

I know it's how our brains are hard wired. It's just that I can't deal very well with the negativity of the labels.

Here is the thing.

People are effected by the mental image they hold of a situation. People can talk about projects as if they are conducting a war. They are using words like “marching orders” and “the troops”. If a Project Manager has a mindset like this, war as a metaphor, his mind is thinking in friends and foes, allies and enemies. You are either with him or against him. This view of the world will make it very difficult to collaborate with this person if you disagree.

Using negative labels enforces the mindset. Not helping here in this respect. At least not in my brain.

We need labels. I am aware of that. Analogies and associations help us crunch information so it doesn't take up so much space in our brains. It helps us to compress information for storage.

The problem we face is that we use the labels directly offered to us, to put things and people into prefabricated boxes that that might create the wrong association.  With "wrong" I mean, "not helpful". It brings us in a polarized view of the world.

A couple of weeks ago I pondered the question if introverts might be more suited for virtual leadership. Actually, some great comments and this insightful blog post by Josh Nankivel triggered this post :) This mental exercise is not intended to let people take a Myers-Briggs test and determine based on their score if they are a better leader than someone else. This use of labeling is absolutely not productive or useful.
 
Going over the axis and see what's in each box, and consider how this might affect a situation can be interesting. It shapes connections and associations, and awareness. It helps you to prevent seeing a single story. The trick is to recognize that it's not a box, but a balance. In reality we all are part introvert, part extrovert. Or any other dimension you want to pick.


Consider agile and plan-driven approaches. It's not one or the other. Different circumstances require a different approach. If you need creativity to solve a problem or to create a design, you need an easy going, stimulating approach; if you are running towards a deadline to get towards production, a rigid, centralized controlled environment is more the way to go. Depending on the environment and general circumstances a project manager should construct a process and organization that serves him or her best.

Depending on the situation you can provide a proper balance. By seeing this as a balance, there is no need for polarized discussion about right or wrong. But before you can do this, you need to study the labels itself. What's in it, how this might affect a situation?  

I really do think that awareness about dimensions and balances is important. If nobody tells you about it, you might not be aware of a bias you might have. As they say, fish discover water last. Somebody has to show you the water.

If you want to read more how to bridge polarities, getting into a "both-and" mind set instead of a "either-or", I encourage you to read this article: "Rhythms, Boundaries, and Containers: Creative Dynamics of Asynchronous Group Life". In it the authors are exploring a middle path bridging two prevailing approaches to groupware: (1) mechanism — making groups work through the use of explicit forms and procedures, and (2) context or open space — allowing groups to self-organize. Although they talk about groupware, software for virtual collaboration, I find the article relevant to any group collaboration. And it's a great illustration on how to bridge polarities.
 

As you can tell, I am still not sure how this works exactly. :) But it's is about how we explain things to others effects how they might behave. So it's important. Really.

Bas de Baar is a writer who draws about people in transition. He loves to make visual maps and travel guides for the collaborators of our brave new world.