This concept led to me almost losing my marriage, and what saved it. I had been interpreting all of my wife's actions according to why I would be acting that way, instead of trying to understand how she is justifying her actions.

Once I started asking more questions about her mindset, and really listening to her when she answered, the whole direction of my marriage changed for the better.

I know I’m like 15 hours late to commenting on this thread, but, first of all I’m going to preface this by saying I really enjoy these discussions as with most discussions and love everyone’s perspective they bring to the table. This is regardless of if I agree with it. I also love giving my perspective, because if/when I give replies those that take the time to reply back in whatever form often make me leave feeling appreciated, understood, and/or more educated than before I replied. Also hopefully I give someone else a chance to feel that too.

I think the main principle that describes this situation where you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes is empathy. A complimentary principle in my mind is humility. Humility as I was taught is a principle not of self deprecation, but of self honesty. For example it would not be “I know nothing”, but instead “I know quite a lot of things but there is still a lot I don’t know”. Just like thinking you know nothing, thinking you know everything is also not humility. The self honesty part of humility can be about any of your capabilities not just knowledge.

When you give yourself the opportunity to be humble and say this person has a whole life of experiences that I don’t have and if I approach them the right way about it and empathize they can give me perspective on their ideas and choices. This leads you to understand them better and help them through a difficulty or trial or problem they are having it could also do the same for you as then you can say “I’ve never thought of it like that before.” This is not to say you should agree with their worldview blindly and follow your emotions blindly, but once you’ve allowed your controlled emotions to get you this far use knowledge to make a rational decision on which side to choose and if you feel like helping them see what you see present it in a way to them that is constructive.

I’ve found these two principles useful not only when I discuss with others but also when I read the thoughts of others too. For example if I read a biography, I ask what unique perspectives does this person have, and what can this person teach me whether it’s something they themselves thought and acted on correctly or incorrectly.

Great point, I'm certainly not perfect. I sometimes find myself thinking, "why would you do that!?" and that's when I realize that what that really means is I'm the one who's not understanding something. I should be asking myself, "why would they do that?"

In my marriage and in life in general.

> I sometimes find myself thinking, "why would you do that!?" and that's when I realize that what that really means is I'm the one who's not understanding something. I should be asking myself, "why would they do that?"

Thank you! This is a great distinction. I learnt something really helpful today.

This was the first thing I thought of when I read this question. So often I find myself and people around me basically assuming that the folks on the other side of the phone are idiots. Well, chances are they're thinking the same. You only need 15 minutes to disagree, but it takes much more time and effort to humbly understand a stranger's worldview and motivations. However, once you do, you're much more likely to deliver something you're both happy with at the end.

I think this is a significant part of the value of face-to-face meetings - it's much easier to 'get' someone when you observe and speak to them and their colleagues. At the very least, the connection you get makes it harder to subconsciously write them off as an idiot!

Of course, occasionally you come across people who really are very unsuited for the task at hand and end up talking total rubbish. But it's still worth taking the time to be sure - it's probably not as obvious to you as it is to other people, and you'll find yourself having to justify your assessment more often than you expect, particularly to decision-makers.

I wrote a library that a bunch of teams in a larger company were to use to move lots of data around. At one point there was an argument of the form X must always be Y vs X must never be Y, and eventually I had to tell them both that they were getting something else.

Neither department had a job if the other didn’t exist and produce. You can’t go telling the guy upstream from you that they aren’t allowed to do their job or there’s no point. You’re cutting off your nose to spite your own face. It was so stupid. I just had to start repeating “‘compromise’ means ‘nobody gets everything they wanted’”. I walked them both (privately of course) through how to use it and they soon found something else to bicker about. Children in neck ties.

> shed your own views, listen very closely to what they're saying, and interpret what they're saying not through your own lens, but through theirs.

A good team manager can identify what motivates everyone on the team, align incentives, and then take a step back to get out of the way.

If an engineer likes to work with new technology and hates your legacy system, find the new tech they can work on. If the product manager is only interested in a particular feature, then make them the manager of that feature but hold them accountable to its success.

A good manager will line up the dominos, but not tell any one of them how to fall.

Absolutely. I would add: remember that we can all be right. That problem or dysfunction may have 3 root causes, not just 1, and that engineer, lawyer, and BA can stop debating about who diagnosed it right - they all did.

Contradictory viewpoints can't all be right; if there are three different root cause analyses, at least two are wrong, and if there are actually three interacting causes where each identified a single independent root cause, they are all wrong, not all right .

Now, they are all possibly approaching the truth from different directions, and need a synthesis of each others views to get to the truth, but that's not the same as the discussion-ending idea that inconsistent explanations can all be right so attempts to resolve the conflict are unnecessary.

I was thinking of situations where the "causes" can be additive. "Why are we consistently late?" CAN be caused by broken technical processes AND understaffing AND bad product design. Did not intend "root" to be taken that literally.

Interesting! Can you share an example of the shortcuts you mentioned?