A few recent changes in my environment and particular people around me (hey, Yura R!) made me think about some of my areas of incompetence. One of them comes from me being a strongly opinionated person (a trait also common in the people I respect most). It comes with a lot of discussions and debates, agree-to-disagree situations, and, unfortunately, often with people seeing me as a person blind to their opinions. In short, having a strong opinion doesn’t mean I’m able to communicate it well (duh!).
I am in my thirties and only now starting to realize that I need to put myself in others’ shoes more often. Managers, bosses, stakeholders, my wife—they are all brewing in their own bubbles with their own opinions, previous experiences, fears, aspirations, and predictions. And these states are always changing, fluctuating, biased, never set in stone. It is quite impossible to see anything through their own eyes. But it is quite useful to acknowledge the difference when trying to do so.
What is even more important than trying to see someone else’s point of view is to see yours more clearly. Seeing others and incorporating their views into the whole picture makes it easier to notice your own agenda, fears, and bad communication habits. It is a similar experience to reading non-fiction and experiencing somebody else’s life. It gives perspectives. Many of them. And, yes, I started to notice my own insecurities and biases, reflecting during or after conversations and checking how they affect my ways of communicating. And, man, I simultaneously hate it and love it.
And all of this doesn’t mean that my arguments and facts are wrong in those debates. It only means that everyone’s opinion is right from their own perspective. The discussion becomes less of a battleground and more of a thinking process and opinions merging. It is also not about compromises. It is about common understanding and respect. Someone still can be more right than everyone else. Some facts still can reject opinions fully. But you start to see better why opinions are born and if those whys should push your own opinion’s recalibration and the way you communicate.
Writing this, I remembered a David Foster Wallace commencement speech where he talks about the goal of education being to understand that you are not the center of the world. I watched it a long time ago. I occasionally strive to remind myself of this. And every time I find it particularly hard to follow on a day-to-day basis. It sounds easy, but thinking a lot of your actions through others’ perspectives is actually exhausting. I’d also put this speech above my writing, but in this way there’d be no reason to read my text at all, so what’s the point of it being public then? It’s a joke, but, yes, DFW’s speech is better content to learn the lesson from (who could have guessed, huh?).
Here it is: David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech.