Finding the middle ground

This is part of the Amplio University coaching curriculum. Amplio University provides affordable, effective, convenient, live training for those who want to think and lead.

This chapter is modified from the corresponding chapter in Al Shalloway and Paula Stewart's book Being an Effective Value Coach: Leading by Creating Value.

“Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides.” - Frank Tyger

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said: “The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

When all you see being discussed are extreme points of view, know that there is either a middle ground that is likely more effective or that something on an entirely different dimension is not being observed. When you do this, you can see more options and communicate new ideas, receiving less resistance. The result is faster learning, more engagement, and people being more effective. You will also gain trust as a coach.

A personal story

Years ago, Don Reinertsen and I were at a conference, watching from the back of the room. We'd sometimes make private comments about the presentations. At one point, it was clear that there was a pattern of “this or that” – mostly relating to flow or iterations - in the presentations. Don made a funny observation: “These folks have been around ???? 1s and 0s too long.” I chuckled at this since I had had the same feeling.

This attitude is very pervasive everywhere. Notice how often someone says something and a person hearing it will respond as if the only alternative is going to the extreme of what was mentioned. For example, if someone says, “There is a degree of predictability” in development, someone else may say, “You can’t predict everything.”

We have choices between the extremes. A well-known bit of life coaching advice is never make a decision when you only have two alternatives. “Decide” means to “kill off” options. But what you want to do is to take the two points and understand the dimension in which you are looking at things. Always have a third alternative, even if it seems worse than either of your first two. This third option can be between the two options you see or on a different dimension altogether.

In the Agile space, most people seem to be making binary decisions. ?We look at Scrum as a thing and Kanban as another thing. Scrum has the cross-functional team be sacrosanct, and David Anderson says, “Visualization, not reorganization.” There is value in both. Both are proxies for what we need to do. And there is always something in the middle.

Don’t immediately go to extremes.? Consider the issues being dealt with. Create options. Go a step deeper than most people do.

If someone suggests something, pause a moment before responding.? Consider if there is a middle ground between what was said and what you will say. A small amount of thinking before responding can save a lot of time in debating. Focus on exploring, discovery, and learning.

How to take advantage of knowing people do this

Knowing that people go to extremes provides you insights in how to speak to people about new concepts that don’t fit into their normal thinking. Expect when you say something new, if people don’t immediately agree to it they will hear an extreme case of what you said – not necessarily what you meant. For example, if you say “we want to focus on creating a safe environment so that you don’t need so much courage” many will hear you say “we want to make it so people don’t need courage.” Knowing this, you might say “while we always need courage, it’s good to make an environment safer so you need less.”

Don’t use this as a formula, of course. Just be aware that when you mean shades of gray, many will listen to you in absolutes.

Look for a second dimension

There is also another possibility. Sometimes there is another dimension to attend to - not merely a middle ground between two options. For example, there has been a fair amount of discussion as to whether it’s ok to push a process onto people. But it’s not yes or no or even just a certain amount. There is another dimension to attend to - are you talking about team level or across the organization. Having agreements that all teams must follow to work together makes sense. But requiring teams to work in a particular way doesn’t. This “third dimension” provides for a better solution.

One way we’ve found to be effective in finding this middle ground is to step back and attend to what you are trying to accomplish. It is likely that the two approaches being defended are different attempts to accomplish the same thing. Speculate if there are other ways to accomplish this. Even consider bad ones. Doing this will help you and the person you are talking to see that it isn’t an either-or conversation.

Expanding on the problem with extremes

Edgar Schein remarked "We don't think and talk about what we see we see what we are able to think and talk about." When we debate "this" or "that" we don't see "another choice."

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