I Have No Opinion

AN IDEA FOR CONSIDERATION

“This is YUCK!”

That’s a frequent remark from my daughter as we sit down for dinner. In fact, it usually comes before she even tastes the food.?

Typically, her comment triggers my standard lecture on making judgments.?

There’s a big difference between saying, “I don’t enjoy this,” which is a true statement about preference, and “This is yuck,” which is a universal statement about the food. You don’t know if the second one is true; other people might find that food to be delicious.

While my practical concern in those moments is to prevent her statements from influencing her brother to also reject his food, the larger lesson is that it’s helpful to distinguish between those two types of expression.???

Here’s the part of the lecture that I don’t share: Why should anyone care about your opinion of the food? Given your lack of expertise in this field, your view is unlikely to be useful to anyone else.

Harsh, I know. That’s why I don’t say it!

But I was thinking about that this week after the torrent of commentary about Simone Biles’ decision to withdraw from competition at the Olympics. For me, it’s not just my instinctual disdain for negative commentary; I ask, Why is it even useful for people to share their opinions about someone else’s behavior that doesn’t affect them? Why is forming a judgment helpful?

In When Things Fall Apart, Buddhist teacher and author Pema Ch?dr?n, recommends being intentional about noticing our judgments.?

When I have done that exercise, it’s usually eye-opening to see just how many opinions I have—and just how many of those opinions serve little purpose.?

For example, a client told me a story last week about traveling through a small Texas town and being turned away from using the restroom at a gas station because the station attendant didn’t like that she was wearing a mask.

My first thought was, “That’s so dumb.”?

But other than making me feel self-righteous, I got nothing out of it. Surely, expressing said opinion would have been even less useful since it provides zero benefit to the world. (That thought is why I’m bad on social media.)

The bigger problem, however, is that having an opinion closes off inquiry. It certainly would have been more useful to start asking questions. What are the psychological or cultural factors that would cause the attendant’s behavior? Why did that action make sense to her?

That’s the point. Opinions can block our learning because they calcify our thinking and increase the odds that we’ll enter into ego-filled contests to defend our perspective. As Ch?dr?n writes:?

“When I talk about noticing opinions, I'm talking about noticing them as a simple way of beginning to pay attention to what we think and do and how much energy comes along with that. Then we can also begin to realize how solid we make things and how easy it is to get into a war in which we want our opinions to win and someone else’s to lose.”

When we’re not starting from curiosity and truth seeking, it actually undermines our ability to influence others to adopt our agenda.

She continues: “It's up to us to sort out what is opinion and what is fact; then we can see intelligently. The more clearly we can see, the more powerful our speech and our actions will be. The less our speech and actions are clouded by opinion, the more they will communicate…. When we don't buy into our opinions and solidified sense of enemy, we will accomplish something. If we don't get swept away by our outrage, then we will see the cause of suffering more clearly.”

So here’s to the benefit of noticing our opinions! (Though I’m not saying you should do the noticing exercise, since that would be an opinion.)

LEADERSHIP WISDOM?

“The worst thing an organization can do is limit its development of people by importing society’s class system into its own operations, like organizations today that decide very early which are the comers, or that you are not going to get any place if you don’t have an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Performance is what counts.”

—Peter Drucker, in Managing the Non-Profit Organization

(Two weeks in a row from Drucker, since this book is full of gems.)

SOMETHING FUN, OLYMPICS EDITION

The Olympics have been on the TV in my house 24/7 during the last week. Of course, this started with the Opening Ceremonies, when my wife walked across the house to give her “analysis” of the shirtless flag bearer from Tonga.?

The Olympics have also provided loads of delightfully inane questions and answers from commentators and athletes. Some of my favorites:

During the gold medal match in mixed team archery: “This has turned into some high-level archery!”

During the gymnastics qualifying: “She’s gotta have two great vaults, and the main thing is that she has to land them.”

Mike Tirico asked Katie Ledecky, “It’s been 5 years since [the last Olympics], what’s changed for you?” Her answer was completely worthy of her Stanford degree: “Well, I’m older now.”

Finally, The New York Times had the following headline on Sunday: How Jamaican Sprinters Won All 3 Medals in the Women’s 100 Meters. My first reaction was, “This probably says that those who won were fastest, causing them to reach the finish line before the others.”??

Indeed, when I clicked through, looking for the deep analysis, all there was was this handy chart:

I guess I was right!

Thanks for reading!

Charles

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