Tappers and Listeners
Dr. Shyam Iyer, CPF, (Honoris Causa)
Founder - 60Bits Consulting - Facilitating Organizations to Transform & Raise Performance through Process Consulting, Leadership, Learning, Change, Culture, OD & HR Architecture [PMS, Engagement] | Ex CHRO | Ex TATA
In 1990, a psychology student at Stanford University conducted an interesting experiment. It was referred to as the ‘Tappers and Listeners’ experiment. The rest of the world first heard of it when the authors Chip and Dan Heath started talking about it in public.
For her PhD Dissertation, Elizabeth Newton invited her peers in college to participate in the study. Each student was assigned one of two roles: ‘Tapper’ or ‘Listener’. The tappers were given a list of twenty-five popular tunes, such as Happy Birthday to You and Jingle Bells. They had to tap out the tune with their fingers on a table and the listeners had to guess the song. As you might have guessed, this is not easy task at all. Of the hundred and twenty times that a tune was tapped, the listener could guess the tune correctly only thrice. That’s a success rate of about 2.5%.
But here’s the interesting bit before the tappers began to tap the tune, Elizabeth asked them to predict the probability of the listeners being able to guess the song correctly. The tappers predicted a 50% chance that they would to be able to get the Listeners to guess the tunes correctly. So while they thought that they would be able to get the listeners to guess correctly one of two times the reality was that Listeners could guess the tune only once in forty attempts. How come?
Well, here’s what was happening. As the tappers tap the tune, he can hear the song playing in his head. His fingers seem to be tapping the tune in perfect sync with what’s playing in his head. And he just can’t understand why the Listener is not able to pick up such simple tune.
As managers we fall into the tappers Trap! We give instructions to other which seems very clear in our heads but others may have no idea what we want them to do.
In the given context of managing remote teams its even more relevant and the next time that happens, do remember that the problem is with the tapper not the listener.
Remember to "CLAP" if you want to have hi impactful remote meetings and remotely managing teams.
