Why should I give a damn about you?

The Common Ground Series – Part 2

As mentioned previously, Finding Common Ground is about exploring shared interests, beliefs, or opinions between two people or groups of people who may disagree about most other subjects.

In a world where the media, governments and self interest groups are portraying, more often than not, a polarised ‘us’ versus ‘them’ narrative, even though many of us go about our day-to-day interacting with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds, it’s even more important that we resist this divisiveness and work together to find common ground for the common good.

Why?

Octavio Paz, Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature 1990 once said,

“Every culture is born from mixing, meeting and clashes. Conversely, it is from isolation that civilizations die.”

Research work done over 30 years by George Land on The Theory of Maturity and presented in his book ‘Grow or Die’, shows over and over again that it’s in our collective diversity, operating in the stage of Mutualism, – a form of heterogeneity where organisms, individuals or communities look for something different to combine and grow with - that we can evolve and withstand major shocks to the system and continue to thrive and grow.

It’s when we retreat to the stage of Replication – where organisms, individuals or communities look for similarities; often likened to the development stage of a teenager where we want to fit in and be like our crew, our gang, our kind… we create homogeneous groups where we all see things pretty much the same way. Agreement is easy, conflict is less and any attempt to bring in outside influences is immediately rejected. In this model someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong. You can see where I am going here in that this type of thinking can lead to fanaticism which is a dead end to growth and development of any organisms, individuals and communities.

Organisations and communities based on homogeneity, monoculture, sameness, or however you call it, lead to stagnation and collapse.

This is not the way to plan a long term future. 

Here’s why we should give a damn about each other and diversity.

Operating as individuals, we have very little chance of surviving on our own, let alone progressing. We depend on each other’s pursuits, abilities, work, skills, etc. Functioning viable and healthy societies are built on the consideration that different people with a range of skills sets, ideas and cultures will bring different contributions to the community. Some will grow food, some will teach, some will cure, some will build the roads and infrastructure, some will look after citizens, and so on. That way we all get to prosper by working together.

We all need each other to survive and progress. We need healthy societies filled with a diversity of people, that while they may not always see eye to eye, they find ways to solve big and small problems for the common good.

So how do we give a damn about each other?

Let’s take a leaf out of how people in sales and service roles help others.

Effective salespeople and service people have to work with a wide range of people every day. Some of the people they work with they would never socialise with in their personal lives and may not share the same values, however, they find ways to be cordial and respectful to others by finding out what is important to their customers and then offering the right products, service or solutions that the customer values. And if the customers are satisfied with how they were treated and what they received they will likely return and tell others. These successful sales and service professionals have the ability to find common ground for the common good both for their clients and their own businesses.

What is it that these people do that shows they give a damn about others?

Being Otherish

To start with, they are ‘otherish’. Adam Grant, in his bestselling book Give and Take, talks about the concept of ‘otherish’ being the opposite of selfish and different from selflessness. ‘Otherish’ people consider both their own interests and the interests of others simultaneously; they are looking for win-win situations, as opposed to selfless people who may only consider the other and end up in lose-win setups or selfish people who look for winner-takes-all.

‘Otherish’ is all about a fair exchange of value that leads to the common good.

Theory of mind

These successful sales and service people also have Theory of Mind. When we interact and work with people (customers, colleagues, managers, friends, family, etc.) it is important to be able to interpret and understand where the other person is coming from, their perspective, especially if we want to continue interacting and working with them in a manner that is beneficial to both parties. Interpreting and understanding where another person is coming from does not imply that we share their point of view. We may not agree. However, we at least know where they stand, what their perspective is. Ideally, the other person would respond in kind but that is not always the case. It is critical to our survival that we understand that others might see things differently to ourselves. This is about Theory of Mind.

Theory of Mind is the ability to interpret and understand another person’s mind and see their perspective. Having Theory of Mind allows a person to attribute thoughts, desires and intentions to others, to predict or explain their actions and to posit their intentions. You cannot hope to survive or thrive in business or life without a well-developed Theory of Mind. Only through the continuous practice and implementation of Theory of Mind can we fully understand our colleagues, partners and clients’ perspectives and then look for mutually beneficial solutions based on real, tangible and fair exchanges of value.

Giving a damn about others

In conclusion, being Otherish and practicing Theory of Mind combined with excellent skills such as questioning, active listening, reflecting, problem identification and solving, solution crafting and storytelling, persuasion and influence coupled with the qualities of curiosity, respect and helpfulness – the essential tool kit of any self respecting sales and service person – shows you give a damn about others and is the easiest way to find common ground for the common good.

Remember everybody lives by selling something. 

Related topics

In order to progress, we must first find common ground

Sales Psychology – The Theory of Mind

Why everybody benefits from being more ‘Otherish’

A year ago (roughly)

Are your salespeople stumbling at hello?