• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Coach of Choice

Making wise choices

  • Choice!
  • Contact
  • About
    • My coaching style
    • Diana’s Resume
    • FAQ
    • Why Hire a Coach
    • Codependence-Addiction
  • Testimonials
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Archives for Relationships

Relationships

Can just one word change how we communicate? Can we stop the lumping?

By Diana Gardner Robinson 2 Comments

Lumping?

“What, you may be wondering,” is “lumping?” And then, perhaps, “And if I don’t know what it means, how can I be doing it?”

The dictionary describes “lump,” when used as a verb, as meaning “to put in an indiscriminate mass or group; treat as alike without regard for particulars.”

There has been a lot of lumping lately – lumping of people by religious group, by nationality, by skin color. Think about it. Think about social media. About the way people talk when speaking of others not like them. So many of us tend to lump.

“Americans,” “white people,” “men,” “Muslims,” “Democrats,” “Tories,” “Socialists,” “black people,” “women,” “Christians,” “Republicans,” the list goes on and on and one part of our brains knows, when we use these terms, that they – whichever “they” it may be – do not all think alike, act alike, don’t even look that much alike. Yet we use the terms, over and over again. When we do this we make whatever group we are mentioning into “the other.” We add to the many splits that separate us from others on our rather small planet.

When we lump, we imply that what is true of some becomes true of all. When we write (or say) something about “women,” we are lumping all women together as though all were the same even though, if we pause to think, we know that this is not true. Unfortunately, when we lump we are usually expressing something negative. When we speak positively, it is usually to describe someone’s behavior as though it were exceptional – which it may well be. Sadly, when we describe groups of people, it is most frequently an attempt to portray them in a negative light, often based on some stereotype.

We also strengthen our own tendency to perceive the entire body of those people, in whichever group they may be, as being in alignment with that stereotype.

Is that how you really want to be? Does it fit with your self-concept of yourself as an independent, thinking, and compassionate human being?

 

A Solution – the Word “Some”

There is one little word, just four letters long, that can begin to change this sad tendency. One word can change our thinking and the way we communicate, so that we begin to perceive the world as a little less “good” and “bad.” One word combats the tendency to lump. Perhaps we should consider using it more often.
That word is so simple. It is “some.” “Some men…,” “Some women….”

It is a word that admits that not all of almost any group are… anything. We do not think alike, believe alike, vote alike, love alike, hate alike… if we have to hate at all, which seems unnecessary.

“Some” admits that when we generalize, there are exceptions to what we are saying.

“Some” admits that there is good among the bad and bad among the good. It admits that people are capable of thinking for themselves, of being independent of whatever we are concluding about that particular group of people.

Wouldn’t you want to know, when people speak negatively of whatever particular group you may belong to, that they allow for the fact that not everyone fits into their judgment? That they are not assuming that you fit their stereotype? That they allow that there are exceptions by preceding their generalization with the word “some”?

As a personal example, I know that I feel hurt when I read a post from a friend of mine who tends to politicize race and to refer only to the wrongs that Caucasians have committed upon African Americans. I know very well how much I wish that, rather than “whites,” those posts referred to “some whites.” They never do.

Don’t we all consider ourselves, and want to be considered by others, as exceptions to some judgments? Should we not allow that there are exceptions to our own judgments?

(Of course, I could rant against judging in any form, but it is sometimes difficult not to draw conclusions – hopefully based on facts – and what one person sees as a conclusion, is often seen by others as a judgment.)

So, for now, let us remember that there are exceptions to every rule and every stereotype, and let us begin to use the word “some” whenever we are generalizing about people or situations.

Let us say “no” to lumping by adding “some” to every generalization.

May your 2016 be the best year yet!

Diana

(This blog was originally published as an issue of my free newsletter, “Work in Progress (because we all are!).” I do not usually mix newsletter and blog. However, I think this topic is important enough to want to give it wider distribution, so I am also distributing it as a blog, available to all on my website. If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter (WIP), which is distributed approximately twice a month, please look to the right of this page for the sign-up form.)

 

I hope you find this blog interesting, useful, or amusing, depending on its topic. One way to keep track of my posts is to subscribe to my newsletter (see form on the right), which will always contain a link to recent blogs. Or, of course, you could bookmark this page and keep checking back. Either way, I hope that my work makes your life easier and more balanced. To explore my offer of the gift of a 30-40 minute coaching session on whatever issue is a stumbling block for you, please contact me via my Contact page.

The Piece I Wrote just after 9/11/01 – that still holds true

By Diana Gardner Robinson Leave a Comment

 

TRAGEDIES

Tragedies change our lives. Need they change us, the people we truly are?

So much has already been written about the September 11 tragedies that I hesitate to write more, for it feels as though all has been said already. Yet I cannot ignore them, either.

We are overwhelmed with tragedies. Tragedy of the thousands of deaths, innocent people suddenly taken from their loved ones, children destined to grow up without the father, or the mother, or the sibling or other family member or friend who might have made all the difference in their lives. People who have lost those closest to them, people who, almost worst pain of all, still do not know…

Tragedy of symbols destroyed. Tragedy of life plans, work plans, lost. Of years of hard work, time, effort, dreams, tossed aside and ground into powder.

Tragedy of innocence lost, of people who lived in faith and calm who will now live with suspicion and fear.

Tragedy of contagious anger. The frustration and pain that most feel, but that, in some, is flowing over into hateful thoughts, vicious messages and actions.  Suddenly the internet is more filled with anger and hostility, both toward individuals and toward peoples as a whole. Suddenly people who have lived relatively peacefully fear to shop at their local grocery store. Suddenly the terrorists are winning by undermining not brick and concrete, but how we are to each other.

We may assume that the terrorists had many goals, ncluding shock, pain, death, destruction. There is much about which most of us can do little or nothing, except pray, contribute where we can, offer a shoulder where it is needed. But about the anger and hate… there we CAN do something. We can refuse to hate. We can deal with our anger. We can come together in caring, rather than rant apart in rage. If you would deny the terrorists their ultimate goal, which may go far beyond the destruction of steel and concrete and flesh and bone, then refuse to hate. Refuse to let them change, in a negative direction, the way you respond to your fellow humans.

Have you ever been condemned by association?  Assumed to be a certain way because of the company you kept, the clothes you wore, the friends you had? Ever been stereotyped, responded to in a certain way by people who did not know you at all? Simply because of how you looked, or where you or your ancestors were born? I have, and I know how deeply it wounds, by its very unfairness, and the feeling of helplessness that it engenders.

Even on the day of the tragedy, the mayor of the community in which I live found it necessary to plead for tolerance because the Islamic members of that community were already being harassed. Even before the tragedy, some internet messageboards were becoming hateful. Hate-ful. Full of hate. What does that say about those who are so consumed?

Our fury at the terrorists is, with full justification, multi-faceted, but much of it is about the killing of innocents, people with whom they could not have any quarrel, for they did not know them. When we turn that fury on people we do not know because of what they wear, how they worship, or where they or their parents were born, do we not begin to slide down the slippery slope toward a similarly heinous attitude?

How will we heal from these tragedies? Slowly, I think, but most definitely not by hating. Certainly the perpetrators must pay full penalty for their actions, but let not the innocent suffer with them. If we become like unto the perpetrators in our actions, and in our anger, then they win.

Whether it is the neighbor in your grocery store, or the families living near wherever the originator of these dark deeds may be, let us resolve to protect them as surely as we wish that our loved ones had been protected.

Where the perpetrators hoped to disrupt, let us keep moving forward with our lives wherever we can. Where they sought despair, let us hope. Where they attempted to sow hatred, let our love for the innocents of humanity grow ever stronger.

Diana Gardner Robinson

Is Your Help a Hand-up or a Hand-out?

By Diana Gardner Robinson 2 Comments

Hand-up or Hand-out?

Or, to put it another way ”What you do for me without me, you do to me.” Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi had such a knack of saying a whole lot in very few words, and this is one example. It is a point that those of us in the self-help, personal growth and counseling fields need to take very seriously, but also applies to parents, teachers, and anyone who has skills that others need. It echoes, slightly more enigmatically, the old “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you teach him for the rest of his life.”  Apart from my occasional rebellious question as to whether anyone ever considers whether to teach a woman to fish, each statement echoes the other.

Whether we are working with children, with those who are in need, or with people who do not have skills that we have mastered, most of us want to help people. We want to help people so that they can grow and become self-sufficient. Yet, all too often, the help that is given is a temporary fix rather than something that encourages growth. In fact, helping someone while they stand helplessly back and watch may well convey the message that they are helpless and need someone else to look after them. It can be unempowering. We want to provide stepping stones, but instead the message that they are helpless to help themselves may become a stumbling block.

People do not learn from watching nearly as well – if at all – as from doing. Of course it takes longer, and more effort, to tell someone how to do something, to guide their actions and give them feedback, than it does to do the darn thing ourselves! So, unfortunately, we tend to do for, rather than do with.

My neighbor is a brilliant “fix-it” person, and always willing to help. I have noticed that he “does it right.” He does what I, at five foot two inches, cannot do either for matters of height or of strength. When that is out of the way he hands things back to me and, if needed, tells me how to do it, but I have to be active in the process. When I installed a motion detector light over my garage door, part of what was needed was out of my reach.  He promptly did what I could not, but then handed the tools back to me to continue the task. I’m not sure if I felt more empowered because I learned something, or because I had been an active part of the project rather than a helpless bystander. I think it was the latter.

Of course we have to have a balance. While I am saying that taking over and fixing everything can be un-empowering, on the other hand standing back and saying that people must do something for themselves when they are incapable of doing so is not helpful. Leaving me to install my own light over the garage door would not have helped me to grow a few more inches. I believe the balance lies right there – where the help offered is for what the individual cannot do, but that they are expected to participate as well.

Habitat for Humanity has that down pat, truly living out their slogan “A hand up not a hand out.”  The organization organizes and leads, but the anticipated owners of the house must contribute many hours of work, under supervision where necessary and learning many skills as they go, in order to earn the right to move in.

I suspect that those of us who “do for” rather than “do with” may get a quiet charge of virtuosity when we consider how much we do for others – but then… are we doing it for them or for ourselves?

I also suspect that the one thing that people really need is to be empowered by our acknowledgement that they are capable of “doing with,” even if it only involves tightening a couple of screws, as with my garage light.

Do you do for? Or do you do with? If the former… would you consider bring your “helpees” on board, just a little? You will not be giving them less, but more.

I hope you find this blog interesting, useful, or amusing, depending on its topic. One way to keep track of my posts is to subscribe to my newsletter (see form on the right), which will always contain a note of recent blogs. Or, of course, you could bookmark this page and keep checking back. Either way, I hope that my work makes your life easier and more balanced. To  explore my offer of the gift of a 30 minute coaching session on whatever issue is a stumbling block for you, please see my Contact page.
Diana

Jumping to conclusions can land us in the wrong place

By Diana Gardner Robinson 1 Comment

Jumping to conclusions can land us in the wrong place. We are rushed, we are pressured, and we don’t have time for the fine details. Instead, too often we mentally leap to the bottom line, and in that leap we often fly past a few things that could lead us to more accurate understanding.

We may read that a dietary product provides “Up to 4 hours hunger control,” but how many of us remember that “up to four hours” includes one, two and three hours as well as four?

Sometimes we even teach others on the basis of our wrong conclusion.

The simplest answer is NOT always the correct one.

How often have you read or been told that words carry only 7% of the information conveyed in communication, that 38% of the information is conveyed by tone of voice and 55% by body language? You can find this misinformation in many books and all over the internet. It has been quoted in learned papers and taught by at least one national training organization that really should know better. It is wrong, and yet it is based on some excellent research by a professor at the prestigious University of California at Los Angeles so… how can it be wrong?

It is wrong because somebody, somewhere, over-simplified. No doubt in a hurry, or because of a word-count limitation assigned by an editor who in turn was bound by page space, a very important piece of information about that research was omitted, not by the original researcher, Dr. Albert Mehrabian, but by someone in the subsequent reporting chain.

The fact is that Dr. Mehrabian was not researching communication in general. He was very specifically researching the communication of feelings. So when we say that 55% of the information about how someone feels is conveyed by body language, we are quite likely to be accurate. Think about it. How often can we tell how someone is feeling just by the way they move as they enter the room? The way they walk, hold their head, the droop of their shoulders, the expression on the face… oh yes, we can see Dr. Mehrabian’s research as solid. That does not mean that we know anything more about that person’s situation, about any information they may have received that led them to feel that way. It just means that we can have a fairly good idea about how the individual is feeling.

Yet, because someone over-simplified, misinformation is passed on around the world, and courses on body language are seen as even more essential to interpersonal success than they actually are.

Don’t get me wrong – body language IS important. However, it is extremely unlikely to carry 55% of the meaning of whatever interaction you may have with someone who is reporting on what is going right or wrong with a project, or if they are training you on the policies and procedures of a business, or even discussing plans for a vacation. Body language does not convey facts unless those facts are actually feelings. 

One term for what happens when this type of mistake occurs is “over-generalization.” Someone took a specific situation and assumed that it applied in a much broader context than was correct. This happens a lot. A child told that a large furry animal in a field is a cow is likely to call all horses and camels “cow” until it learns better. That is over-generalization. As adults, do we really know if research done with white male college sophomores from an Ivy League college can be generalized to group of people who are far more diverse in race, age, gender and life experience? The results may indicate a possibility, even a probability, but if we are to avoid over-generalization it needs to be replicated with a population that is far more diverse in race, age, gender and life experience before it be applied to the majority of people.

Yet that, of course, is exactly what we do when we stereotype. We take an experience, or an incident, and assume that it is always going to happen in the same way based on whatever is most noticeable about what happened. We take a person who behaves in a certain way and assume that all people like that person have the same behaviors or beliefs. Not only do we base stereotypes on our own experience, but on what we have read or heard from others, whose knowledge may be even further removed from the truth. Anyone who talked to Dr. Mehrabian about his research would have learned the truth, but the further the misinformation traveled, the more firmly wrong it was.

I once started work in a new environment in the U.S. and found myself welcomes warmly by all the staff… except one. She – I’ll call her Susan – was barely civil, and would often not respond to my cheerful “Good morning.” When she did she mispronounced my name often enough that it appeared to be deliberate. It took a while, but after some months she began to relax, and confessed to having been influenced by an episode in her teens. Her family spent some time in England, and after having become accustomed to American high school life she suddenly found herself in a far more highly structured English school being taught, and reprimanded, by English school teachers who did not appreciate her introduction of American ways and accent into their domain. She remembered the experience as truly horrible, and still hated the memory of her teachers, who were all middle aged women with, of course, English accents. Many years later, with my English accent still noticeable, I kicked up all the youthful anger and resentment she had stored up since that time. She had taken the past situation and over-generalized it to “all” middle-aged English woman – in this case the “all” being me. Stereotype. And, as she eventually realized, inaccurate. Yet it certainly slowed the efficacy of our work together.

Sometimes, when we over-generalize, or stereotype, it can hurt other people, as her lack of welcome hurt me. Sometimes it can be harmful to those who do it, and who act or make decisions based on inaccurate information.

In my work in addiction counseling I have met people from many different backgrounds and learned much from them. One day in the midst of a conversation that I don’t remember a man  turned to me and commented,

“You know a lot more about ‘the street’ than you look like, don’t you!”

I smiled and replied, “It occasionally gives me a thirty second advantage.”

He nodded thoughtfully, “My mom always says that thirty seconds is enough to hang a man.”

When a stereotype leads us to underestimate other people’s knowledge or abilities, it can indeed be harmful to us as well as to them. A bluff may be called. An employer may pass over a potentially brilliant employee who could do much for the organization. A competitor, under-estimating the abilities of other competitors, may not train or practice sufficiently prior to the contest. Serious, and maybe irrevocable mistakes may be made.

“Insufficient information” is the typical response from computers when asked to solve a problem for which the data provided is insufficient. It is worthwhile for us to take the time, and make the effort to check on whether or not we, too, have sufficient information before we make assumptions, and even more so before we act on them. An assumption that hunger is controlled for four hours can leave us hungry, even with dangerously dropping blood sugar, long before we had planned it to happen if we assume that “up to four hours” means “four hours.” It doesn’t.

We all tend to do it. Are there unfounded assumptions are leading you astray from your goals?

 

Please let me know your thoughts about this post, or the website in general, in the comment form below.

And feel free to contact me any time via the Contact or Subscribe pages.

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to our newsletter “Work in Progress (because we all are!)”

* indicates required






Email Format

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Tips for the new Supervisor
  • Risk-Taking
  • Some Ways to Make Difficult Decisions
  • Adventures in the Smog
  • Top Ten Steps to Obtaining Forgiveness
  • Pigeon Holes & Stereotypes: They Hurt… Everyone!
  • Reduce Drug Overdose Deaths with this Conversation
  • Coincidence? Or not?
  • Family roles, family trap?
  • Goals and True-Goals
  • Do You See Life’s Signals?
  • Before you take a break…

Privacy Policy
Contact Information

© Diana Gardner Robinson 2020

Copyright © 2021 · Log in

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.

The Coach of Choice
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.