Black, white, republican, democrat, south, north, mac, wrong PC, introvert, extrovert, death penalty, no death penalty, pro-life, pro-choice, pro this, pro that. How do we stop polarizing? If you set aside a moment to really watch this video.
I believe you will be armed with one of the most powerful tools to stop polarizing and bridge the divide. Whatever that divide is in your world. To equip you properly with this tool, I'm gonna be sharing one larger brain shift a concrete example.
One single beautiful question that you can have in your back pocket to immediately stop polarizing conversation even in the exact moment that it's happening and I'll wrap up with one really clear memorable illustration or drawing that will allow you to make this stick. Let's get into it, might need this. I got this concept from a brilliant human being and mentor Matt Church and he asked the question, what's the third option?
What's the third choice? And that's your question to stop polarizing in its tracks right black, white. What's the third option?
Republican, democrat. What's the third option? Maybe the third option is that we've taken two parties and lumped every possible major giant social issue in only two categories.
Maybe it's actually a little bit more complex. I think one of the skills that we need to develop in ourselves first and then encourage in others is a comfort with complexity. We don't have very much of it right now.
Right, we only have patience for little sound bites and sips. But if we want to stop polarizing and quit boiling things down to black and white and swim in the gray a little bit we're gonna need to develop a little bit and up our comfort level, stretch our comfort zone with complexity and I believe the question, what's the third option? Is an extremely powerful tool to pull yourself and others out of that extreme.
So, I'll give you a very real life example that actually happened yesterday between a conversation with my wife Kate and my brother Ben and myself. So, we're sitting on the couch pretending that we're sports fans with a steelers game on in the background and somehow I don't know how. We started talking about space exploration and billionaires going into space and that started getting pitted up against public education, right.
So, how are we spending billions of dollars to sit a couple people on top of a bomb and launch them into space when Kate used to work at a school as a school nurse were 80-90% of the kids were getting free or reduced lunch because they were at or below the poverty line. So, we're talking about like kids are eating only when they go to school. How do you hold those two things up, right ?
So, we started getting this heated debate and I really love space exploration, it excites me. I love looking up at the stars, it expands my perspective of the universe. The idea of setting up a base on the moon and being a pioneer and exploring Mars is really cool and I also believe that public education is gravely underfunded that teachers are horribly underpaid, right?
All these complex beliefs but in the conversation what ended up happening was Kate started getting more and more fired up and passionate about public education and like what the heck, how can we do right and we started me and Ben started defending space and saying, "You know, we're literally allotting 1% or less of the world's resources toward exploring new planets and getting people excited about something new and discovery and whatever else and at one point, I stopped and I realized that this conversation was completely arbitrary. We were polarizing further and further apart as the conversation was going for absolutely no reason because we've chosen two somewhat arbitrary things and pitted them against each other and I think from the time we're very young. I'm even mindful of it with my son Otto as I'm teaching him.
Yes, no, this is right, this is wrong. We're taught that you the answer on your test is either right or wrong and so we lose our capacity for complexity and so what I said in that moment to Kate and just pause the conversation slowed everything down was realizing like, "Wait a second, we're taking these two issues. What's the third option?
", the third option is actually there's if you made a pie chart of all the ways that people spend their money. If you made all the way a pie chart of just the way that billionaires spend their money. In a pie chart of the way the government spends their money and then you made another pie chart that was the human suffering pie chart and it was the slice of pie of all the challenges that things need from water quality to water pollution to climate change to take every single issue put it onto one pie chart.
That is a much more holistic big picture conversation that we're now able to say like, "Okay, if we look at this from here how should resources be allotted to address these problems and does it make sense to take some of the best and smartest people and put them towards space travel as opposed to education or these other 17 issues", you can tell us I'm unpacking this that we didn't get to any big solution. Because when you increase your capacity for complexity, you don't necessarily fix something but you certainly don't fix something when you boil it down to simplicity and you say either this or that. Because then you just create a fight between something as opposed to exploration and a combined mission to create some solution or better world.
So, the illustration that I thought was really useful and memorable is a Venn diagram. So, we would often create a Venn diagram or t-chart to create a pros and cons list, right. So, on this side is stay in your current job on this side is leave your current job and you blend them together and you list out the pros and the cons of each and maybe the benefits of doing something in the middle.
The idea that Matt introduced was forget about Venn diagrams. What if you create a triple Venn diagram and you added a circle to the bottom and that circle was titled, what's the third option? So, in this case, that third circle you fill with answers to that question because there's not really only three options either, right?
It's not about a or b or and then maybe option c. It's actually, you've got the whole alphabet of choices in front of you and so that circle might have stay in current job but ask for three days remote, leave current job but ask if you can stick around part time as a consultant, right? There's all these other creative options that we don't let our minds consider because I believe our brains have developed and maybe even been washed a little bit to love and crave simplicity and to avoid complexity.
If you really like this concept you'll love this video on how to start a difficult conversation at work. It's one of the videos that I got the most email responses from people saying, 'Oh my goodness, this was so useful. I forwarded it to my team", etc and I think and trust you will really love it.
Have fun exploring your third option.
