Imagine you’re a captain of a ship setting sail from London, United Kingdom to the United States. You know that where you set your destination matters, for a 4 degree difference in navigation determines if you end up in New York City or Miami. It determines if you are still wearing your winter jacket or sipping a beverage on a sunny warm beach.
That is the power of micro adjustments. As the ship launches from one dock and before it lands into the other dock, it is constantly making micro adjustments.
Why? Because the tide, waves, wind, sun, weight of the boat, number of passengers, amount of cargo, wear and tear on the machinery, etc. all of these factor in the ability of the whole ship to make it from one place to another.
Because of all these factors and that a ship is huge and heavy, micro adjustments have to be made constantly: maybe it’s throttling back when the waves are tough, maybe it’s full speed ahead through the calm sea, maybe it’s changing course a bit to avoid collision with an object or another ship.
Huge and heavy things cannot be changed instantaneously. If you tried to change direction on a large ship, it will likely stall or tip over and sink.
Similarly, huge and heavy things such as conflict (aka the elephant in the conference room) cannot be changed instantaneously. Micro adjustments are needed to turn around tough situations, strong opinions, or adversarial relationships.
Unlike a ship, you cannot throttle the engine or push through to navigate through conflict. But us humans have a far more exquisite and remarkable way to do micro adjustments: through feedback.
If hearing the word feedback makes you cringe or flashback of terror, I understand because feedback has been used unskillfully, ineffectively, and even harmfully at time. (FYI I do not recommend the feedback sandwich technique.)
To me, feedback is a gift – it’s a way of truly knowing what is working and working for someone, including myself. Without feedback we are stuck in our vacuums, blind spots, and monologue stories. With feedback we get to understand what others see that we cannot see, we get to share what we see and others cannot.
Feedback is like touching an elephant.
There once was a merchant who brought back an elephant to the village. The villagers have never encountered an elephant before. In the village there were three blind people and they were curious about the elephant too. The first blind person touched the ear and said: “Aha! An elephant is like a fan that I can wave and cool myself with.” The second person touched the tail and said: “No, no, no! You got it wrong, an elephant is like a rope that I can tie things with.” The third person touched the tail and said: “No, you’re both wrong! An elephant is like a tree trunk that I can lean on.” The three people yelled, argued, and screamed about who was right and wrong. This is where the story ends.
The reality is that they were all right: they each touch upon a different part of the large complex elephant and have different perspectives.
The reality is that they were all wrong: they each only touch upon a different part of the large complex elephant and cannot comprehend the enormity of the entire animal.
I like to imagine a different ending where each blind person shared their perspective and put together a weird looking animal that is a cross between a fan, rope, and trunk. Kinda something a second grader would draw 🙂 Still not the elephant but much closer to one than before.
Learn more about putting all the principles in play here.
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Nancy Li helps leaders and managers create a toolkit to navigate through conflict and reach their goals.
Learn more here: https://pannapanya.com/
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