A few days ago I finished Kathryn Schulz book – On being wrong, and it is really “an idea worth spreading” (She also have a TED talk which you can find here: http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html).
I found the book very inspiring. I think it puts some of our communication problems in a new focus. We all know that the hardest thing when you communicate is to stay in dialogue, we need to listen and fight the feelings we are having, to stay focused on the meaning of the conversation. A misunderstanding can create a feeling which can lead to that you will move from a dialogue to discussion or worse.
Most of us are also afraid of talking in public, we are afraid of making mistakes, being misunderstood, or being wrong (specially when talking to colleagues).
So where does Kathryn Schulz book fit in? We are afraid of being wrong, not to be wrong, but the feeling of being wrong. This feeling is suppressing people to add their insights to the pool of knowledge in dialogues, meetings or at work. We think of conversation like if they were a game where you can win, that someone is keeping score whenever we are being wrong. We have for a very long time learned, in schools and at work, that it is better to find small error in some fact or the language used by someone than actually form our own opinion, since we do not have to risk anything ourself and we feel good when we find a small error within the argument coming from the other person. We have learned that it is good to look at the detail of a discussion and not the meaning of the discussion.
How many conversations/meetings have you walked away from, unfulfilled, with a feeling that we are just talking around the issue instead of the issue? Talking only about the details of the arguments instead of the meaning of the conversation?
