Helping humans, hard fun? But the best kind of fun :)! - Generations of models for how to help humans

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

One sentence summary: understanding humans is hard - when trying to help: 1. look for the root not proximate cause, 2. take into account others and the environment as well as the individual and 3. think about how your and the individuals emotional state will affect things... Oh, and have fun :)

The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe. A human brain has more connections than there are stars in the universe!

Helping people is hard. However, done well I find helping people is fun :)!!

Five generations of how to identify the root cause of a problem:

• G1: person is a good / bad employee

• G2: person has strengths and weaknesses

• G3: strengths and weaknesses have strengths and weaknesses :) (eg someone is good at managing a certain type of person but bad with another type of person)

• G4: G3 + when looking for the root cause, did it originate from the individual (I used to assume far too often things originated with the individual), others (eg someone has poor tone because someone provoked them vs the individual originated the tone) or the environment (eg looming deadline is causing stress leading to poor tone)

• G5: G4 + including how ‘emotional tank levels’ for all parties at G4 can affect things (eg if someone is in a really bad spot their comms tone might be far worse because of this, eg if you are really drained today you are probably looking at the world more negatively than is fair)

When looking to help people (others and/or myself), I ask a set of questions that I hope sets me on the correct ROUTE:

• 1. Is the problem I have identifying the root cause or a proximate cause (symptom)? (Try to always go a couple of layers deeper to check if you are at the root cause or not)

  • What is the Root cause?

• 2. Have I considered not just the individual, but also the environment and others? (This is to try and break me out of just looking at the individual… which I find I can easily do. Often I find the root cause is not the individual, but someone else or the environment)

  • Are there Other things that may be factors?

• 3. Is the person sometimes good at this and other times not good at this? (This allows me to try and get at the nuance of strengths and weaknesses thereby not having an overly simple articulation of the root cause. Eg is someone good at managing this person, but not that person? Hmmm, why!)

  • Is this an Unusual circumstance?

• 4. How full is my emotional tank? (If I’m depleted have I taken into account how this will be affecting myself and my view of the world? Eg if my tank is empty I’m typically far more negative.)

  • How is my Tank?

  • "Hack 1: if your emotional tank is low TELL PEOPLE IT IS AND WHY!" I don’t know about you, but I find understanding people hard. So if you know if your tank is low please let others know! …however I’ve found the emptier my tank is the less emotionally self-aware I am. Annoyingly, when it matters most to be self aware I find I’m the least self aware!!!

  • "Hack 2: if I don’t know where I am in my emotional tank (ie I have to ask the question of where am I) then typically I’m pretty depleted!"

  • "Hack 3: get external input on where your emotional tank is by... asking others if you seem tense… and then listening to what they say :)!"

  • "Hack 4: mental health days are a thing! If you need a day off for inside or outside of work things then TAKE ONE!"
    
    

• 5. How full is the individual’s emotional tank? (If the individual’s emotional tank is depleted should I be treating them differently? Eg cut slack or offer support instead of provide feedback.)

• How is the Emotional tank of the individual?

• "Hack 5: to try and determine if someone’s tank is low, if their tone is significantly worse than usual I ask ‘how are you?’ vs responding to them." This can allow them the space to open up.

• "Hack 6: If you can see someone needs it encourage them to take the rest of the day off or tomorrow off."
  
  

Is someone bad at their job... Or are you bad at understanding how to help them :)!

• “Built not born.”

  • We are all born not able to talk or walk... let alone do a 21st century job!

  • We need to build and cultivate ourselves and others.

  • Finding how to help others is one of the most fun games I know of.

  • Don’t get annoyed if someone didn’t do good, get happy because you found a way to help someone!

• “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Carl Jung

  • I find that everytime I find a way to help someone… I also find how to help myself! Yay!

  • For some reason it's easy for me to see the twig in someone else's eye but not the log in mine :(.

• When I find something that didn’t go well it makes me happy, not annoyed.

  • It is an opportunity to help someone AND to help myself.

  • “Be the change you want to see.”

  • Don’t be annoyed at something and not try to help. Helping = happiness :)!

  • “You have no right to be annoyed at someone if you haven't told them about what is annoying you.”

• Jingle: “Don’t be sad about bad, help yourself to some happiness”. TM DA :). (i’ve decided i’m going to try and make a jingle for each blog as well as a one sentence summary! )

  • Helping others = helping yourself.

  • Helping humans might be hard, but done well it’s fun!!

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Delicious Details (please read, I like this bit far more than the summary)

All models are wrong… but some are useful :). The world is extremely complex, while models are an approximation of the world (and as such wrong as they do not capture everything), good models help you understand the world better than having nothing as a guide to navigate.

• Ultimately everything is human capital.

  • Eg the chair I’m sitting on to type this is ultimately the product of human capital.

  • Eg the computer I’m using to type this was made by humans.

  • Eg the internet that I’m going to send this to you over was made by humans.

  • Eg the coffee I drank this morning is made by humans.

  • “People are the best of times, people are the worst of times.”

  • Honestly the number of times I’ve tried to help others and / or myself and actually hindered is annoyingly high.

  • But as they say “life doesn’t get easier, you get better at it”.

  • Below are some thoughts on how I try to help!

Do you know what I also find complex? People. Very very very very very complex! Over time I try to develop and improve models, thereby hopefully increasing my understanding of the world and hopefully being able to help more :)!!! Here is one model lens I currently use to better understand how to help people at work:

• G1: a person is a good / bad at their job

  • This is a very one-dimensional view

• G2: a person has strengths and weaknesses

  • someone is not good at everything or bad at everything, but good in some areas and bad in others.

  • Eg someone is good at people management but perhaps weak at problem solving

• G3: a person has strengths and weaknesses even within a certain area

  • someone might be a good manager of a specific type of person but not others (please note that I think one key aspect of management strength is the ability to manage a wide variety of people)

  • Someone might be poor at problem solving at figuring out how to significantly improve a product (eg making a new deal maker) but be great at problem solving how to get our customers to see why we a new deal maker. So they are not ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at problem solving, but have relative strengths and weaknesses within problem solving itself!

• G4: G3 + environment / others / individual.

  • G1-3 are looking at the individual only.

  • Proximate vs root cause. When you are trying to ‘problem solve’ try to always get to the root cause. Unfortunately in the past I’ve many times treated a symptom (proximate cause) and not the root cause. I try to always ask myself this: ‘is this to proximate or root cause?’ / AKA can i go deeper.

    • I often rephrase this as ‘root cause vs symptom’. Eg if you have a headache and you take a panadol the headache will go away for a bit but then return once the panadol has worn off. Best to find the reason causing the headache (root cause) and treat this, not address the symptom with a panadol.

  • Example:

    • Let’s say that in a meeting someone spoke with a tone that was not great. Was this:

      • 1. The individual / yourself. Eg does the person need to think more deeply about their tone and eg find a way to ‘provoke thought’ vs ‘tell people how it is’? If the person is the root cause then try to help them level up through energising feedback :).

      • 2. Others. Eg did someone else say something incendiary and this caused the individual to respond with poor tone. Of course we try to ‘respond not react’, but it’s quite possible here that if you are looking to try and help, the person to speak to is ‘the other’ here (root cause), not ‘the individual’ (symptom).

      • 3. The environment. Eg does someone have poor tone in the meeting but if you zoom out they are in a mega crunch time, and this behaviour is uncharacteristic of them. So it’s the environment causing the tone (root cause), not a systemic area to address with the person (symptom).

• G5: G4 + including how ‘emotional tank levels’ (see below for more detail) for all parties at G4 can affect things.

• What come after ‘Generation 6’? I don’t know yet, please let me know any ideas you have!

Emotional Tank Talk:

• I’m a big fan of the concept of one having ‘an emotional tank’.

• On my best days I like to think I’m alright… on my worst days I’m really really bad at life :( !

• Honestly, I think you can be a totally different person when your emotional tank is full vs when it is empty.

• I think you should treat yourself and others differently depending on where they / you are in their / your emotional tank! Here are my rules of thumb:

  • I’m a big fan of the concept of positive sentiment override. This is from Nobel Prize winning economist Danny Kahneman and says ‘if 75%+ of your time is positive then you have positive sentiment override’. Eg if you work for 4 hours and 3 of the hours are good but 1 is bad, then you don’t care about the 1 bad hour because of the 3 positive hours, ie you have positive sentiment override for the 1 negative hour. However if the ratio is 2 hours positive to 2 hours negative you don’t have positive sentiment override for the 2 negative. I think it’s basically impossible to have every minute of anything be positive!

  • I’m going to invert this ratio here :):

    • ‘Treat normally’ if emotional tank is 25%+ full.

      • Eg if someone has exhibited poor tone in a meeting

      • AND they are the root cause of the tone (ie not others, not the environment)

      • AND their emotional tank is 25%+ full

      • THEN give them constructive feedback.

    • ‘Cut slack’ if emotional tank is 10-15% full.

      • Eg if someone has exhibited poor tone in a meeting

      • AND they are the root cause of the tone (ie not others, not the environment)

      • AND their emotional tank is 10-25%+ full

      • THEN cut them some slack. Eg say ‘hey, how are you today?’

    • ‘Provide support’ if emotional tank is less than 10% full.

      • Eg if someone has exhibited poor tone in a meeting

      • AND they are the root cause of the tone (ie not others, not the environment)

      • AND their emotional tank is less than 10%+ full

      • THEN give them support. Eg say ‘hey, how are you today? Do you want to talk about it? Is there something I can take off your plate?’

• I have a tank, you have a tank, we all have tanks! Thanks for our tanks!

  • I don’t want to be a robot, I like having emotions, I like feeling things.

  • “For machines downtime is a bug, for humans it’s a feature.” Arianna Huffington.

  • I think that, as above, you should treat others differently depending on how full their emotional tank is… and also you should treat yourself differently depending on how full your emotional tank is!

  • For some reason my default is to treat myself the same. It can be that exactly when I need to be kind to myself I’m the hardest on myself because I’m not thinking about my emotional tank levels! What a silly billy!

  • “The golden rule: treat others the way you would like to be treated.” I use the same levels above for when I should cut myself some slack or ask for support!

• Post traumatic growth and building resilience.

  • This is a topic for another day but I think you want to get better at managing your emotional tank so you become depleted as little as possible.

  • This is basically around how often your emotional tank gets to 25% or lower.

Alright, let’s try and wrap all these thoughts into a nice checklist :). Dis is delightful, checklist-ising = energ-izing :)!

• 1. For this problem  have I identified the root cause or a proximate cause (symptom)?

  • Try to always go a couple of layers deeper to check if you are at the root cause or not.

  • This is meant to be covering off G1-5.

• 2. Have I considered not just the individual, but also the environment and others?

  • Addressing G4

• 3. Is the person sometimes good at this and other times not good at this?

  • This is meant to specifically address G3: aka hopefully allows me get at the nuance of strengths and weaknesses.

• 4. How full is my emotional tank?

  • Eg if I’m depleted have I taken this into account for how it will be affecting myself and my view of the world? Eg if my tank is empty I’m typically far more negative.

  • Addressing part of G5.

• 5. How full is the individual’s emotional tank?

  • Eg if the individual’s emotional tank is depleted should I be treating them differently?

  • Addressing the other part of G5.

The end :)