Positionality: Share the ground you stand on

Have you ever had that situation where you are sure that you have been crystal clear in explaining not only what your idea is, but why it's important? You've supported it well. You're sure that it is the right thing for this situation or these people, and still they just didn't get it. You've made sure that it's relevant and comprehensible and defensible. What's left to try when you've done everything right? I can't promise that I know what's going wrong every time that situation is happening, but there is an issue I see over and over again, and that's when, however we've talked about, however we've helped make sense of our idea, we've focused as much or more on what's different about our idea, what's different from what people are doing now, than on what's the same. Now I get it. Already you're like, wait, wait, wait, Tamsen, I should focus on what's different or else people aren't gonna understand. Yes, and the principle I'm talking about here is that we can only reach people where they are, not where you wish they were. When we focus so much on that distance between your idea and where somebody is right now, how different it is, we end up adding to the perceived risk of changing. Is difference important? Absolutely. People have to understand that what you're talking about isn't the same as where they are right now. At the same time, we need to make sure that it isn't so different that it feels incomprehensible or indefensible to them. Let's say you do succeed at meeting them where they are. You make sure it's relevant. You talk about your idea as involving pieces and parts of what they already know, and they start to see that it is different. And yet something about how you're explaining still doesn't work. Why not? I believe the simple reason is this: that self-evident truths aren't always evident or true to everybody. Here's why that happens. What you take for reality, for the way things are, for what's right, what's different, what's working, what's not, is the view from where you stand. Now, that sounds obvious, except there's a hidden challenge there, and that is that it leaves you a blind spot exactly where you're standing. You don't realize that you are the wine in the bottle, and that's got a label on it that you can't read. Or to use another analogy, that you're like a computer that runs code that it never sees. The same is true about your ideas and what is sitting underneath them. In other words, the ground that you're standing on when you share them with other people. And this goes even deeper than individual truths or axioms. It goes into what academics call positionality, which is a ridiculous term, I grant you. It means the quality, the nature, the description, the attributes of the position that you are standing in when you come up with ideas, when you share them. Whether we realize it consciously or not, different people have different understandings and different beliefs about even what reality is. For instance, there are people who believe that A) there is a reality, there is something out there that we can know, and B) that it is the same reality, that all we have to do is study harder, science harder, explore harder, question harder in order to find it. You might not believe that. You might be saying to yourself, of course reality exists, but I also know it's true that my reality is often different than that person's reality. And then there are people who say there really isn't any reality that we can all agree on because we all have our own interpretations and anything we see, anything that's real is a product of our own experience, construction, meaning-making, et cetera. Maybe you start to see the problem. Looking back on my 2 years taking classes for my doctoral program, the insistence that we do this, that we figure out what our beliefs are about reality, about what we can know, about what we believe, about what we value, and to be upfront with that when we start to present our ideas has turned out to be one of the most useful things that I have learned. And I realize it's useful to anyone who wants to make things make sense to other people. What matters about all of this? A, those positions exist, or at least I believe they do. Second, your position is or is not going to be the same as the people that you're talking to, and you probably can't know that until you put something out there. And then C, That gap, if it exists, is oftentimes, if not always, where a well-defended, comprehensible, and relevant idea can still not land. Does this mean that you are out of luck? Well, no, but it— what it does mean is that it's a really great indicator to stop trying to convince people at that point, to stop persuading and start seeking to understand. And even better, establish mutual understanding of where each person is coming from. Why do we wanna do that? So that we can back up and find where there is common ground so that we can potentially make our idea make sense there. So how do we do this? First of all, step out a little bit and take a look at where you are so that you can say, huh, I never thought about the fact that people may see reality differently, but Now that I do know that, what do I believe? Second, it's about ensuring when you are trying to make something make sense to somebody else that you own the phrasing of that. You say, I believe that if we want to do X, then Y makes sense, and here are the things that are self-evident to me. If that still isn't working, that's the time to get curious by looking at the pieces and parts of, let's say, the core case for your idea, the outcome it delivers, the approach that you're using, and the self-evident truths that justify that approach. Where do they align and where do they not? Then get curious about where and why they don't. You might find, for instance, that someone says, "Well, I don't believe that everything is interconnected." Okay, maybe they don't. After all, believing that everything is interconnected is what's known as a primal belief. It is not something that changes, but we might be able to go one level up and say, Okay, maybe you don't believe that everything's interconnected, but would you agree that in this particular context, for instance, that we're at least interdependent? Something that I do is going to affect something that you do, even if it's not direct. If we now understand that interdependence is where we share, then the job is back on you to say, can you now make your case through that shared common ground of interdependence, that place where you do both see the world the same way, even if you're standing in slightly different positions. People are different. Gift for the obvious, I know. But it also means that there is many, many layers of difference, and each of those layers of difference shapes how someone receives information, but also how they give it. Ultimately, when it comes to making sure your idea is strong enough to survive first contact with an outside audience, avoid those avoidable errors of irrelevance, incomprehensibility, indefensibility. Locate your idea in the landscape of other ideas. Offer a frame for your idea and then fill it with the content of your idea. And then finally, support your idea with the evidence of your audience's own experience. Those cures, those steps ready your idea, but paying attention to your positionality, where you stand and where your ideas come from, help make sure that you are ready too. It helps you understand the context from which you have your idea in the first place, and thus what you might be blind to when you're trying to present it to somebody else. I will go into more detail on each of these kinds of position, reality, knowledge, values in upcoming posts, but in the meantime, I want you to sit with this question: where might something that feels self-evident to you be more a product of your position than of a reality whether or not that exists.