Gurteen Knowledge Letter August 2022 Issue 266

Gurteen Knowledge Letter
Issue 266 – August 2022

I am starting to be asked by various organizations to re-run my monthly Zoom Conversational Leadership Cafés.

I am running a Café on “How do we disagree constructively?” for #wearehereCanada on August 12th and a Café on “Is this our Gutenberg Moment?” for NetIKX in October.

I will also be running two Cafés (western and eastern timezones) on “What is communityship?” as part of World Values Day on October 20th.

Please get in touch with me if you would like me to run one for your organization or network. You can see my past Cafés on Conversational Leadership here.

1. The Long History of Argument
   A series of talks by Rory Stewart
2. We should think carefully before speaking up!
   Speaking up is as likely to cause conflict and resentment as it is to address a real injustice
3. Myth: Our body language conveys 55% of the message
   This is a distortion of some research conducted by Albert Mehrabian in 1967
4. There is not a single, widely accepted definition of spirituality
   Spirituality need have nothing to do with religion
5. Littlewood’s Law
   An individual can expect to experience “miracles” at the rate of about one per month
6. Comparing oracy and rhetoric
   What's the difference?
7. Tweet of the Month July 2022
   July 2022
8. Help Keep My Work Alive
9. Unsubscribe
10. Gurteen Knowledge Letter

You may enjoy these three talks by Rory Stewart from the BBC Radio 4 Seriously series of audio documentaries and podcasts.

In the talks, Rory looks at the history of argument and explores its importance and the fact that it is the foundation of our democracies and how we make political decisions.

He seems to see argument solely as rhetorical debate, which is not too surprising given he was trained to argue in school, taught classical rhetoric, and was once a Member of the UK Parliament.

Although he sees the dangers of rhetoric and how dishonest arguments can threaten our democracies and provoke division, he would still like to see it taught in schools as in the past.

He thinks we need more debate and rhetoric to get at the truth and make better decisions.

I found it surprising that he makes no mention of dialogue other than in its general sense as an alternative word for debate or discourse and no mention of social reasoning or oracy.

So I'm afraid that although I enjoyed his talks, I have to disagree with him as I feel that although honest rhetoric and debate are important, we also need dialogue, and it is oracy that should be taught in schools.

Prompted by his talks, I have added a post that compares oracy to rhetoric to my blook.

We should all speak up more, should we not?

In an email to me recently, my good friend David Creelman in Toronto made what initially seemed to be the non-sensical idea that we should avoid "speaking up". In his words:

Speaking up is as likely to cause conflict and resentment as it is to address a real injustice.

I asked him to explain his reasoning, and this was his reply:

I think individuals should consider the range of outcomes, both positive and negative, that could occur from

#1 Not speaking up
#2 Speaking up in the way that first comes to mind
#3 Speaking up after having thought about it

It is surprising, maybe disappointing, how often #1 is the right way to go since the harm of speaking up outweighs the benefits--or that we just don't know enough about the situation to be confident that we should risk the harm.

#2 can be risky.

#3 is strong since it can lead to #1 when appropriate, or simply a more effective way of phrasing what you say, to whom, and when

Let's be clear about the possible harms: getting an innocent person in trouble because your perspective was wrong, rupturing relationships, or creating a climate of fear. These should not be taken lightly.

I think there is much truth in this, and the issue has gotten my attention - one of the advantages of having a wise friend who is prepared to question accepted wisdom.

David went on to explain that he feels most people do follow point #3 - "Think before you speak up". The deeper concern is that if you strongly encourage speaking up, you risk empowering people who are not thoughtful or vindictive to go around "speaking up" about every little thing they see.

I look forward to furthering my conversation with David on this topic and updating the post in my blook on speaking up, which is still a "work in progress".

Speaking up, speaking out and speaking truth to power are critical conversational leadership skills, especially when initiating change. But we need to engage in them with care.

I overheard a video on interview techniques my wife was watching recently where the instructor pointed out that:

Our body language conveys 55% of the message etc.

I would be surprised if you have not heard it said, often in a training course or at a conference.

The statement is so evidently not true, and I am amazed that people still proliferate the myth.

It is a total distortion of some research conducted by Albert Mehrabian in 1967.

In writing my blook, time and time again, I find myself not happy with my understanding of certain words and concepts, especially those that are bordering on pseudoscience or, for lack of a better term, what I call New Age mumbo jumbo, and I cannot find a definition or description that satisfies me.

I spent considerable time recently researching and reflecting on the concept of global consciousness, which tended to fall into my New Age mumbo jumbo category; however, I managed to craft a definition that satisfied my more scientific mind.

I find it interesting how long it takes me to write a description with which I am, say, 90% happy. I need to keep putting it down and coming back to it, often over months, and find myself waking up in the night thinking about the concept.

One word that has been bugging me for a while is spirituality; well, maybe two words if you include the word spirit. I want a non-religious definition —  a secular one as I don't think that spirituality should not be confused with religion. This is where I am at on spirituality so far —  I still have a lot of nighttime thinking to go.

Littlewood’s Law, or adage, states that an individual can expect to experience “miracles” at the rate of about one per month.

The law was framed by Cambridge University Professor John Edensor Littlewood. Wikipedia describes the law like this:

Littlewood defines a miracle as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million. He assumes that during the hours in which a human is awake and alert, a human will see or hear one "event" per second, which may be either exceptional or unexceptional. Additionally, Littlewood supposes that a human is alert for about eight hours per day.

As a result, a human will in 35 days have experienced under these suppositions about one million events. Accepting this definition of a miracle, one can expect to observe one miraculous event for every 35 days' time, on average – and therefore, according to this reasoning, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.

Credit: Wikipedia: Littlewood's law

Littlewood was joking, but he makes a good point. What we often consider to be miracles or paranormal phenomena are commonplace and are simply coincidences.

I have started to write about rhetoric in my blook though it is still a work in progress.

I was never taught rhetoric in school, so I was unaware of its long history and depth. Like many people, I also tended to take a negative view of the concept, given its abuse mainly by politicians.

In starting to research and understand it better, one of the first things I have done is to compare rhetoric with oracy.

On the surface, rhetoric and oracy are quite similar concepts but dig a little deeper, and there are some significant differences.

Oracy (the ability to express oneself in and understand spoken language) encompasses the positive speech aspects of rhetoric and, critically, the ability to listen. It is a crucial Conversational Leadership skill.

Here is my top tweet for July 2022.

Try talking neuro-gibberish if you’re hoping to win an argument this week. Irrelevant neuroscience information – or “neurobabble” – makes for the most convincing scientific explanations

https://buff.ly/3zxYrRZ

I tweet most days. My tweets tend to relate to material in my blook and other articles and blog posts on Conversational Leadership or Knowledge Management. You can follow me here.

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David Gurteen
Gurteen Knowledge
Fleet, United Kingdom

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