Beneath the Surface of Scepticism: The Anatomy of Doubts

Mike 

Gridlock Triangle is back today. We want to expand it to doubts. Doubts are part of our lives, no matter how we look at it, we doubt a lot of things around us. Let's look into it together to see how can we doubt better. My name is Mike. 

Yuen 

It's Yuen. 

Mike 

Welcome to The Imperfect Clinician. 

Yuen 

Last week we talked about fear of failure. We introduced the concept of Gridlock Triangle, and today we'll talk about the anatomy of doubts. Tell me more. 

Mike 

Doubts are part of our lives. It's a very big part of our lives where we question ideas, things, people's behaviours around us and the most common companion of our decision-making process are doubts and we doubt a lot of things in our life. Some of them relate to us, where we doubt our actions and our abilities, but also there are things in our surroundings, in our environment that we also put up for doubts and today we want to focus on the latter. I think that doubts as the way of expressing lack of success in the ideas that are formed around us. So for example, in a company there is a new project and you have got certain doubts around. Whether it's going to be successful, whether it's going to benefit the company or the team and sometimes not getting on board with those projects can mean that we are missing out on progression and we don't progress to the level that we potentially could without people around us, we doubt people's intentions. We doubt events that are happening even in the news or within, you know, the friends that we see every day. And for me, doubts as such don't necessarily have to be a negative feature of our lives. It often allows us to look at the ideas and allow us to question the validity and essentially in the scientific term, can lead to more progression. But sometimes those doubts become overpowering, and that can lead to our inactivity inaction or inability to make a decision or just to scrapping the ideas and choosing to do something completely different. What do you think about that? 

Yuen 

So I want to pick the example that you just talked about, you know is company launch a project can be quite doubtful about whether first of all, that it's going to have any impact. And second of all, whether it's just for show, whether it's actually changing behaviours and changing cultures, and sometimes it might be a combination of factors, it might be that it's a colleague that you know who's always been very cynical about anything new, maybe because of their experience. Maybe because there's a lot on the plate and maybe because it's a way of venting so it can be an individual factor. Where you don't believe things around you because in inverted commas ‘I've seen it all and it never makes any difference.’ 

Mike 

So is it based on personal experience that you become? I don't know, very cynical about ideas around you, or is it realistic, you know, assessment of the situation? 

Yuen 

So I think. It can be both in the realistic situation, I would presume sometimes people want to be a realist instead of an optimist and so they use it as a way of bracing themselves for any potential impact, or lack thereof. Or it might be that a person has lost trust with the system because again, I've seen it all, and it never makes changes for the umpteen time. So I just lose trust. But also there is another part where we can't just look at an individual level. We need to look at from a system level. Where if this is happening, a majority of people are saying this, then what is not landing right? Is it actually just a talk and not a change in action because you know you can dress it up as pretty as you want and call it 10 different names in 10 different quarters? But if it doesn't land, if it doesn't change people's behaviour, if it doesn't change, how you talk about it, it doesn't. Change how it's being perceived on the ground. Then it has a no chance of. Making an impact. 

Mike 

And then if you express your doubts, OK, it does not make you a stumbling block, does it not increase both confusion and also does it not increase the chance of argument? 

Yuen 

So I think first of all, having an environment that enable people to voice their doubts is important and not everyone has that. So if you notice that you are hearing doubts, I think first of all, pat, on yourself, if you're a leader and go actually people can come to me and talk about their worries, the second thing is if you are the person who's voicing your doubt. I think a lot of the time is how you do it. That's very important, in terms of am I just moaning about it? Am I giving constructive criticism or am I just sabotaging it for no apparent reason? If you're a leader that's listening to peoples doubts, you have the ability to shift it to become an active listening activity. So by doing that I mean somebody might say. Oh, I don't. Think this well will work. You can use that opportunity to say or I can see that you're really concerned about this or you're not really on board, tell me more. And it might be that people on the ground are seeing things that you are not. It might be that people with diverse background are understanding things that you can't, and so they might be able to provide valuable insights to you. So I think looking at from three different lens is important. If you're the leader where you are the listening party is actually a great activity to do and hopefully you should be doing this before launching any projects. However, if you're the party that voices your doubt. It's how you deliver it. That's very important because you know, moaning is easy. Everyone can talk about what's wrong, but it's the smaller percentage of people that can come up with the what about or a solution or maybe different options. And this is where you make a difference and maybe it's the other small percentage of people where they're just constantly think everything is wrong. And so with that, sometimes it's personality because they burn out with their life and they're just taking out everyone. Sometimes is the burnout in the work culture and it's that's the case. Then we need to. Look at improving it. But this is how I would see it in. Terms of that project that you've mentioned 

Mike 

So yeah, you mentioned trust and as a leader it's important to build that trust between the team that you operate with and when the team members, when there are us, you know that are expressing our doubts. That can potentially lead to conflict, especially if you are doing it repeatedly. I think it comes from lack of ability to see the purpose because you then begin to question everything from the very bottom up, yeah. And this is more of a problem with the individual. Well, rather than with the whole project. I mean, I think it's great to express your doubts that I think it's great to be critical of the situation of a project. But I think you need to come up with solution as well rather than just to criticise things. If you don't cope with the solution to those doubts, if you just. Becoming this old, grumpy man, a woman who is just not convinced, and you cannot convince yourself to do the project cause there is a lot of things around us that we don't have a lot of influence on. And sometimes we just have to learn how to live with them. Even despite, you know, having some doubts, we can find solutions how to make things work around us, because otherwise that's going to stumble our progression and we will not be able to not only go forward but also not enjoy what's happening around us. 

Yuen 

Yeah, and and I want to say usually, when you get into a situation like this, there will always be this word that's involved, which is change. And for some people change is harder because they are stepping outside of their comfort zone. They don't think they can do it. It might be that they don't feel the need to do it. They might go. We've always been doing it this way. Why change now, especially when we're doing it? Well, and also when change is involved, there is always fear of uncertainty because you don't know how that will change your role. You don't know how it's going to change your efficiency. You might be quite comfortable having your routine. And if that's shaken up, understand the way people will feel, first of all, quite defensive about it. And so I think when you are influencing others to change and motivating that, you have to be able to learn to address those fears and understand there might be people who find it harder to step outside of their comfort zone. Or maybe there might be people who avoid in all capacity to be out of their comfort zone, both professionally and personally. 

Mike 

How do you make people who doubt more at ease with the ideas that you want to propose? Because it is, you know, all companies, all organisations, all families and you know, groups of people in order to progress in order to face changing reality, have to introduce certain amendments in the systems, and that requires getting people on board, so how do you make it easier for people to become more on board, more believing in the success of this operation? 

Yuen 

Make sure they are part of the process. Make sure the voices are heard and give them a control of the situation. So don't spring things on people. If I want to create a new system where I have to involve different teams. I would always ask them. It might be that I suggest process ABC and they'll go B doesn't work because this is what we do and I don't do what they do. So their opinion is really important for me and I might go, I think C works for your team, for example. And then I am more than happy for it to be amended for people to poke holes at it and say we don't work this way or this will slow us down significantly and it it will make our work not sustainable. So making sure that people are involved in the process and when you do that, you are giving them more opportunity to voice their concerns earlier on and also when they give you suggestions, you can work through it together. So they feel like they are part of the change. Not being forced to change. 

Mike 

So tell me, how are you different when you are introducing the change? How are you landing it on? Let's say I don't know the family OK between us or your team. And how does it change to when you are on the receiving end? Do you analyse do, I don't know, SWAT analysis of the situation around you or how how? Do you approach that? 

Yuen 

There is only so much change that I've planned. Hopefully what I'm hoping is when you do change consistently because you always want to improve. How you work you want to make yourself more efficient. You want to learn from mistakes. These are little steps to expose people to small changes. And when it comes to bigger changes, yes, accepting that it's hard. From my perspective, leading the change involves a lot of conversation and listening with other people and when change is thrust upon me, which is common too, regardless of how senior you are as a person, it's how you first of all feel emotionally how you regulate that, how you dress, how you feeling. Before you can even speak to your colleague. Or your peers or people in your group that you're leading, because without that what happens is you transfer those feelings and you almost impose on them by the way that you speak and how you start the conversation. So if you're nervous about something, if you haven't addressed it within yourself, how you say things in your tone of voice in your speed will always be led by those. 

Mike 

Do you think that it helps when you create an alternative and you give up for discussion, even for yourself? Two options instead of having a you know too many of them or just one? And you choose the one that works better for you. 

Yuen 

I think sometimes that helps. For some people who struggle to think of an alternative, that's always a way to, I guess, change the perspective to what if it's not that, it's what. If it's something else. Maybe this something else is not good enough. What can you think of that? I might have missed? So I think never look the playing field and almost handing that power over to somebody in. Say you have the choice. You are involved and your say is really important in making this work and you are heard. I find that's helpful. 

Mike 

Do you think that people who have a lot of doubts are just very hard to adapt to the situation?  

Yuen 

Not all the time. From my experience, sometimes people can ask a lot of the right questions. It doesn't mean that they don't believe in the change. It's almost like you sometimes need a few devil advocates, or maybe a few different people to point out that the worst case scenario. So you prepared for it. So it's helpful to have constructive discussion within the group you should be surrounding yourself with people. Just go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with everything that you've said. 

Mike 

No, they yeah, I completely agree that you know, if you have people who are completely putting you on the back all the time, then you can believe that you are the one and only and you don't make any mistakes. 

Yuen 

Yeah. And and I feel uncomfortable when I only hear that. So I think it's really important that you will always have people who... It doesn't have to be doubts. It can be people going, ‘I think we can do a bit better’ or I think I I think. We can be more efficient. How about we do this and I always welcome ideas like this. 

Mike 

And and this is how you overcome the problem with having doubts when you come up with solutions that you think of other ways of dealing with the problem. But I think that the real problem is when you are just doubting things around you just. No, that's not gonna work no matter what you do. That's a poor idea. And we all doomed. And it it. It's not going to have any positive impact on you. 

Yuen 

I think usually this comes from a place of emotions, whether that's resentment, whether that's fear, whether that's feeling fed up, frustrated not being heard, or maybe a combination of all of that, or maybe it's not related to what you do or what the workplace is. Somebody maybe is quite fed up personally or maybe. I don't know. They've had a difficult. Time. So I think taking into account peoples’ story and what they come to work with, cause you know, asking people to leave their personal life at home is just ridiculous and not possible. Take that into account when you listen to people. And sometimes people need more one to one time where you know either yourself or or manager or a leader and sits down with them and say: I can see you're really struggling. I'm here to listen. And then you give them the space and the time to speak. 

Mike 

So the dialogue? Yep. Yeah, have been listening ear. That's something that helps us as leaders to to deal with with those situations. And do you have a lot of moments where you doubt not not yourself, we we're not talking about that in ourselves. We're talking still about, you know the. Things that are, you know, impacting on your world and you say ohh no, don't think it's a good idea. 

Yuen 

Sometimes, when opinions are being given by people who doesn't understand the system, then I get quite doubtful, but I still go. OK, tell me more? And then seeing whether I can be convinced. Sometimes it's more around the uncertainty of what's going to happen. That can make me feel, umm, I wonder again. Like you said, the what we what we talked about the uncertainty sometimes can be quite scary at times, but I think for me knowing that I'm doing it right for the people. And I'm setting up a system that's right for the people and supportive to others making environment that feels safe for them. I feel less and less so. 

Mike 

I personally think that I am in general quite optimistic person and I very often, you know, go with ideas to go through with the ideas and I'm happy to try things out and I'm making mistakes just like everybody else. And I don't think I live with those mistakes. I think I'm trying to learn from them. 

Yuen 

Very much so. 

Mike 

Or I've learned how to deal with them that way? Yeah, just to embrace those imperfections. Just to embrace the mistakes and just go ahead and try out. But then at the same level, I think that I'm quite realistic in the initial assessment of not only like we're talking situations and project, but also about people. And I always give the benefit of the doubt, speaking of doubts, but I still remain quite critical, not critical. I want to call it realistic. Realistic intentions, as I have a bit of experience in that field and I don't see the value in it or I think that more so what I do. Is I look at the risk and benefit but not risk and benefit that amount of work that has to be put into? It for the gains. OK. And sometimes, you know, there's change in the system that involves a lot of training, a lot of, you know, you have to learn a complete new skill and you see the the payouts going to be negligible. Then you just can't go on board with it because you just see. No, you're just thinking how do I avoid doing it? How can I sign out? You know, I think that it is really important to acknowledge those doubts. And I think the doubts can push us in the right direction as well. We just don't want to get to the point that we're going to doubt everything that's happening around us. I would like to encourage everyone to look at the anatomy of their own doubts, look at the things they've done recently that they say ohh I I don't think that's gonna work. And try to think of a solution as an exercise. What would make this work? How would you change it to see if the outcome would be align with the purpose of this change? I think that this is a very good exercise cause it helps you understand others point of view and it allows you to become more consciously critical of the projects and ideas around you, so today we discussed about the doubts, the doubts that we have about the world around. Yes. And join us next time, cause we're going to discuss about our own self-doubt, self-esteem and lack of confidence. This is going to be a big one and I thank you very much. For today. And we'll hope you're going to join us next time. Bye bye.  

Mike 

It's about time for Yuen Reads. 

Yuen 

In Yuen Reads today the book title is ‘Girls, Woman and Other’ by Bernardine Evaristo. It's the winner of Booker Prize 2019. And my mind is blown. It is fiction, it's got riveting writing. I was reading two of the books at the same time, but kept going back to this one and felt the urge to finish this before I read any of the books. It spans generations and centuries and makes me feel deeply the struggle of life. I got to step into 12 different characters with their lives intertwined. And it touched on history, past, present and future. After devouring the book, I realised it touched on so many different crucial topics such as racism, drug abuse, slavery, domestic abuse, LGBTQI +, love, abandonment, adoption and religion. The writing is exquisite, where I feel like I'm watching a movie. Or in the journey with them, all of them understanding their pain and change. And it was liberating for the characters and myself alike. I would definitely recommend this book. 

Mike 

Thank you for listening to The Imperfect Clinician podcast. 

Yuen 

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Mike 

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