The other day, someone came into my office with a bad idea for a project of mine. I regularly get bad ideas from this person, so I naturally have just set myself to resisting whatever this person (let’s say a “him”) says and hoping he’ll go away and leave me alone so I can do what I know is best anyhow. Sometimes, though, this person wins and I end up begrudgingly doing what he suggests, even though, I “know” it’s not the best thing to do. Either way, I usually fight his ideas. Because mine are better.
Or so I thought.
On this particular occasion, I lost myself and somehow decided to listen to this person and find out why he thought this idea was good, even though my initial reaction was that my own plan was better. I decided this time to really hear what he had to say, though, and actually discovered there was a good idea here that I had missed. I still didn’t like the implementation he put on his idea, but there was a good idea behind it all, a good idea I was about to dismiss entirely. After a few more moments of discussion, we actually arrived at a new plan, that was better than either one of our original ideas. He walked away happy and I had a better solution than I would have otherwise.
By being willing to listen, by exploring this seemingly bad idea for just a moment before dismissing it, by looking for the idea’s motivation and treating this person as a real person with skills and motivations I made someone who I might have considered a time sink into someone who can actually help me do my job.
Now that’s power we can all use and learn!
While Scot acknowledges this story is slightly fictional, and really only slightly, he writes it as a good reminder to maintain an open approach to ideas and people.