Taking Perspectives

According to Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of Spotify,

“The value of your company is equal to the sum of the problems you are able to solve.”

“Sometimes, your work is critical in ways you might not realize. It transforms the lives of those who use your product, solving problems for them. Often, whether you’re a junior or senior in your field, you might not grasp who you’re helping. I want to emphasize how vital your work is, as it translates to the benefits experienced by users.

Engineers see things with glasses of an engineer. We know why we should something coz we learnt it that way. For example, Engineers solve thinking it is an engineering problem. But this problem has direct or indirect impact to the user using that system. What this tells us is,

“Shared situations don’t always lead to shared conclusions, even with common goals and values.”

People often perceive things in ways we don’t expect. This basic misunderstanding is where frictions begin. We struggle to understand others and overlook their pain points.

Early in my career, I didn’t see it this way. We treated users like objects, discussing their problems as mere requirements. I never considered the real pain behind those needs.”

Sometimes we even don’t know who the users are. This is even more dangerous. We eventually figure it. Once you know your user, you work for them. You want to make them happy. Give them a better product they want to use and make their life bit better. There are frameworks to collect pain points. But humans are not trained to see other person’s viewpoint. We can’t see others pain. It is a key leadership quality.

How to be a better in understanding others ?

I keep asking myself, how I can train to think from users perspective. How I can take perspectives. How I can be objective and reason with logic and equally with empathy.

Organizations and small teams have frameworks to develop tools and products for their users. They have systematic ways to collect user perspectives using Design Thinking. But taking perspective is an art that does not exist in the first place. It is a skill we have to get trained on. We have to practice and get better at it. Perspective-Taking takes place when we reflect systematically to view from other’s viewpoint.

Perceptual, Conceptual and layers.

Perceptual is sensory view point of other people. Ability to understand how other person sees things in physical space.

Conceptual is viewpoint of other person’s psychological experience. This research tries to understand the difference between what is seen from what is known. Here children from 4-6 yrs old were given training to educate that there may be many interpretations for same information. They performed well in subsequent perspective-taking tasks.

In another research learning that misinterpretations can occur, gave children ability to predict and expect misinterpretations to happen in any given situation. This is a super power for children and equally to adults to expect information you have at hand might not be enought to make decision. There may be more to it and they start looking for taking perspectives, opinions and request for comments. Before we arrive at a conclusion, we want to make sure we have seen this from all angles.

Mind plays a crucial role

Humans are ego-centric. We are self-obsorbed and train to think for oneself. We start from our view point. We base it by our experiences and opinions. So perspective-taking is not a natural skill. It is a muscle you have to develop by being intentional about it. Recognize you don’t have it naturally, and train to be better at this.

Perspectives and Empathy

Empathy and Perspective-taking are twins. Both are crucial, but different approaches. It is not one vs the other. Rather, it is about when to apply what. Recognize empathy is an emotional response. Perspective-taking is more of intentional thinking. We have to use our head as much as we use our heart. Start with emotional response but end with logical thinking. One without the other is a missed opportunity. Empathy resolves conflicts, perspective-taking counteracts inherent biases and improves conflict-resolution.

How to be a good perspective taker ?

• Recognize each person as an individual
• Recognize each person have their own emotions
• Understand each persons motives, incentives and intentions
• Have innate desire to learn about others
• Understand other person’s perspectives can be influenced by larger societal values
• Improve your Active listening by being present and focus on their talk.
• Recognize people can confuse thoughts and feelings
• Understand the problem statement with clarity
• Being open to ideas and comments
• Understand everyone can be right or wrong. But reality doesnt work like that. Everything is contextual.
• So, understand the context.
• Take the disagreeing perspective to improve the accuracy of the estimates. Infact there is a research about this

References

• Taking a Disagreeing Perspective Improves the Accuracy of People’s Quantitative Estimates
• Perspective and Empathy
• Different Perspectives

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