As have a lot of people, I have been thinking a lot about the election we just had in the United States and looking for lessons that we can use to take to our business lives, our public lives, and our personal lives.
And, one of the really frustrating things about any sort of political discourse, especially here in America, is that no matter which side you are on, if someone disagrees with you, they are a big fat moron and you are the only one that knows anything.
Strangely enough, this is actually how that plays out in many areas, not just politics.
Why do I say that?
Because all of us have a world view and experiences that are entirely unique to us and which make us have knowledge, biases, and ideas that are likely different or at odds with those of other people we might know.
That’s just a fact.
So the challenge for many of us comes when we put ourselves in a position where we ask ourselves, “how could someone make that decision?”
Or, even better:
“How can they be so dumb?”
You see a lot of that from the left and progressives right now.
It comes out in some version of:
“How can they vote in against their interests?”
“How could they vote for Donald Trump, he’s such a racist?”
“They have to be out of their minds to vote for someone so unqualified for the job!”
And on and on.
But this takes into consideration an assumption that people always make the “right” decision.
The thing is, “right” is usually a subjective measurement of a decision.
Why?
Because everyone is operating on a different worldview. Many times our worldview drives an emotional response to the situations that we face or the decisions that we have to make.
That’s why stories are so powerful.
Stories enable us to make sense of the world and all of the complexities that eat in on our awareness. Its because our minds are gap filling machines that sometimes if we have incomplete or misleading information that we make decisions that make other people baffled, alarmed, or befuddled.
Let’s take the recent example of fake news, there is a certain number of people that are going to fall for false stories, conspiracy theories, and other slippery narratives. That’s just the nature of human existence, but at the same time, the fuel that drove much of this fake news was a number of gaps left in the real stories that gave these stories room to grow.
Or, if fake news is too painful for you to consider the hypothesis, let’s look at the way that battleground states that have historically gone for the Democrats went to Donald Trump.
He filled the gap between the pain that people were feeling in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and other states with a story about how he was going to change things and how his business background gave him unique insight that would help him and him alone solve the issues that they felt were most important.
This concept, while applied here to politics, is something that plays out in every area of our lives. In every day that we are doing something.
You see, people don’t make the “right” decision because they are stupid or dumb or racist or ignorant…at least in most cases, but they do make the “right” decision for their worldview at that time, especially when you consider the situation that they are looking at.
The challenge then becomes for you to tell stories that help fill that gaps or to fill in the voids, and not just assume that facts and common sense and “everyone knows this” will.