We’re remarkably confident about why people act the way they do. In disagreement, that certainty is a liability.
Nan-in received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full and then kept pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” he said.
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
I’ve shared this koan with countless audiences, reading from the dog-eared copy of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones that my sister gave me as I headed off to college. And I’ve read it to countless graduate students, quipping that mediators and coaches aren’t any wiser than anyone else.
But we do have a superpower our clients don’t in that moment:
We have none of the baggage from having known the people at the table. We haven’t built up years of diagnoses, assumptions, judgment, love, or frustration. As a result, we’re not teetering at the top of the ladder of inference.
We have empty teacups.
How certainty sabotages us
It’s natural to speculate about why someone acted the way they did. The problem comes with acting on those speculations as though they are real and accurate. We stop learning and commit to our Stuck Story, our one-sided view of what’s happening.
- Motives are rarely singular. Human behavior is shaped by overlapping incentives, constraints, emotions, and habits, so collapsing action into one cause almost guarantees distortion.
- We misread others’ intentions. Attribution bias can cause too much emphasis on character and intent, and too little on context. Pair attribution bias with Lake Wobegon effect — where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average” — and we’re as likely to be wrong as right.
- Availability bias leads us astray. We tend to overestimate the likelihood of a reason based on the ease with which that reason comes to mind. Our prior experiences, conflict hooks, and exposure to others’ views (including social media) all influence how this mental shortcut plays out.
- Confirmation bias steers our attention. After we settle on an explanation, we tend to look for evidence that supports it and overlook evidence of other interpretations.
Tidy explanations are comforting, but they’re not particularly accurate. Not-knowing protects us from mistaking familiarity for accuracy.
How not knowing helps us
The discipline of not knowing — of emptying our teacups — asks us to grow more comfortable with discomfort. The payoff is worth it:
- Staying open demonstrates wisdom. The ability to hold several plausible reasons open at the same time and still function — which writer F. Scott Fitzgerald famously called a “test of first-rate intelligence” — is essential to problem-solving and creative thinking.
- Openness increases our options. How we explain their behavior influences what we think and how we respond, which in turn affects how the situation actually unfolds and the options that become visible.
- Not knowing helps us be more nimble. When we become less concerned about “figuring them out,” we become more agile in our responses because we’re responding to what’s happening rather than clinging to a fixed interpretation.
- Restraint signals good faith. No one wants to feel unfairly or incorrectly judged. We build connection and trust when we demonstrate that we aren’t rushing to judgment.
Staying open doesn’t mean treating every explanation as equally plausible. It means not confusing the first explanation that makes sense to us with being the right one.
Developing the discipline of not knowing
Emptying our teacup is a learnable skill that we can turn into a habit of mind. I consider it a core habit of disagreeing better. Here’s an exercise for developing the discipline:
- When you find yourself speculating about someone’s motives or intentions, ask yourself, “What other reasons might someone have for doing that?”
- List as many reasons as you can imagine. When you think you’re done, keep pondering for two minutes more. As with brainstorming, this can yield a second wind of ideas.
- Review your list and ask yourself, “Are at least half of them reasons that a normal, reasonable person might have?” If not, imagine someone you respect having done what you’re analyzing. What positive reasons might you ascribe for them doing it?
- If you can’t come up with positive motives to ascribe, ask yourself, “What would an impartial mediator’s list look like?” or “What would their best friend’s list look like?”
- Use your list to stretch your thinking and reshape how you might respond.
Emptying our teacups doesn’t mean they stay empty. We fill them up as we work to understand. And empty them again. The discipline of not knowing is a habit of mind during disagreement, not a temporary state until we land on the “right” explanation for why they are the way they are.
In a world that rewards fast explanations, choosing to stay open — again and again — is a consequential choice.
Disclosure: One or more links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, which means I receive a few dimes from Amazon if you buy the book through them (at no extra cost to you). And, of course, I just turn around and spend those dimes on more books, which then inform my work and my writing for you. It’s a beautiful cycle.