SEA: A Simple Way to Share Your Views and Understand Others’ to Jointly Solve Problems and Resolve Conflicts

Roger Schwarz Management, Strong results, Team Effectiveness

To solve problems, make decisions, or resolve conflicts with others, you need to be both transparent about your views and curious about others’ views.

When you’re transparent, you are sharing your views, including your reasoning that leads you to hold these views. When you’re curious, you are genuinely interested in others’ views, including how they are similar to and different from yours.

Until you and the others you are working with can understand how and why each other’s views differ, you won’t be able to create potential solutions that everyone can support and implement.

When you are transparent, others are learning what you are thinking and feeling. When you are curious, you are learning what others are thinking and feeling. When everyone is both transparent and curious, everyone is learning what everyone else is thinking and feeling. This creates the shared pool of information that is essential for solving problems, managing conflicts, and making decisions. Transparency and curiosity are two of the five Mutual Learning core values.

Transparency and curiosity are both necessary for effective work relationships, but each alone is insufficient. In fact, being only transparent or curious will create problems for you. If you are only sharing your thinking, others will reasonably conclude that you’re not interested in their views, and you are less likely for those people to commit to any solution you develop. On the other hand, if you are only asking questions, others will reasonably conclude that you may be hiding something and, in some cases, quizzing or interrogating them. You’re likely to contribute to their getting defensive, which again, will reduce the chance that they commit to any solution you had in mind. The easy and effective way to prevent this problem is to be simultaneously transparent and curious.

I’ve developed a simple and effective way to combine transparency and curiosity. I call it SEA: State your view. Explain your reasoning. Ask a genuine question. You can change the order of these three elements, but you need all three. (If you know about Mutual Learning, you may realize that the three SEA elements are part of the eight Mutual Learning behaviors. State your views and ask genuine questions are the two parts of the first behavior and explain your reasoning is the fourth behavior.

Below are two simple examples that show how the three elements work together to create effective interaction. The first example is when you have a view to state; the second example is when you have a question to ask.

If You Have a View to State

Imagine you and your team are trying to solve the problem of people coming to meetings unprepared. After discussing the root causes of the problem and team members’ needs, you think you have a solution that will work.

Here’s what you might say:

  • State your view.  “I think it would help solve the problem if we sent out a proposed meeting purpose and process before the meeting instead of introducing it at the beginning of the meeting.”

  • Explain your reasoning. “This would give everyone time before the meeting to read the necessary advance information and think about what information they want to share and what questions they want to ask.”

  • Ask a genuine question. What problems, if any, do you see with what I’m suggesting?

Here’s why you would say it:

State your view. If you have a view, state it specifically. Don’t be vague; it makes it difficult for people to understand exactly what you are proposing. Be accountable for your view; if it’s your solution, state it as your own. Don’t use “we” when it’s really “I.” Unfortunately, too many consultants and authors have convinced leaders to use “we” instead of “I,” believing it builds team cohesion. Not so. Using “we” when it is really “I” avoids accountability and creates cynicism.

If you’re thinking that you can’t state your view in the beginning of the meeting because you’re the leader and, if you do so, others won’t share their honest views, then you have a larger problem. Read here to learn what it is and how to address it.

Explain your reasoning. People are hard-wired to make meaning. If you don’t explain the reasoning underlying your view, others will make one up. And if your team has different views on this topic, it’s likely that the meaning they make will be different than your meaning. They are likely to incorrectly assume things about your reasoning and attribute motives to you that you don’t have. Sharing your reasoning helps people understand not only what you are thinking but how you are thinking. And it’s a natural segue to the third part of SEA: ask a genuine question.

Ask a genuine question. The key word here is genuine. A genuine question is one that you don’t know the answer to, isn’t designed to make a point, and doesn’t embed your view in the question. In the example above, if you had asked, “You don’t see any problem with what I’m proposing, do you?” you’d be asking a nongenuine question, embedding your view that there really aren’t any problems with what you’re proposing, and implicitly making your point that neither should others.

In Mutual Learning, differences and questions are opportunities for learning, not for telling others they are wrong. Asking genuine curious questions is like opening a door to invite a person to come in. The more curious you are, and the more you explain your reasoning for your question, the wider you the door opens. A genuinely curious question opens the door as much as possible so others can share what they are thinking and feeling, especially if what they are thinking and feeling is different from you, and especially if they have less power or authority. It also explains the reasoning for your question. For example, you might say, “What do you think I’m missing? I’m asking because in our meeting on team accountability last week, you saw some things differently and I think you may have similar concerns here.”

Make sure your question is related directly to your view. For example, if you are proposing a solution, ask what they think of your proposal, not when they can implement it. Asking when they can implement it is premature because it is an assumptive question; it assumes they have already agreed to the solution. People can get defensive when you ask assumptive questions because they recognize that you are assuming things about them that may not be accurate.

If you want to learn a quick thought experiment to see if you are about to ask a nongenuine question, see my article on the “You Idiot” Test.

If You Have a Question to Ask

In mutual learning, you also use SEA when you want to ask a question. In this situation you often change the SEA order to ASE.

Here’s what you might say:

  •  Ask a genuine question. “What’s the status of the project X?”

  • State your view.  “I’m asking because I thought you said project X had been completed three months ago . . .  

  • Explain your reasoning. “. . . and as of last week, I noticed the budget spreadsheet shows we are still incurring labor hours on the project.”

  • Ask a genuine question. “Did I miss something?”

Notice three things. First, after you ask your question, you continue by stating your view and explaining your reasoning for asking the question. This quickly enables the person you are asking to understand where you are heading and reduces the need for them to make meaning of your question. People can easily become anxious by assuming incorrectly why you are asking them a question. This is especially true if you’re asking people who report to you, and even more so, if they think the question is related to their performance.

Second, this example ends with a second genuine question that relates back to the initial question. It opens the door wide to invite the person to help you learn something you may have misunderstood. It sends the important message that you are open to hearing that you don’t have all the information, the latest information, or had misunderstood something. It’s not always necessary to have a second question; but it is necessary to have SEA in some order.

Third, SEA, in whatever order you use SEA, is not a one-and-done tool. You use it repeatedly in a conversation to create transparency, curiosity, and improve team results.

If SEA Isn’t Working for You

If you’re not getting the results you expected from using SEA, consider the following:

You may need to use additional Mutual Learning behaviors. SEA contains the two foundational Mutual Learning behaviors for solving problems and resolving conflicts, but they are not necessarily sufficient. You will likely need some or all of the rest of the eight Mutual Learning behaviors.

Your mindset may be getting in your way. How you think is how you lead. You can’t reliably produce new behaviors that are incompatible with your mindset—the values and assumptions you operate from. This is like trying to get the latest version of a software application to work on your computer that is using a 15-year-old operating system. You may be thinking you’re operating from a Mutual Learning mindset which can generate SEA, but unaware that you are really operating from a unilateral control mindset. Changing your mindset takes intention, attention, and practice.