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This Land of Strangers - Robert E Hall

This Land of Strangers

"..the most important book of the decade." — Richard Boyatzis, co-author of best seller Primal Leadership

Relationships, in all their varied forms, have been the lifetime study of Robert Hall. He brings a rare combination of experience as a researcher, consultant, writer, teacher and CEO in dealing with the real-world relationship challenges of modern organizations. When coupled with a decade of hands-on experience in the gritty world of inner-city homeless families it translates into a tapestry of vivid stories, well-researched and oft startling facts, and strategic insights that weave together the yet untold narrative of society's gravest risk and most stellar opportunity.

Declaring War on War

In the silence of connection, people are comfortable by being in touch with a lot of people – carefully kept at bay. – Sherry Turkle, “The Flight from Conversation,” The New York Times 

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Talk of war rumbles through the overheated discourse of today’s political season just months before the 2012 Presidential election. Raised voices accuse the other side of class warfare, war on women, war on the poor, war on the rich, war on the unions, and war on the banks, and so on. Feel free to be offended if there is not some group that has declared war on you or yours. There are similar business discussions, in boardrooms, conference rooms, and probably even restrooms about war on competitors, product wars, price wars, and even advertising wars.

It got me to thinking about how war has become the operative descriptor and even model for so much of what is garden variety discourse, debate, tension, and competition. At every turn we name and act out our conflicts in the worn out hyperbole of battle. The paradigm of war dumbs down complicated and nuanced differences into a simplistic forced and false choice of friend or foe. It makes everything binary – we vs. they. It is like the old TV westerns where the good guys predictably wore white and the bad guys wore black and after about 30 minutes the good guys always won. First war exaggerates the relationship divide and then goes about making it so.

In the real world our differences range from small to large, yet war has no room or time for our similarities, only differences. Politics provides an example of how differences get magnified. Voters who identified themselves in the ideological extremes have grown from 29 percent in 1972 to 49 percent in 2008. Yet a survey of their specific opinions on issues (like when does life begin vs. simply your stance on abortion) found the divide had only increased four points (from 10 to 14%) during the same period.

Some of war’s destructive relational influences are now reinforced by technology. Nicolas Carr, author and tech guru, has said the scariest thing about technology wasn’t that computers started to act like people but that people have started to act like computers where it is all about the speed of locating and reading data. It does little to deepen understanding, strengthen relationships, or reconcile differences.

Technology can be very judgmental and unforgiving. It simplifies nuanced differences into binary choices – yes or no, in or out, friend or foe. These forced and sometimes false judgments leave little room for gray. While religion is often viewed harshly, and sometimes justifiably, for its highly judgmental tone, rules-based technology can be more so. For example, I find in working with the inner city unemployed who often have flawed job histories or personal backgrounds, today’s highly automated, online hiring processes leave little room for redemption or overcoming great adversity. Yet most of us have experienced gain when someone looked beyond the math of credit scores, grade point average, test scores, or a missing skill to give us a chance. So many of our greatest talents – Steve Jobs at Apple, Wendy Kopp who founded Teach for America, Bill Gates at Microsoft – did not fit the established mold.

Technology-based transactions can limit relational development. The quick, binary judgments offer little empathy, flexibility or hope to say: your situation is unique; let me think about it; let me run it past a colleague or boss; or, I am going to make an exception. Truly, technology allows us to be in touch with a lot of people but it keeps them at bay, within defined boundaries. When it comes to special understanding, encouragement, or risk taking – it is mostly silent.

Speed is the golden child in the world of technology-based judgment. Perhaps you have seen those cellular phone commercials where the know-it-all brags about the speed of their latest information download “that was so 23 seconds ago.” As our gaze falls ever downward to our devices, we honor the speed and urgency of trite interruption over the relationally rich world of nonverbal cues, unuttered concern, and nuanced wisdom. Speeding up the delivery of empty noise reminds me of what our head of software development used to day: If you give a fool a faster tool, then what you get is a faster fool.

There are times when what we really need is not a yes or no, but a conversation. Sherry Turkle has said that conversation unfolds slowly, and it teaches us patience. The blank pause and the uncomfortable silence are useful in seeking to know the other person and their needs. It provides a space to contemplate less canned solutions; to search for an authentic and empathetic way to say yes, or no, or what if. These are the very characteristics that have made small businesses, start-ups, house churches, home hospice, and local restaurants attractive to consumers and to workers.

Yet technology and the paradigm of war dominate our culture and unwittingly our relationships. Their ability to efficiently deliver immediate, binary, conclusive judgments has conditioned us to expect ever faster responses and shorter answers – think texting and twitter.  If we are not careful the mind of the computer will become ours and we will be cured of the need for nuance, differences, redemption, and narrative answers.

It is more likely however, that as rules-based technology dominates more of our lives, the hunger for more personalized, authentic interactions and relationships will go up, not down.

War will always be with us and technology will become more prominent. But it is time to consider how these two forces are at war with relationships. General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the height of conflict inside Iraq commented on the sectarian violence, said “If the Iraqi people as a whole decided today that, in my words now, they love their children more than they hate their neighbors…this could come to a quick conclusion.”

If we cherish our relationships, we must declare war on war.

(Column appeared originally in ABA Bank Marketing magazine – June 2012)

By ROBERT E. HALL

Not to be reproduced without written permission. All rights reserved. © Copyright Robert E. Hall 2012

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