How to Enable Productive Arguments
At risk of digressing too much away from the topic, a look at the landscape in American news and social media on politics shows two contrasting stream of thoughts with each one seeking to outdo the other by way of snides, memes, and fake news. The same paradigm is repeated elsewhere. Recall the days of 2010 to 2013 where heated arguments are made by comparing Android and iOS, or whether a company should move towards cross platform development or native.
Such forms of argumentation mostly yield to naught. Moreover, in meetings where the discussion steers from the sciences to the humanities, the tendency is for it to move towards inefficacy especially when not tempered with listening ears and responsible moderation. It is not uncommon to have extroverts dominate meetings and steer the conversation towards the way the extroverts see the world. How effective this is depends on the composition of the organization. A study made by Gino, Grant, and Hofmann shows that in a passive organization, extroverts increase productivity by 16% but in a proactive organization, extroverts dampen productivity by 14%.¹
While Software Engineers tend to consider themselves extroverts,² a more thorough personality study shows that introverts outnumber extroverts by 25%.³ In any event regardless of where one’s personality falls under, without a proper structure of argumentation, any attempt to solve issues collectively loses much of what could have been invested in the pool of shared meaning.⁴
A study made in Cornell shows that people tend to withhold information because they think they’re just wasting their time. The study debunks the myth that people don’t speak up due to fear. Rather, futility is 1.8x more likely the reason why information is withheld.⁵
What this underscores is our general lack of ability to extract information. Though Rudy Rigot isn’t the first to highlight the need of listening, his recent blog further underscores how this becomes doubly important in the attempt to extract information into the pool of shared meaning.⁶
This is how a low quality collective problem solving tend to look like:
- Someone keeps interrupting the person speaking.⁷
- An idea is preemptively dismissed without giving it a chance to be refined.
- An idea is dismissed by a rebuttal of one of its warrants while failing to cover the others.⁸
- The discussion goes off tangent from red herring.
- The tendency to die on every hill.⁹
Most of us reading this would have been quick to associate with those mentioned above. How then must a productive argument be made? The solution is an argument map. Austhink defines argument mapping as “a way to visually show the logical structure of arguments. You break up an argument into its constituent claims, and use lines, boxes, colors and location to indicate the relationships between the various parts. The resulting map allows us to see exactly how each part of an argument is related to every other part.”
What argument mapping does is that it gives the group a very clear outline of whether an idea is worth pursuing. Moreover, doing this removes the emotional attachment one has to the idea he believe is true. This prevents one from fighting for it at all costs. Moreover, interruptions, red herrings, and false dismissals are avoided. In using an argument map, each individual contributor shares his inputs and the process is repeated with each one writing down his defense and rebuttals until no further contributions are offered.
What this further does is that argument maps can be iterated and/or parallelized. If in the midst of working on an argument map, the group thought about a refinement to the idea, a new argument map can be made with those refinements and the process repeats itself with the new idea. What this does then is that it gives an idea, which is normally raw and unrefined when first pitched, a chance to grow. Moreover, anyone can hop into the conversation. A junior contributor can add justifications, even reasons to believe the team should steer towards one direction instead of the other. This loosens the hierarchy and encourages brainstorming.
The next time you run a meeting involving hashing of ideas, this is worth trying out. Have you done this before in your teams? Let me know in the comments below.
This blog is part of a series on Software Engineering Management and Leadership.
¹ Gino, Francesca. “Introverts, Extroverts, and the Complexities of Team Dynamics.” Harvard Business Review. August 12, 2015. Accessed September 08, 2018. https://hbr.org/2015/03/introverts-extroverts-and-the-complexities-of-team-dynamics.
² Avram, Abel. “Are Developers Introverted or Extroverted? Are They Intuitive or Logical?” InfoQ. February 20, 2013. Accessed September 08, 2018. https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/Introverted-Intuitive-Logical.
³ Capretz, Luis Fernando. “Personality Types in Software Engineering.” International Journal of Human Computer Studies, November 1, 2002. Accessed September 8, 2018. https://www.eng.uwo.ca/electrical/faculty/mcisaac_k/docs/mbti-IJHCS-v2.pdf.
⁴ Pool of shared meaning is coinedby Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, authors of Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High. This is a pool of ideas we put together when brainstorming.
⁵ Detert, James R., Ethan R. Burris, and David A. Harrison. “Do Your Employees Think Speaking up Is Pointless?” Harvard Business Review. July 23, 2014. Accessed September 08, 2018. https://hbr.org/2010/05/do-your-employees-think-speaki.
⁶ Rigot, Rudy. “Engineering Decision Model: Messy Opinions, Neat Ownership.” Hacker Noon. September 03, 2018. Accessed September 08, 2018. https://hackernoon.com/engineering-decision-model-messy-opinions-neat-ownership-bb5ad91d574.
⁷ Usually coming from one in a position of power such as the upper management or by way of societal composition, such as an extrovert in a group of introverts.
⁸ For instance, if W, X, Y, and Z are the warrants to believe A is a good idea, and a rebuttal to W is made, A is dismissed even if X, Y and Z still holds.
⁹ To die on every hill is to work towards a certain desired outcome no matter the cost.
