Being Open

Chris Morris's recent post about self-management techniques has provided good food for thought. In particular, one idea from Chris's list--saying "Thank you" in response to someone's discovery of a defect in your code--reminded me of a lesson that took me many years to learn for myself: being open. What I mean is, being open to a direction or idea that is suggested or inspired by someone else. It's easy to remain "closed," a state in which the default posture is defensiveness, or insecurity, or fear, or control, a state in which the default answer is "No."

A friend of mine is an improv actor, and he told me of a parallel concept from that milieu. Improv acting is all about reacting to input from your fellow actors and from the audience, but it's also about creating opportunities for your fellow actors. In a scene, often an actor will put forth the a question or an offer of some kind. As an actor in the same scene, one's default instinct might be to respond negatively, or in a closed fashion. But an improv actor has to train that out of him or herself, because negative/closed answers will stop a scene in its tracks. A postive/open answer, by contrast, keeps the scene going, and creates more opportunity. Picture it:

A typically bare improv stage; the audience is quiet, ready to be entertained; two actors stand next to one another, one male, one female, an ordinary folding chair between them. The female actor puts her right foot on the chair, bows slightly, makes an inviting gesture toward the chair, and says loudly to the male actor, "Would you like to take a ride in my ferris wheel?"

How does the male actor respond? His first instinct may be to say, "No! I'm afraid of heights." But in that case, the female actor is left in a bind--now the crafting of her response must deal with this negative presentation, and the opportunity for comedy and imagination for the audience is diminished, if not lost altogether. If the male actor answers instead with an entusiastic, "Why yes, that sounds fun!" then the female actor can say, "Step right up!" and the fun can begin.

On a software project, if a team member says, "Hey I have an idea! What if we did our logging this way instead?" and your default answer is, "We don't have time for that right now." then opportunity is lost, and over time enough of this will grind down the morale of the team.

For a leader on a software project, a closed posture is especially deadly, because it creates a team-wide disfunction that the leader will likely remain blind to unless confronted with the reality of the cause and resulting effects. I was lucky enough to have a friend several years ago who forced me to confront my own closed posture, and to the difficulty it created for him personally and for the project. After I processed this information, I realized that it was affecting me negatively too.

Thanks for reading,
Dan