Vocabulary, granularity, & terministic screens | LSW#46

Why your repertoire of concepts & language matters

Hey! It’s Sheril Mathews from Leading Sapiens. Welcome to my newsletter, where I share strategies for getting savvier at the game of work.

Want to get better at something? Pay attention to your repertoire of language in that domain. I examine this fundamental idea through the lens of neuroscience, philosophy, & peak performance.

ICYMI:

• Complex Outcomes, Simple Patterns

• Good Goals Gone Bad

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Forces & nuances

As I rode up on the ski lift for my first lesson, feeling somewhat apprehensive, the instructor turned to me and said “My job is to teach people to love gravity.” It was a startling introduction, but perfectly captured what I was to learn.

When you stand at the top of a steep slope, nervously looking down, you are aware that gravity is definitely going to take you to the bottom, and the only question is whether you will do it in fine style or as a tumbling heap risking broken bones. You cannot ski at all on flat ground, and the skill he taught was how you must stand and balance and let gravity do its work, adapting yourself to the forces in play. He was right – when you get the hang of it you really do love it. And the more you love it, the deeper your skill becomes, and the more freedom you have.

All types of skill teach us the same deep truth: that the more we can immerse ourselves into the forces at play the more freedoms we have.

We have all seen great players in sport when they are ‘in the zone’, or musicians giving a memorable performance, and been aware of how much time they seem to have, how they have a freedom of movement and expression that we can only dream of. In fact, studies show that the movements of a skilled performer are much more varied than those of the amateur.

— Bill Sharpe in Three Horizons

• Problem vs conditions of the game. One of the forces at play at work is often dysfunction and politics. Like gravity, it’s not going anywhere and it just “is”. You can treat it as something that “shouldn’t” be there and an impediment to your work. OR you can treat it as simply part of playing the game.

• Immersion vs resistance. The more we can harness the forces instead of fighting them, the better we can play the game.

• Poor vs rich repertoire. The vocabulary and nuances of the pro are much more varied than the amateur’s. A skilled hand surgeon’s understanding of your hand is very different from the layperson’s at many levels. The same applies to your understanding of organizations and how to operate within them.

Your terministic screen

All of us have peculiar ways of interpreting things that’s largely driven by our vocabulary, educational background, and culture. This means the same situation will be experienced very differently based on our unique interpretations.

The key driver behind that interpretation is language:

A person’s way of seeing a situation is filtered through what scholar Kenneth Burke calls a ‘‘terministic screen.’’ This screen itself is made up of language—words, terms, phrases, and their relation to each other. This screen directs our attention to aspects of reality. We don’t see the world, we don’t see the terministic screen; instead, we see what the screen allows us to see.

— Steven Zaffron, Dave Logan in Three Laws of Performance

Here’s an example:

…suppose we assemble an economist, a psychologist, and a sociologist in the college cafeteria and ask each to give explanations of food choices made by a customer. Suppose further that the customer we observe happens to select custard rather than either cake or pie.

The economist might explain that, because custard is less “labor intensive” and therefore cheaper than the other desserts, it was the only dessert the customer could afford. The psychologist might explain the choice by means of the customer’s history; for instance, he or she might say that the customer’s “past reinforcement schedule” provides the answer. The sociologist might explain the choice by pointing to the “ethno-social background” of the customer and showing how different classes of people favor different desserts. . . . Thus, the terministic screen of vocabulary causes each to focus on elements and interpretations of the situation to the exclusion of others.

— Phillip Tompkins

Your terministic screen about work & organizations will largely determine:

• how you interpret it

• what parts you notice

• whether you see or miss the leverage points

• if you feel capable or powerless

Given the way things look to us, our conclusions and actions seem obvious. Changing what appears obvious now requires changing the screen that lies further upstream.

Similarly, your audience and stakeholders have their own set of terministic screens. If your proposition doesn’t line up with theirs, your ideas will not get traction.

“Getting it” vs not

When we upgrade our vocabulary and mental models and start executing on them, we start getting “distinctions”:

Getting a distinction is like what happens as you learn to ski. When you first stand at the top of a slope and look down all you see is a lot of snow and a really steep drop-off. As you practice and become more expert, you begin to be able to see differences between one slope and another. Standing at the top of a slope you see moguls and other subtle variations in the terrain that make for easier or more difficult paths down the mountain. In addition, the mountain no longer seems so steep.

These characteristics of the mountain were always there, but before you just didn’t see them. That’s what getting a distinction does.

— Steve Zaffron

The way you see your organization today is not the only way. There are nuances and aspects you’re not noticing, and that includes potential points of proactive action.

Your vocabulary and mental models act as frames and maps for viewing your organization. This in turn defines the limits of your actions and what you see as possible.

What we do not have a language for, is simply not accessible to us.

Granularity

The latest in neuroscience shows that our brains are predictive machines rather than reactive. And our ability to predict well and thus respond better is contingent on our familiarity with concepts and the number of distinctions we carry.

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett explains it this way in the context of emotions:

In many cultures, you will find people who have hundreds, perhaps thousands of emotion concepts, that is, they exhibit high emotional granularity.

In English, for example, they might have concepts for anger, sadness, fear, happiness, surprise, guilt, wonder, shame, compassion, disgust, awe, excitement, pride, embarrassment, gratitude, contempt, longing, delight, lust, exuberance, and love, to name a few.

They’ll also have distinct concepts for interrelated words like “aggravation,” “irritation,” “frustration,” “hostility,” “rage,” and “disgruntlement.” This person is an emotion expert. A sommelier of emotion.

Each word corresponds to its own emotion concept, and each concept can be used in the service of at least one goal, but usually many different goals. If an emotion concept is a tool, then this person has a gigantic toolbox fit for a skilled craftsperson.

She then compares this skilled craftsperson of emotions to folks with medium or low emotional granularity, who have the equivalent of a few hundred, or even worse, only a few dozen. Their ability to respond is markedly different:

Words seed your concepts, concepts drive your predictions, predictions regulate your body budget, and your body budget determines how you feel.

…Therefore, the more finely grained your vocabulary, the more precisely your predicting brain can calibrate your budget to your body’s needs.

In fact, people who exhibit higher emotional granularity go to the doctor less frequently, use medication less frequently, and spend fewer days hospitalized for illness. This is not magic; it’s what happens when you leverage the porous boundary between the social and the physical.

The same is true for work and organizations. The better your “organizational granularity” about how to work inside them, the more effective you are at navigating the inevitable ups and downs.

Speaking differently instead of arguing well

… a talent for speaking differently, rather than arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change. …The method is to redescribe lots and lots of things in new ways…

— Richard Rorty

Organizations are very much cultures onto themselves. The mistake is to argue well from logic alone.

Instead, if you can speak frequently, variedly, and consistently, you will get far more traction. Whether it’s a new initiative you want to champion, or better positioning your own role in the org, it takes a lot more creativity and persistence than we realize.

How do you learn to speak differently? By upgrading your vocabulary and the granularity of your understanding of organizations.

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That does it for this edition. I’d love for you to join me in my course starting April 2nd. Use this link or set up a call to discuss options. Thanks for reading!