A few days back I wrote about dancing and that during those few minutes, people tended to share parts of their life. This is not unusual, at least for me as I have always tended to be a sounding board for people's thoughts, ideas and feelings. If you don't know what a sounding board actually is, here are the definitions, I mean the second one.

Sounding board

1. a board or screen placed over or behind a pulpit or stage to reflect a speaker's voice forward.
2. a person or group whose reactions to suggested ideas are used as a test of their validity or likely success before they are made public.

Before they are made public is often a key factor as there is a level of trust that conversations are kept private so that ideas can be protected either from judgement or for patent reasons. The latter comes into play heavily in my work as I work with manufacturing and technology innovators who require a level of secrecy through NDAs and in some cases, background checks performed by the Finnish Security Intelligence Service.

But, there is something interesting that often comes up in these discussions (generally the personal ones) and that is many people have an expectation of what response is valid. What I mean is that often when people are talking about the things they are looking for opinions on, they already have an idea of what opinions they are going to accept and, if met with a differing view, see it as an attack on who they are, not the topic at hand itself.

Most people when asking for opinions aren't actually asking for opinions, they are asking for support for their ideas, not resistance. They are hoping that whoever they are using will give them a pat on the back for a good thought or, in the case of people who are upset, sympathy and a hug to validate their feelings as correct. They want an echo chamber that tells them they are right to think and feel what they think and feel.

Echo chamber

1. an enclosed space for producing reverberation of sound.

For the people who attempt this with me with issues that require real attention, they are generally going to not get the responses they are after because they have already gone into the conversation with an expectation that they are correct. This is of course a conflict in itself as if they think they are correct, why look for validation of position at all? The reason is that they are actually uncertain and need peer approval and, if that doesn't come, they can get upset.

Recognize it or not, a great deal of our behaviors are driven by peer approval and how we think others are going to view us and of course, judge us. We engineer our public self o fit in with what we believe to be socially acceptable to increase our chance of fitting in and not being rejected. In this process however, what makes us valuable to the group (our unique perspective) can be lost and rather than an idea being cutting edge, it becomes average.

Part of the problem with asking for others opinions and taking stock in the response is that if who you ask is an average thinker who supports average ideas, the value that may actually be present in a thought can be completely missed by the sounding board. As I see it, a good sounding board isn't just to battle test an idea, it is to drive the thoughts of the person asking the question further than the original. Sometimes it may result in a regression to the average but, sometimes it may push to solutions that lay beyond. It is much like a psychologist's couch where the patient develops the cure.

But, having said that, most people just want to take a pill and, that pill needs to be easy to swallow. This means that many go into the conversation with the expectation they already have the correct treatment and expect the sounding board to prescribe what they already want to take. There is no problem with this if the treatment is actually going to lead them to where they want to be but, if it is unlikely and the prescription is a pat on the back and support, it can lead to some very nasty eventualities.

As I see it, if I ask someone for their opinion, I do not want to restrict them by having them feel they have to protect me from their response. I want them to be free to respond however they see fit so I am able to get their real views, not their watered down views designed to take the middle road. Most I find don't actually have the emotional control for this as often there is conflict between positions so instead of building an understanding of why the gap exists, whether it needs to be overcome and how one would go about it if it does, the response is to feel victimized and hurt.

How I see it though that this is a large part of the problem with the world as not only do we value the approval of a group who may not be qualified to approve, we become victims of those who have other ideas than our own. Rather than discuss, we close ourselves off to 'toxic people' and anyone who disagrees with us is classified as toxic. That means, anyone who is identified as different becomes a threat to who we are and that means, everyone is a threat depending on circumstance.

The problem is that there is a lack of responsibility at play. Rather than taking responsibility for the self and learning the skills necessary to be able to listen to differing opinions, consider them well and act upon or dismiss as relevant or not, people build barriers to information. They erect their echo chamber walls, fill it with sounding boards that are mirrors and create a safe space where they do not feel victimized, bullied or hurt by people who obviously do't know that how they think, is always correct.

And then they wonder why their experience doesn't match their imagined reality.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]