There’s an interesting talk on the Edge site from Stephen Schneider. He’s a climate scientist and IPCC member. He’s talking about climate models and economic models and what happens when you put the two together. Worth looking at if you’re interested in the climate debate. But he does say something interesting about ‘influence’. He says that the challenge for climate scientists is to ‘get beyond their own rationality’ in order to influence the wider debate.
I think this is a challenge for everyone trying to influence anyone else. For two reasons. Firstly, it’s never our rationality that convinces others. It’s their rationality. It’s not enough for it to make sense to me, it has to make sense to them. Others can have a very different rational model. Our challenge is to understand their model.
Secondly rationality itself can only go so far. Today there is always a counter rational argument. People get confused. At best, rationality can move people to ’should’. I should do something … but may not. Each of our lives are full of ’shoulds’. I should exercise more, I should think before I speak, I should spend more time on the important but not urgent, etc. Knowing ‘I should’ is different from ‘I will’. ‘I will’ is about action. What is the tipping point from ‘I should’ to ‘I will?
I believe that tipping point is emotion. Many senior leaders are adept at the rational, but poor at identifying, managing and articulating emotion in a deliberate way to achieve their rational outcome. Perhaps this is a reason why leadership is still a relatively scarce commodity. Maybe too much of the focus has been on rational understanding of leadership and not enough on the emotional side.
