the vulnerability loop

A wonderful bit from The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, our current read:

"People tend to think of  vulnerability in a touchy-feely way, but that's not what's happening,"Polzer says. "It's about sending a really clear signal that you have weaknesses, that you could use help. And if that behavior becomes a model for others, then you can set the insecurities aside and get to work, start to trust each other and help each other. If you never have that vulnerable moment, on the other hand, then people will try to cover up their weaknesses, and every little microtask becomes a place where insecurities manifest themselves."

Polzer points out that vulnerability is less about the sender than the receiver. "The second person is the key," he says. "Do they pick it up and reveal their own weaknesses, or do they cover up and pretend they don't have any? It makes a huge difference in the outcome." Polzer has become skilled at spotting the moment when the signal travels through the group. "You can actually see the people relax and connect and start to trust. The group picks up the idea and says, 'Okay, this is the mode we're going to be in,' and it starts behaving along those lines, according to the norms that it's okay to admit weakness and help each other."

The interaction he describes can be called a vulnerability loop. A shared exchange of openness, it's the most basic building block of cooperation and trust. Vulnerability loops seem swift and spontaneous from a distance, but when you look closely, they all follow the same discrete steps:

1) Person A sends a signal of vulnerability.

2) Person B detects this signal.

3) Person B responds by signaling their own vulnerability.

4) Person A detects this signal.

5) A norm is established; closeness and trust increase.

From the discussion of Celeste Headlee's We Need To Talk,

we had three major take-aways that we felt we could work on to improve the way we speak to others:

• to more consciously participate in active listening
• set the stage for our discussions, especially major ones during liqa'
• when interacting with others, keep in mind the main objective i.e. "I want to understand what moves this person emotionally"; this will naturally inform our body language to be the one that is welcoming, safe, and open

Here's a mind map to summarise the main points of our book this time round, 

i.e. what makes our conversations come alive and be effective:

(Click to enlarge)

One of my favourite bits is the chapter, "You Don't Know Everything", which basically expounds on the importance of showing vulnerability in creating trust. In a conversation, someone has to show vulnerability first, for the next person to show vulnerability in return, and thereby create a safe space for an open and honest exchange.

"Conversations are the basis of relationships and relationships are built on trust." The more open you are about your limitations, the more weight people give your opinion when you offer it.

Excerpt from The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer, to guide us in our reading:


"Remember that the goal of grammar-stage reading is to know what the author says; the goal of logic-stage inquiry is to understand why and how.

The final stage of reading -- your rhetoric-stage pass through the book -- has a third goal. Now you know what, why and how. The final question is: so what?

What does this writer want me to do?
What does this writer want me to believe?
What does this writer want me to experience?
Am I convinced that I must do, or believe, what the writer wants me to do or believe?
Have I experienced what the writer wants me to experience?
If not, why?

Uninformed opinions are easy to come by. But thinking through someone else's argument, agreeing with it for specific well-articulated reasons, or disagreeing with it because you're able to find holes in the writer's argument, or because the writer left out facts which he should have considered and weren't -- that's difficult. The rhetoric stage follows the logic stage for this very reason. The good reader bases his opinion on intelligent analysis, not mere unthinking reaction.

The journal is an excellent logic-stage tool. But in the rhetoric stage of enquiry, you need something more. Rhetoric is the art of clear, persuasive communication, and persuasion always involves two people. In your case, one of these people is the book's author: The book is communicating an idea to you, persuading you of something. But for you to articulate your own ideas clearly back to the book, you need to bring someone else into the process.

How can you do this? In her Letters to Young Ladies, Lydia Sigourney praises the virtues of "purposeful conversation", talk centered around particular ideas. In the nineteenth century, women often met in "weekly societies" to discuss their reading -- the forerunners of today's popular book groups. These discussions, Sigourney suggests, are essential to proper self-education, since they "serve to fix knowledge firmly in the memory".

The problem with book groups (as you know if you've ever been in one) is that the readers who attend them don't always read the book carefully (or at all), and unless someone takes a dictatorial hand during discussion, it's apt to wander off fairly quickly into unrelated chat. For the project of self-education, it's best to find one other person who will agree to read the Great Books list with you and then talk with you about what both of you have read.

This reading partner, indispensable in the final stage of reading, can also be useful to you in the first two. During the grammar and logic stages, your partner provides you with some accountability -- if you've agreed to finish the first reading of a book by a particular deadline and you know someone else will be checking on you, you're much more likely to make good use of your own reading time to actually finish the book.

During your rhetoric-stage inquiry, when you'll be looking back through the book for answers to questions about the writer's ideas, your reading partner can talk to you about those ideas. Perhaps something you found troublesome, or illogical, was entirely clear to your reading partner; discuss the differences, and discover which one of you is correct. You may discover that the disagreement is only an apparent one, brought about by the use of different words for the same concept. Or you may find that an apparent agreement between the two of you dissolves during discussion, perhaps because you are using the same words to represent very different things. A reading partner forces you to use words precisely and define your terms.

Ideally, your reading partner will read at more or less the same speed as you do, and can devote the same hours to the project of reading. But it isn't necessary for you to come from similar backgrounds, educational or otherwise. As a matter of fact, a reading partner with a very different background can help you to think more precisely, as you discover that you need to explain, clearly, ideas that you've always taken for granted."