Throwback Thursday - The ORID Method for Structured Conversation

Doug Downs (00:03):

I met a woman once. Actually, to be honest, she was someone I was really trying to impress. She told me about her job a bit, about how she grew up, some of her life values. She was an artist, and she showed me one of her paintings. It was an abstract. I held it up and said, wow, this is great. I can see a lot of meaning in this. This is fantastic. And then I bashfully asked, am I holding it the right way? Because it was an abstract. And she said, if you like it, whatever way you're holding it is right. That really stuck with me. Well, we spent more time together. I started thinking about how I saw myself with her, and I know she started thinking the same thing with me. Eventually we were married and 23 years later, we have three kids and just helped the eldest move away for university. It would seem as people, the biggest decisions that impact our lives shouldn't be based entirely on emotion, nor should they be based entirely on logic. The man who founded the ORID method for structured conversation was inspired by what an art professor once told him.

(01:24):

You must look seriously at what is going on inside of you as you observe the art to see how you are reacting, what repels you, what delights you. You have to peel back the layers of awareness so that you can begin to ask what it means to you. You must work to create your own meaning from an artwork or a conversation. Today on Stories and Strategies, a better way to make decisions and resolve disagreements using both logic and human emotion.

(02:24):

My name is Doug Downs, and just as we get started, I want to let you know we're working on a Halloween episode of Scary PR and Marketing Stories. We would love for you to contribute. All you have to do is just go to speakpipe.com. SpeakPipe two words, that's all one word, speakpipe.com/stories and strategies, all one word. Just click record. When you're there, leave a message about that time you accidentally sent that email to reply all and what the fallout was or that horrible monster of a boss that you worked for. You don't have to leave your name, you don't have to leave your contact info, none of that stuff. Whatever happened, we want to hear about it. We will edit it and possibly use it in the Halloween episode. And by the way, when you go to Speak Pipe and you leave the message, if you listen back to it and you don't like it, I haven't got it yet. Don't worry. You can delete it and record again. So it's absolutely, it's dummy proof. That's how I found it. My guest this week is Robin Parsons joining us in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Hello, Robin.

Robin Parsons (03:32):

Hello, Doug.

Doug Downs (03:33):

How are you? Calgary is warm, hot and sunny today. I know that because I'm pretty much right there as well.

Robin Parsons (03:40):

Well, I dunno if it's hot, but it's pleasant.

Doug Downs (03:42):

It's nice. It's nice. Robin, you are a certified professional facilitator. That's your CPFA certified Technology of participation facilitator, your CTF. True. You also have your MBA. You've had your own business since 2014. You offer services including multi-stakeholder engagement, conflict resolution, strategic planning, large group processes, and you've worked with a range of industries including government, natural resources, environmental associations, education, healthcare, social services, housing, law, policing, indigenous organizations to boot. And you've trained with some of the leading academics in facilitation, including Sam Kaner, Roger Schwartz, ICA Associates, the Justice Institute of British Columbia, and the University of Calgary's Conflict resolution program. If there's a fight at the family dinner table, Robin, you're the one we want at the table, right? Because you'll settle everybody down.

Robin Parsons (04:41):

Unless I'm the one who started it. I'm a parent of nearly adult teens, so there's not much I do. That's right.

Doug Downs (04:48):

For a little while. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. So for a little while we're not very smart. And then when they get to their twenties, we get a little smarter somehow. Robin, let's first start by defining the role of a facilitator. What does a facilitator do? And is that actually up to the company that's hiring you in a way?

Robin Parsons (05:09):

Yeah, so in its simplest form, I always say that I'm the person that you bring in to help a group have a conversation and talk about the things they need to talk about so they can make the decisions they need to make. So within its various simplest form that it's what we do. What sits underneath that a bit is that we bring process. We have processes and methods and ways for people to have conversations so that they can come to some kind of a resolution. So when I'm in front of a group, I'll always say something like, so I'm your facilitator today. And my role today is process. I have a way for us to have a conversation about something, but I have no opinion on content. I have no content to offer. So that's how we characterize the role of the facilitator, is we are neutral about content.

Doug Downs (05:56):

So almost sounds like you're just helping us apply the logic, but that's not it at all, is it?

Robin Parsons (06:01):

We're trying to do good process so people can access their thinking and their knowledge. That's really what we're trying to do is create the structures and the methods, well, the process, using methods so that people can think clearly and therefore come to some kind of a resolution.

Doug Downs (06:17):

And so when we think of facilitators, sometimes mediators get mixed in with all of that. Tell the difference in the roles.

Robin Parsons (06:24):

Yeah, so there's kind of a continuum. Facilitators are very much, we're pure process. We are never about content. A trainer as an example, is content, right? They're an expert in content and they bring content to it, and good ones use facilitative process as they're helping to train. Consultants are hired for their expertise and they may use participative methods, but really they're hired for their subject matter expertise. And then mediators are closer to facilitators in that they're trying to help people resolve a conflict or a dispute. But what they'll do a bit differently is they'll often shuttle between two sides. So they'll go back and forth between two sides to help resolve facilitators. We tend not to do that. We tend to be large room, everybody in the conversation.

Doug Downs (07:10):

Okay. I know this means a lot to you. You genuinely believe the world is a better place when participative dialogue has happened. Democracy, in other words, people having a real and genuine, meaningful say in decisions that are made. Robin, have you been on Twitter? It's a mess.

Robin Parsons (07:29):

It totally is. Do

Doug Downs (07:30):

We really want people having a say no? Okay. Tell me about the OR method and how does it help with this?

Robin Parsons (07:38):

Yeah, or method for me is, it's kind of, dare I say it, it's become my religion. So it's a thinking structure. So what it is, is we say that there's four levels of thinking. We say that the first level of thinking is sort of what we call the objective level, and that's the facts and data. That's the observable. What do I see, what do I hear, what do I touch, what I feel? It's that observable level of data. And then the next level of thinking is what we call the reflective level. And the reflective level is our internal response to that external data. So it's my gut response, it's my internal associations, it's memory, it's experience, it's quite a few things. Then the next level of thinking is what we call the interpretive level of thinking, and that is the make meaning, significance, tie things together. I often call it connecting the white space. So it's that processing level of thinking. And then the fourth level is what we call the decisional level. And that is kind of the resolution of the thinking process. So I'll call it a small decisional level, meaning that it's not always about a big decision, but sometimes it's just bringing the thought pattern to a conclusion. So those four levels of thinking represent a very human pattern of thinking. And so as a facilitator, we bring this into practice all the time. So that's our core method.

(09:02):

So it's super interesting when you understand the model. It's super interesting to see the model in play, and it's really interesting to see when levels of the model are missing. So the objective level, the facts and data level, I laugh, I have a client and we're doing process mapping. And so in process mapping, the objective level is the current state. What is the as is process. So what always happens there is you get the As is up there and everybody's like, oh, I didn't know that. No, I thought we did it this way. No, it happens this way. And so that's the power of the objective level is we all see it differently, but it's still all there. We all have a different lens on that. So that's super important. So when it's missing, it's like who's on first for a conversation? It's hard to start a conversation coming from a different place. And then the reflective level, in my opinion, is kind of the magic in the model. And that's because that's our internal self. So would you say that you make a gut decision ever?

Doug Downs (10:03):

Sure, all the time. Yeah.

Robin Parsons (10:05):

The reflective level are gut level. It's that internal. I heard something and I've just immediately had a response to that. And so when that's missing, bad things happen.

Doug Downs (10:16):

So you want that the gut.

Robin Parsons (10:19):

You want the gut level? Yeah. Because what happens is when we miss that reflective level, we have a tendency to, that reflective level will come out, but it'll come out somewhere else and it'll come up kind of in a toxic way. So an example I like to use is the workplace. The workplace is pretty hostile to the reflective level because it generally says emotions are bad. Let's be professionals. We just deal with the facts in the room. Let's leave emotions at the door. And sort of this idea that that is, I dunno, a deficiency of the human condition. And so we have a tendency to ignore it in the workplace. Well guess what happens? That shows up in the hallway after the meeting or that shows up on the chat line after the meeting or during the meeting, everyone's expressing their frustrations. And so when you skip that level, you skip kind of a really inherent, really personal, really human level of being.

(11:13):

And so I always say to when I got a group of technical people in the room, I say, well, it's really good data where our experiences and our memories and our human way of being exists. So that's the reflective level. So then when there's the interpretive level, if you skip that, it's kind of like you make decisions without thinking. I remember having a group of people and they were so, they made decisions so fast, just so fast. And you realize that they're making bad decisions, not stopping to think. They're not stopping to think about the implications of what the decision they're making is on the people around them or on the business or on the client or whoever. So you start making poor decisions when you skip that level.

Doug Downs (12:01):

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Robin Parsons (13:17):

Yeah, I love the way you said that. It's about accessing all the brain. So if the model relates to brain functionality really well too, which is another thing I really love about it, but that objective level and that reflective level are kind of that back of the brain, the lizard, the primitive brain, the amygdala, all that parts of the brain. And so it's the part of our brain that's kept us alive as a species, sees something, react, fight, flight. That's where that sits. The interpretive level sits at the front of the brain in the prefrontal cortex, and that's the thinking level. So by slowing down to access that interpretive level, we access all the parts of our brain. We don't just access the gut level response of our brain. And so I think you and I have talked about this, but Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow, he talks about that, right? That the slow thinking is this, it's harder. It's harder to work for the brain, it's hard to work for the body. It forces us to put away easy patterns and to access different thinking. And then the decisional level, if it's missing, that feels like the best way to characterize that is there's an hour of my life I'm never getting back.

Doug Downs (14:22):

And this whole idea, this isn't brand Spank New, came out in 2022. This goes back to the fifties.

Robin Parsons (14:29):

Yeah, it does. Yes. And I think the origin story is so super cool that I love telling it. So the story there is that there was a Armand Chaplain, second World War comes back from the Second World War helping people to process this really hideous experience that they've had. How does he help them with this? And he goes back to his university and he runs into an art professor. And the art professor says to him, to an experienced art, art is a three-way conversation. It's a conversation between yourself and the artist and the painting or the piece of art. And so at the objective level, it's what do you see? What colors, what shapes, what designs, what images do you see at the reflective level, your response to are you repelled? Are you drawn in? Are you curious? Are you liking it? And then the next level of engagement with a piece of art is this idea of what does it mean for me?

(15:27):

What does it mean in my life? And then the final level is, okay, and so what do I do with that? And so that really struck a chord with him because that drew on readings that he had had from the existentialists, the Ki Guards, the Heiddeger, the Beauvoir, Simone Devo and the Phenomenologists. And so he crafted this conversation structure that he called the art form conversation. And many years later, we call it the focus conversation. And it's just this really remarkable conversation structure that allows us to access all of our levels of thinking. And we like to say it takes us from surface to depth in our thinking.

Doug Downs (16:06):

I love the idea because part of this was born through the advice he got from an artist that the mindset of an artist is something that was so far ahead of modern science. I think that's absolutely wonderful. So if I Google or Wikipedia something that says Laura Spencer created the arid method, Laura Spencer, I'm sure did great work. But no, that's something that's taken off as folklore on the internet.

Robin Parsons (16:30):

Well, kind of, yes. I mean, Laura Spencer was the first person to write a book that documented some of these technology participation methods. And this or method is core to that overall body of knowledge. So she was one of the first to document it. So I think she gets credit for it, but there was a whole bunch of people working that from the fifties onward. Joseph Matthews was part of the ecumenical movement out of the United States in the fifties and the sixties. And so it kind of comes out of community development, community work. And so it's had its evolutions through there.

Doug Downs (17:00):

Okay, let's stretch this out. I love that we have a theory and we agree on it and it's got good science behind it. But I always like unraveling. What does this mean? One thing we do all the time as comms pros and marketers is surveys, right? Oh gosh. We get a base understanding of what people are thinking by doing a survey. Well, if orid is a useful and meaningful process, does that not render surveys in all forms? Those political polls, the marketing surveys, all of them, does that not render them kind of useless? And keep in mind that surveys are a multi, multi multimillion dollar business these days.

Robin Parsons (17:42):

Yeah. So thank you. And I'm going to say yes and no to that question, but let me pull that out a bit. So at Parsons Dialogue, my company, we get asked to do surveys. Our clients ask us to do surveys, and I generally start to twitch a bit. And I'm not a survey expert, I'm a rank amateur. But the reason I twitch is that I have a hard time in a survey design taking people through that structure of thinking because the survey question comes across, and that's the objective level. So I mean, I got one in my inbox the other day, and it was like a net promoter score. So dude, we have just one question for you. Would you recommend us? So that seems really a really simple survey, but that's actually a decisional level question. That's a D level question because it's asking you to draw some kind of a conclusion.

(18:29):

So it asked me one question at the bottom of the thinking stack, and I have had no opportunity to build my thinking to be ready for that. And so it's at best, it's getting my gut response. And so the gut response in that moment is whatever's top of mind. So maybe the dog just threw up and I had to clean up the dog. I'm frustrated by that. Or maybe I had a frustrating conversation with a client, or who knows, maybe I'm ecstatic about the vacation I just booked for myself. And so all of that is affecting my response. So you're not getting a really good quality response. Now, some people will say, well, that doesn't matter because we're just looking for that. Would you promote? And that's a gut response anyway. And I'm going to argue that they're going to put some stats and some this deserves money because seven out of 10 people say, yes, they would recommend us, and I think it's flawed.

(19:20):

Now, the flip side of that is that you can design a survey that follows the thinking structure, and it takes a lot of care and attention, but it's not a guarantee because when you get to that interpretive level, it's usually you got to use some kind of a Likert scale or a forced choice matrix or something like that. And so now you're not really getting their thinking. You don't know why they're responding that way, and you don't have the ability to ask why. Or if you ask why and use a long form text, then you've got all of this text you have to wade through, and you have no real idea of the context in which it was set. So to me, there's a lot of challenges in that in terms of getting good thinking, getting good, reliable results. And I know the survey people will strike me dead for this, but for me as a facilitator, when I want people to go from the top of their thinking to the bottom of their thinking, that's not my tool.

Doug Downs (20:13):

And you have a real life example from the Calgary Board of Education, right?

Robin Parsons (20:18):

Yeah. I don't want to trash them, but a couple of years back, they sent out a survey. They were rationalizing schools, they had built all these new schools, and then they had this school rationalization. So they sent out these complicated surveys, unbelievably complicated surveys, asking me as average parent of kids to, well, what I prefer this school and this location with this, or would I prefer that school and this location with this? Or is it more important? You'd have this and this and this. The complexity of choice was crazy. I couldn't compare, I couldn't hear, I couldn't, the implications of one choice over another. I didn't know what it meant for the outcomes. And so it was a crazy complex medium to try and run a survey for complicated thought. That's complicated thought. And so a survey didn't adapt well to that, and then two thirds of the way throughout that, I have no idea, and I just exited the survey. It was getting too hard, right?

Doug Downs (21:08):

So how does the scarf, S-C-A-R-F model fit in with all of this?

Robin Parsons (21:16):

So going back to the surveys and that interpretive level. So in a survey, we can see an emotion because the language will come up, we'll see angry or we can see it, but we don't really know what the root of it is. So the emotion expresses itself, but we don't know what the root issue is. So what I love about David, David Rock's model, the SCARF model, scarf stands for, he's basically proposes that there's sort of five core drivers in humans. They have a need for status, they have a need for certainty, they have a need for autonomy, for relatedness and for fairness. And when any one of those is under threat, we will behave generally in not a great way, but those are these sort of five core needs that we have as well. So when somebody's expressing frustration or anger about something, it might be because their sense of fairness is deeply challenged, or it might be the sense that their certainty is challenged. And you can't see that often in a social media. You can't see it in a survey, you can't see it. And so that's where the value in a face-to-face conversations, you can probe for that. So what I'm hearing is that you're really concerned about your safety for something or you're really concerned about your security, and then you can go deeper and further in the conversation because A, you've acknowledged the emotion and the root cause and be, you can take it further.

Doug Downs (22:40):

Love this. Thank you for your time today.

Robin Parsons (22:42):

Thank you. This is super fun.

Doug Downs (22:44):

Yeah, we'll have to do it again.

Robin Parsons (22:46):

I would love to.

Doug Downs (22:48):

If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Robin Parsons, you can email her@infoparsonsdialogue.com. That's in the show notes. Don't forget to leave us a voice message with your scary PR or marketing story on SpeakPipe. Again, it's speakpipe.com/stories and strategies. You'll go right to it and do it on your phone. Do it on your computer any way you choose. We'll play some of the messages in our Halloween episode before the end of October. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcasts. If you like this episode, would you do us a favor and tell just one friend? Thanks for listening.