The Pie is a Lie: ➏ Lower the Priority of Winning

Let's look at winning.

I'm not going to dis winning.

Winning can be good

First of all a game with a winner—like chess—can be great fun for both players.

Whoops, I stepped outside of the game with a winner and included aspects outside the game such as the joy in puzzle solving and social interplay. Playing chess is fun! (Well, for many. Maybe being coerced to play chess would make both players feel like they lost overall in the ordeal. )

Winning can be important in discussion!

One case is in an emergency. "Step away from the cliff edge. Tell me more about how you believe you can fly." Or maybe the very short, "Duck!"

It might be long term, a consistent important plea. "I love you and I want you to enjoy life. I don't think that bottle can say the same to you. Please hear me."

Even so, the focus on winning can take away from all we can gain from fruitful dialogue...

Winning! Ha-ha! Or maybe not.

Sometimes the act of winning is the reward itself. I might not remember the argument, but I can chant, "I won! I won!"

We see this in humor all the time.

A common gag in movies is to have two arguing "Is so!" and "Is not!",yet somehow switching sides.

Yet, sometimes it is not that funny. In a meeting another argues against your position and yet somehow takes credit for it and "wins". A politician shuffles position in a debate just to say it is a win, not really caring about the core elements of the issue. One exclaims that he won a debate because his statement caused an opponent to become dumbfounded.

When winning in conversation, dialogue, or discourse becomes primary, we lose the cornucopia of the possible fruit of that exchange.

Framing the dialogue

Let's look at how we look at dialogue.

In Neil Gaiman's Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Wife," the TARDIS—inhabiting a human body for the first time—declares: "Biting's excellent. It's like kissing. Only there's a winner."

Idris sees moving from kissing to biting as adding a winner to a winner-less situation, maybe both are losers or are unlabeled. After the advancement to biting, an actor becomes a winner, thus making the other a loser.

I think that moving from kissing to biting is removing a winner.

There might be exceptions (such as aunt Bertha's kisses at Thanksgiving), but we usually think of kissing as win-win. When we move from biting to kissing (switching the order), we add a winner. Everybody wins!

If we consider dialogue to be potentially win-win, if we desire that win-win interchange, then we have taken a few steps to being ready to engage in dialogue that is fruitful. Jump in or plan on learning more.

Listening

As I have repeated, the first three steps to fruitful dialogue are listen, listen and listen. That helps us to disengage from the winning mindset. After listening, we realize that we have paused as in taking a breath, we see the setting as different, an we envision a potential abundance in conversation through what we have learned. But, what if I keep jumping into snapping up a win, or conversation cannot move forward because I am not able to get past the other's fixation on winning?

Safe-mode dialogue

Perhaps, for now, while getting into this, it might be good to forget about winning and focus on getting to know the other.

There are some websites, YouTube channels and blogs that take winning completely off the table. This can be good. If you are thinking that winning is sometimes important, it is hard to embrace just getting to know each other, especially near some tension.

I don't want to discourage you from jumping in. Take what you know and apply that. I'm just saying that if you are not ready to go to the deep end of the swimming pool, that is OK.

I feel like I am an abecedarian in fruitful dialogue. We abecedarians need training wheels.

YouTube Channel Fruitful Dialog (not me)

No, this channel is not Mouth Fruit, so don't blame Cai and Noor for anything I say. The approach is is to start conversing with those you can relate to, where you might have something to offer. Start out with growing a mindset that allows reaching out. I think this part can be good, but limiting ourselves to our group makes learning slower. Shared pain feels like it is caused by outsiders. Even so, following this model can help when we are scared. Just remember to move beyond this.

Constructive Dialogue Institute

Take a gander at the CDI website. Look at what those folks call constructive dialogue, a "form of conversation that can bridge divides and lead to understanding." Number One in the Five Principles of Constructive Dialogue is Let go of winning. The slogan at the bottom of web pages is "Curiosity. Critical Thinking. Compassion." The approach is geared toward helping institutions (schools, businesses, local governments and churches) in creating an environment for constructive dialogue. I expect to learn from this organization and I already am looking at some of the studies by a founder. (What? Of course, I can learn. You guys are so harsh.)

CDI also provides guides for events, such as holidays and tragedies. This might be useful for us who apply fruitful dialogue from individual up rather than institution down.

So far this seems to be a shell for something that might be very useful. It feels incomplete, but that might be because it is not targeting me. However, because of the emphasis on creating environments rather than planting seeds that blossom and seed, most material seems to be for university administration.

Key takeaways from CDI: Skip winning, ask questions, use storytelling, respond after the emotional flash, seek common ground.

Others

Maybe this list will grow. As I find teachers of non-winning discussion, I might remember to add them here.

The lie

We have so many preconceptions that tend to say the pie is fixed and limited. Based on valid experiences, too! Yet in looking closer at the psychology and mechanics of interchange we see hints that we can think beyond the bounds of the pie as we can think outside the box. Pie. Yum. Yet the word pie creates boundaries in our minds. I want more so you have to have less. We can now see that is not quite right. Here we see that it boils down to winning. The lie is telling us to fight. Let's put aside winning as the primary goal (or as any goal) and move to win-win.

What does you do when the other is caught up in wanting to win?

Is winning like capturing the other and moving that other across the line to your side?

When has an urgent need to win in a conversation come up?