Reply To: Exercise 11: Avoid imposing values
Leadership Step by Step Exercise 11: Avoid Imposing Values
Reflection:
Namely, for this exercise, we were trying to avoid starting with the words No, But, However, and to avoid using the words good, bad, best, and worst. I found this immensely challenging to combine the exercises. I think I would need to spend time in my think box to actively craft alternative responses to ones typically used.
Most of the times, I would catch myself after I would use words that would impose values and often find myself in a state of confusion, not knowing the boundaries of imposing values. For example – Instead of ‘No worries’ I would say ‘It’s all good.’ Then, upon inclusion of exercise 11, I would want to say ‘That’s alright with me’ or ‘That’s okay with me’ instead of ‘It’s all good.’ Invariably, saying that something is okay or alright is also a projection of my value. Hence, my conundrum and frustration because a moderate judgement about a situation is still a judgement of the situation nonetheless. Instead of good, bad, best and worst, I started to use other quantifier and qualifier words like great, decent, etc. and then realized that they were also imposing values. I did try to pivot to my expression, such as ‘I enjoyed …” when possible. At times, it felt challenging or not possible to do in a reasonable amount of time to keep conversation flowing.
I think I caught a small fraction of my value-imposing words. I didn’t really notice changes in others’ reactions. I imagine that the different responses feel more well received that value-imposing words, but I don’t have a comparison. I don’t think others noticed a difference. I think I would have to draft out the words and commonly used phrases and proactively think of qualifying phrases to use instead of my normal ones in order to actively avoid value-imposing words.