At work, I'm part of a group that is developing leadership skills. On Friday, in preparation for our next meeting, I got a link to a survey designed to help you find out your leadership style. Thirteen questions, no big deal right?
Ha.
The first question was, essentially, "Do you prefer to let people do things their own way or do you want them to do things your way?" I get option A, they can do things their own way, or B, do it my way. I have so many problems with this question. (Yes, I got stuck on the first question).
Am I supposed to assume that they are doing their own thing within the policies and procedures laid out? If so, I choose option A. Or am I supposed to assume absolutely no context? In which case, neither A or B. I am fine with people finding their own methods. But there are a lot of things we do at my job that have to be within certain parameters, so, no, don't go making up your own rules. And I have absolutely NO guidance on this!!!! Surveys never give context, and context matters!
Further, why is it assumed there are only 2 possibilities? As I've pointed out, sometimes it is great to have people coming up with their own methods, but not always. This is another huge problem with surveys. They assume that there are a limited set of options. I remember doing one of those dumb employment personality questionnaires they make you do for department store jobs (Why? Seriously?!) They were asking some question about what you would do if a co-worker was breaking rules. Would you ignore it? Talk to another co-worker? Talk to the offender directly? Talk to your supervisor? You can only pick one, because apparently, no one would ever try multiple approaches.
This has always seemed absurd to me because I very incredibly rarely would ever choose just one of the answers. But then, yesterday, I was listening to an Invisibilia podcast - their Part 1 on Reality - and they were talking about whether the reality is that bears are dangerous or that they are safe (you'll just have to listen to it). The whole time, I'm thinking, "Duh! Both!". And then, about 9 minutes before the end of the episode, the host says, (I paraphrase): "Then this guy told me something that changed how I thought about the question. He said in western culture, we have this binary thinking. It can be A or B, but they are mutually exclusive. In eastern culture, they are comfortable with A and B can both be true."
Now, I'm not sure whether she was referring to this new piece of knowledge about eastern vs. western ways of thinking, and that is what she didn't know, or whether she had never even realized that two seemingly incompatible things can both be true. But my big aha moment was that there are actually people who really, honestly, think binarily.*
This is kind of mind-boggling to me, because I don't generally think that way. And I do get that you could think that way about a specific topic or issue. But are there really people who think in binary terms about most everything? Is that a thing? If so, the state of society makes way more sense, but why is this a thing?
I'm guessing this is just a thing people do on certain issues - like when it comes to Cindrella-ing it up with wild animals. I am going on the premise that most people don't think in all black and white all the time. But it's just weird to me that there are areas where they are solid in their binary thinking. I admit, sometimes it does seem like a nice way to think. When someone's made me mad, for example, I have a short window in which I can place all the blame on them, and then eventually I start to think about what I did that wasn't so great and I don't get to feel self-righteous anymore.**
Anyway, this just confirms that 1) Not everyone thinks like I do (I suspected as much) and 2) multiple choice surveys stink.
*Binarily? Binaryly? Binarily. It's not a word. But it should be. It is definitely an adverb, as it is a word describing a verb, so it receives an -ly ending.
**Being indignant sounds good in theory, but I am actually grateful that, for whatever reason, I see both sides. It seems much less stressful in the long-term.
