Words: The bridge of meaning

Summary: [You might view the earlier post “Language – the social tool” before this.] We interpret the data we receive from others during interactions and convert them into information that makes sense to us. It’s not the words that matter, it’s the meanings they carry that induce us to think and act as we do.


Often, we learn not to like differences, to reject thinking in ‘foreign’ ways if they act against the view of the world that our early socializations have given to us.

Stereotypes

Thus, stereotypes are, so to speak, injected into our psyches and triggered unconsciously to influence our thinking and our actions.

We interpret the data we receive from others during interactions and convert them into information that makes sense to us. The (emotional) meanings that are attached to the words - beyond what they denote - carry additional pointers.

We file them away in mind as schemas. They are then used unquestioningly to guide our activities, and provide reasons for our behaviour.

Preconceived notions

We might think that life in the business organization is a matter of critical thinking. However, all too often it relies on pre-conceived notions – of what is seen as ‘best practice’, what other people have done before, and most importantly what form of language and presentation company culture accepts.

It’s not the words that matter, it’s the meanings they carry that induce us to think and act as we do. What this means is that managers need to encourage communication – and indeed conversation - to help people monitor talk and prevent the unconscious practice of infusing life into stereotypes.

Function of education

The function of education is partly to counter-balance conditioned patterns of thought – to subject connotations, schemas and stereotypes to the hard light of analysis and evidence.

We can learn to refuse the promptings of our unconscious schema, and the stereotypes that our memories push before us. But it is not easy – and when we are tired, poorly educated or otherwise less in control, the stereotypes and connotations can retake command.

Conversations – getting used to others

We need to realize that effective communication is not limited to or controlled by either ‘stock of words’ or grammar rules. With language we connect, and it’s by no means a simple tool.

We need to recognize the power of its connotative side that can more easily break than make the global associations we strive for. We need to recognize the need for constant vigilance. Conversations help; they enable us most to get used to others.

And, what we get used to helps us to change, gradually, what we might have brought to our adult lives unquestioningly - the mind-set, and thus, the ‘sense’ we draw from words.

Perhaps this is what language in diversity really stands for – for each of us, a bridge of meaning from past to future.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

Words: The social tool

Summary: Words ‘live’ in conversations – in denotations and connotations. Meanings we hold in mind are already generalized, referring not to one but to a class or group of objects.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that is all.”

Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass.

Words mean different things to different people. Language then, is a complicated business, although we might think of it as a simple social tool.

Denote and connote

A large enough stock of words, we feel, should make our talking to others internationally easy. However, how people in different countries learn to speak, understand, or even think a language is far more complex than grammar or ‘dictionary meanings’.

Words ‘live’ in conversations. A word may have a denotation - standing for a person, a place, a thing or an idea. Most words also have connotations - associations, implications and insinuations, associating them with emotions, and feelings that may be judgemental.

For example, the noun ‘pig’ denotes an animal species. But its loaded meanings include dirty, smelly, inquisitive, grossly unpleasant, chauvinism - and cops.

Semantics

Organizational fears are that hints of sexism or discrimination could upset team relations, and productivity. Employers hope to install equality with politically correct language, erasing negative or derogatory words from usage.

But does this correct the mindset? As it happens, meanings we hold in mind are already generalized, the word referring not to one but to a class or group of objects. The mental associations are simply transferred to the replacing words like, for example, idiot-retarded-challenged-differently abled.

With the use of euphemisms, bias and prejudice are no longer visible. But their hold on semantics remains and extends with the (connotative) ‘sense’ moving – from old word to new word.

For diverse workgroups, just keeping up with euphemisms could sometimes make more confusion than sense.

Upbringing

Childhood conversations - Jean Piaget’s “socialized speech” - begin the process of taking in culture. As children grow, they model themselves on parents, teachers and friends - first understanding and then speaking, thinking and acting, just as the others around are seen to do.

People become tied to their background and live life according to the customs, norms, and habits of thought they experience in their upbringing. It makes their world organized. It stabilizes daily life by telling them exactly how to identify things and act on them.

Connotations play a large part in stereotypes - hackneyed conceptions, with perhaps an element of truth and a large dollop of fancy. A stereotype becomes a standard received idea, preserved in our minds.

Cont’d 2…The bridge of meaning

Body language: Twist of the thinking brain

Summary: [You might view the earlier post “Body language: Motivating signals” before this.] Emotional arousal can be motivational. But people can also stop and reason critically before they act.


Our visual impressions register at two levels. When we read the body language in intense situations, our initial reaction is to immediately follow suit.

The context

Understanding the context of the situation is a more deliberate process that comes later, as we explore the image consciously.

We then recognize and elaborate on the body language. Finally we might even reverse our initial reaction and stay put instead.

Through both routes, states of emotional arousal develop. These pump up the energy appropriate for action, be it reflexively, or as the result of conscious thought.

Two circuits

The emotional brain monitors whole body actions. Its hub is called the amygdala. Two neural circuits pass through it.

The first, the subcortical circuit operates in much the same way in all higher order animal species. This is the basis of automatic reflex-like emotional behaviour.

The second, the cortical circuit, includes cognitive centres for thinking and reasoning, and is much more efficient in humans. This sustains recognition of emotional body language, and is more adept at causal assessments.



Critical reasoning

Hence people can rush into action simply because others are doing so. But they can, on the other hand, also stop and reason critically about what they should do:

They say, “Why should I run? Let me look first if there is a reason to run."

So they may also run towards the ‘danger’ than away from it - like reporters do to get scoop news.

As long as the cortical circuitry in the brain remains active, people think for themselves as and when they act, even in an emotionally charged crowd.

Issues of motivation

Group activity may be stimulated in more ways than one. The ‘reasoning’ of emotional body language may at times have more success than words in motivating behaviour.

For example, management planning may send directives for one type of group activity. Yet emotional arousal in cohesive work groups may become high enough to override the formal lines of command and control.

Human motivation is complex. Organizations need to be aware that heterogeneous groups used to different cultures and ways of doing can easily upset expectations of uniform, logical individual and group actions within any system.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

Body language: Motivating signals

Summary: There’s little or no control over the involuntary signals conveyed by our body language. Human and other primates use gestural signals as guides for their own behaviour. The emotional contents are contagious.


Our behaviour, we realize, can telegraph our thoughts.

So we put a good deal of effort into being ‘correct’ at work or in social gatherings. ‘Rules’, social or cultural, are imposed to control voluntary movements in interpersonal relationships.

Tuned to visuals

Despite these safeguards however, there’s little or no control over the involuntary signals (of emotional messages), conveyed by body language – posture, expressions, tone of voice, etc.

Unbeknownst to us, our bodies are tuning through visual, non-verbal cues into ‘understanding’, ‘resonating’, and ‘responding’, all at the same time.

At unconscious levels, we’re emotionally involved with the environment and others we see around us.

The body language

Non-verbal communication isn’t an alternative to speech, but an integral part of language clearly providing clues to sense making.

Researchers at the University of Tilburg, Netherlands explain that we’re actually so sensitive to living and non-living environments that imagery can bring on strong emotional reactions.

So we’re moved to laughter or tears watching a movie or seeing a painting, a sculpture, or just pictures – each image we perceive is worth a thousand words to us.

Human and other primates are especially sensitive to gestural signals. They use them as guides for their own behaviour.

Precise information

Thus, body language is still a very potent motivator of group action. It sends out information that is more precise than speech. The emotional contents are contagious, touching group members, inducing activity.

Even the casual observer can understand the message, and quite unconsciously, experience fellow feelings. All of us carry this strong tendency just as most animals, to do as others do to ‘survive’ as a group.

Emotional arousal

Response depends on the degree of emotional arousal. For example, when a little afraid, a person may show it fleetingly in eyes or face. This means low arousal, and its significance is lost unless others around catch the look and interpret it correctly.

But when the degree of arousal shoots up and the person is terror-stricken, he/she also runs for cover. Distress, clearly enacted, finds ‘like-mindedness’ forthwith.

Onlookers become attentive instantly, their own emotional states rising in response to the cues they are receiving. The collective intent resonates and surges. Everybody runs for cover – without a word being spoken!

Cont’d 2…Twist of the thinking brain

Goals: transcending limits

Synopsis: [You might view the earlier post “Goals: the involvement with outcomes ” before this.] Choice depends on personal beliefs and not the status quo. ‘Social influence’ today, may be sourced from anywhere in the world.


The choices we make aren’t from a singular reference point, but develop from several that may even be mutually unrelated.

Homogeneity wiping out

Utilities that individuals or groups contemplate depends on their personal beliefs and not really on the status quo of the organization.

Globalization facilitates this drastic motivational change. Social homogeneity is wiping out everywhere, and so is predictability of behaviours.

Linked through technology

The outcomes anticipated make sense only to the actors. Today, social influence may be sourced from anywhere in the world. Organizations may have no idea what these might be!

Technology ushers in the age of information. Social influence is characteristic of this Internet-supported reality. No longer constrained by, or restricted to political borders or geographical boundaries, it now simply spans the globe.

Influence transformed

Hence cultural and technological change has forced into organizations and societies.

Common assumptions have been that ‘the input’ into any transaction, relationship or system is roughly equal to ‘the output’ in dimension and intensity.

But the reality today is something else. The ‘info link’ in social networking is ever increasing, ever varied. For example, developing social trends don’t change their proportions arithmetically; they expand in geometric progressions.

Consider this -

Q: If we have a series of numbers in the order 2, 4, 8, and so on, what will be the 10th term?
A: Not double digits, but in four figures – 1024.

Similarly, the nature and power of social influence too has transformed.

Global reference

The latest of generations to join the organizational workforce, the Millennials, appear to have a profound affinity for the Internet and for diversity.

They tend to think as global citizens, beyond limits of country, race or culture. Hence they are most responsive to rapid change. They carry forward the global reference.

For instance, they don’t seem to follow trends. They create them instead, finding obscure content on the ‘Net and popularizing them. Nodal interlinks over the network keeps the process churning worldwide.

Transcending

Perhaps ‘generation next’ are evolving a new need – the need to transcend the limits of homogeneity. They thrive on change, and architects it, in fact, enhancing roles within and outside the system.

Organizationally, it may be better to follow new generational leads and open our minds to global citizenship. Both employers and employees need greater flexibility of thought to accommodate multiple reference points.

Motivate involvement

Organizational members need to accept increasing diversity in their midst without prejudice. They also need to realize that rising attrition clearly indicates the lack of employee involvement with organizational decisions.

In the global workplace, the use of phrases like ‘your cultures’ or ‘your countries’ now appears limiting and archaic. It constrains generating collective involvements in new environments.

Unless the workforce motivations are carefully understood and addressed, productivity remains the unresolved concern.

Comments/opinions anyone??

Goals: the involvement with outcomes

Synopsis: Money isn’t the only motivator. Our involvement with several outcomes ultimately affects what we do. Much of the dilemma we go through relates to our personal desires vis-à-vis our social expectations.

Organizations around the world have traditionally used money incentives to motivate performance. But now, despite the tried and tested lure, they experience increasing attrition rates.

Not the only motivator

Employers are left wondering how exactly productivity can be encouraged, since the shelf life of money incentives appears short.

Besides, with social and organizational diversity increasing, behavioural motivations of different constituent groups seem complex, difficult to predict.

Over four decades ago, theorist Victor Vroom hypothesized the expectancy theory - that a worker tends to choose high productivity if they see it as the means of achieving one or more personal goals.

That means money isn’t the only motivator. Our degree of involvement with perceived outcomes ultimately determines what we do.

Fat or lean?

This works in every area of life, even in discriminating between package labels.

In a study, researchers asked target groups to decide between two packages of ground beef – one labelled “80 percent lean”, the other “20 percent fat”.

They found that although both essentially meant the same thing, most people predictably preferred the lean. Why is because ‘fat’ is connotative, often viewed as repulsive.

Although the package contents were identical, their labels still subtly biased thinking and motivated choice in the target groups - sometimes wishfully!

Personal and social

Advertising language thus attempts to influence consumer choices causing unconscious emotional reactions. Our motivations are linked to our social and cultural origins, and the orientations that we thereby learn or adopt.

Before acting on the environment people tend to think over four types of consequences:

• Self approval or disapproval
• Social approval or disapproval
• Gains or losses for self
• Gains or losses for significant others.
  

Fact is we’re an intensely social species. Much of the dilemma we go through relates to our personal desires vis-à-vis our social expectations.

Integrated response

Norms, beliefs and customs we carry in memory associate with our subjectivity, and sense of self. They contribute to our reasoning.

These considerations influence our life decisions. Consciously or unconsciously, we may be influenced by their dictates. In our action responses we integrate our behaviours with the goals we intend to achieve.

Know the context

In any department, or workgroup in the organization then, motivating factors relating to individual wants may differ from group preferences. Choices as a member of a social (or cultural) group may also be quite different to those in personal capacity.

Earlier the ‘personal’ and ‘social’ referents were a little more predictable because people came from similar backgrounds. Now in the global context, family, community, neighbourhood, etc., could mean different things to different people.

If productivity is to be encouraged, it becomes important to know about these differences of personal and social contexts that serve to motivate the behaviours of organizational members.

Cont’d 2…transcending limits

Behaviour: acting for the future

Synopsis: [You might view the earlier post “Behaviour: the power of the hunch” before this.] Emotions make thinking more intelligent. Our ability to intuit then depends on the unique mental wiring connecting our emotions and our general intelligence. Intuition makes us streetsmart savvy, thinking future.

Intuition drives the adaptability to changing environments, with immediate knowledge.

Inhibition and distress

The rationalistic mind blocks this fearing passion. But by inhibiting the emotional livewire, issues are grasped incompletely, choices biased, failures in following through or stereotypical mistakes doing so.

Incompetence with social skills raises anxiety and fear, shrinking working memory. The gut feelings in this case, simply signal organic distress when faced with the unknown!

Thinking intelligent

Our intuition combines experiential learning of the past with the present context. It also guides decisions on the ‘right’ options in problem solving, and regulates changes in behaviour.

The intuitive signals are carried by our emotions, both positive and negative. Emotions thus make thinking more intelligent.

The context

Emotions are of special value in the social context. There are five competencies that build on one another to develop social skills -

• Knowing one’s emotions
• Managing emotions
• Motivating oneself
• Recognizing emotions in others
• Handling relationships

They influence our use of language, the way we perceive others or ourselves and especially, how we confront environmental challenges and adapt to change.

Mental wiring

Utilized at a level below consciousness, intuition combines bits of learned information into new patterns - fast.

Our long evolutionary history makes intuitive thinking a deeply buried power of the mind. It develops spatial associations and helps our adjusting to the environment’s unpredictable changes.

Studies have identified a direct neural link from the centre of emotions (the limbic system) to the centres of reason (the frontal regions) of the brain.

Our ability to intuit then depends on the unique mental wiring connecting our emotions and our general intelligence. It predisposes us to think and act in certain ways.

Streetsmart – thinking future

The value of decision-making lies in the flow of adaptive behaviour - from rapid reading and evaluation of possibilities, to unerring selection of response, and performance suited to situation and context.

Decisions relate to the future and we need educated guesses to make them effective. Intuition makes us streetsmart savvy. We can think according to context, utilizing divergent thinking and non-rational logic to back our hunches.

With the clear inputs of emotions, it also facilitates universal empathy, and the building of positive relationships. We are able to change ourselves and encourage others also to change with us.

Extending power

This innate potential cannot be taught. In times gone by intuitive skills were critically responsible for the physical survival of human life or species. We need to understand and accept our right brain’s astute promptings to guide us through life.

And extend the power of our minds to our psychological and creative planes, so individual and organizational actions in the new global reality are unencumbered by hesitation and doubt.

Comments/opinions anyone??

Behaviour: power of the hunch

Synopsis: We assume that people decide to act only after they have a workable theory. But the emotional livewire may initiate action far sooner.

When exactly do people decide to act? Scientists at the University of Iowa experimented with a simple card game and a polygraph, and found some fascinating results.

The scientific tests

Researchers used two groups of people - “controls” (normal people), and “patients” (people with frontal brain damage).

…the players are given four decks of cards, a loan of $2000 facsimile U.S. bills, and asked to play so that they can lose the least amount of money and win the most. Turning each card carries an immediate reward ($100 in decks A and B and $50 in decks C and D). Unpredictably, however, the turning
of some cards also carries a penalty (which is large in decks A and B and small in decks C and D)...

By the process of turning the cards over, participants can build a concept about the decks, and adjust their play concomitantly.

Understanding

Researchers identified 4 stages in the game play:

1. Pre-punishment - Before encountering losses, both groups behave the same.
2. Pre-hunch – By card 10-20, after encountering losses, stress reaction occurs in ‘controls’. This causes a change in their behaviour.
3. Hunch - By card 50, all of the “controls” express ideas about the ‘wrong’ decks, but none of the “patients” can do so.
4. Conceptual period - By card 80, seven out of ten “controls”, and three out of six “patients” correctly explain the nature of the card game.
   

The two groups clearly show differences in behaviour responses. The controls could rapidly adapt to the game, but not so the patients.

The brain tracks

We use two routes in our brain while thinking –

• The rapid track is the intuitive route. It operates quickly to identify and understand patterns in new situations, which helps us quite unconsciously, to adapt to them.
• The rational route is slow track. Although comparatively delayed it allows a conscious, critical grasp of events through deliberate analysis of the data we receive.

From the findings, we might conclude that brain damage in the patients prevented activation of their unconscious reasoning, and hence their making adjustments to the game.

Change in behaviour

In any situation, our eventual decision-making is influenced by unconscious signals from memory of reward or punishment. This encourages us to change behaviour.

The researchers found that with their losses, all the controls showed stress reactions, like sweaty palms, to the riskier decks. Even before knowing exactly why they were reacting, they began to avoid those decks.

But none of the “patients” had such reactions. Even those who finally formed a correct concept of the game could only continue with their previous behaviour patterns.

Cont’d 2…acting for the future

Intuition: learning without awareness

Synopsis: [You might view the earlier post “Intuition: comfort with ambiguity” before this.] The insight is quick, bypassing logic. The survival of the species through adversity proves its effectiveness.

Intuition allows a direct cognitive understanding and operates at many levels - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Immediate knowledge

It’s a far superior source of knowing than logical reason – and far more rapid. The insight bypasses analytic logic.

Intuition is defined as:

Immediate knowledge, as in perception or consciousness, distinguished from "mediate" knowledge, as in logical reasoning.

For example, we know that black is not white, or that a square peg won’t fit a round hole. But we can’t explain how we know so we call it a hunch, a gut feeling, or even luck.

Best practice?

Following ‘best practice’ became important in organizational life to preserve continuity and sameness. But global change has turned the world into a village increasing the heterogeneity that people now have to work with.

Society and the business organization need to relate to diverse people, in constituent demographic groups and customers. Among differences of age, culture, religion, and nationality, ‘tunnel’ vision and single-file progressions appear not to work too well.

It then becomes difficult to determine whether the erstwhile best practice can be relied on in new circumstances.

Adaptive behaviour

Theorists argue that instinctual reasoning was the only available daily intelligence that helped people in ancient times deal with the unknown.

In the uncertain circumstances they lived in, responses had to be instantaneous. Too many predators were about and there was no time to ponder laboriously over logical choice. They needed to correctly interpret sounds and movements to be able to survive.

Distilled knowledge

Experiential learning made unconditioned reflexes conditioned behaviour. These behaviour patterns, free of hesitation and doubt, eventually stored in memory as adaptive instincts.

In time they distilled as our intuition. The rapid route of thinking activates stored procedural knowledge, and quite unconsciously, we’re able to perform.

Feeling for order

Intuition is the “root” of all discoveries. Many noted scientists and Nobel Prize winners acknowledge knowing the answers before, working out the problems later. Said Einstein:

There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by the feeling for order lying behind appearance.

Intuition has a more global role to play in social intelligence, because people are far more unpredictable than things. It’s said that it takes less intelligence to land a man on the moon than it does to resolve the conflict of a married couple!

The learning

The ability to intuit is now considered innate. It represents our learning without awareness. Centred on person or thing, the ‘picture’ is built from elements obtained from generalized explorations on a wide horizon.

This real form of knowledge is critical for effective decision-making. It works through our emotions to provide the crucial understanding. The survival of species proves its effectiveness.

Comments/opinions anyone??

Intuition: comfort with ambiguity

Synopsis: Intuitive thinking has been considered relationship-based, ‘female type’ thinking. Women may be more adept at multitasking, looking beyond the obvious and in managing a variety of situations.


With discovery of two hemispheres in the brain in the twentieth century, functional dualism was theorized along gender lines.

The dual modes

The logic mode of the left hemisphere was perceived as the rational ‘masculine’ consciousness, task-based and academically brilliant.

The insight mode of the right hemisphere was looked upon as the intuitive ‘feminine’ consciousness that is relationship-based.

Feminine competency?

Insight bases on divergent thinking and inductive logic. But whether intuition (or rationality) is intrinsic to gender is still debated.

For example, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was mediocre academically. Yet he possessed "a zigzag lightning of the brain" that was universally admired.

Again, Indian littérateur Rabindranath Tagore went on to be a Nobel laureate, and two sovereign countries, India and Bangladesh have adopted his compositions as their national anthems. He created a university although he himself avoided formal schooling.

The non-rational way

Intuition or instinct isn’t irrational, but rather a non-rational, holistic way of thinking that forms the big picture from only a few dots.

The involvement with home, family and social connections could make women more adept at looking beyond the obvious, multitasking and managing a variety of situations at the same time.

So they appear more comfortable with ambiguity, better at decoding emotional messages, in nonverbal sensitivity, and in communicative verbal skills.

Stress responses

Unknown variables raise new levels of incompetence in people and performance falters. The resultant stress can cause unthinking responses, like:

• Panic is thinking too little, losing touch with situation and context and operating by some remote instinct to simply survive.
• Choking is thinking too much, losing touch with instinct and becoming tentative, approaching the job like a beginner, second-guessing oneself.
  

Stress conditions generally include emotional outpourings of fear and anger. They do also lead to irrational behaviours.

Hence ‘emotions’ have become connotatively associated - although it’s more accurate to equate ‘stress’ with ‘irrational’.

Systemic discomfort

Rationalism faces uncertainty in handling unknown variables. In interpersonal issues, motivation, and teamwork conflicts arise, producing hesitation, vacillation and emotional stress. The process of adaptation requires new learning.

But stress confuses the mind and shuts off reasoning. The decisional strategies adopted are reactive and only to alleviate the systemic discomfort.

People forced to think on their feet in uncertain circumstances might gamble on certain solutions working for them. Or they may become too overwhelmed by situation and context to make informed choices. They may also avoid taking a decision altogether by procrastinating or passing the buck.

Intuition rediscovered

An effective decision then seems a lucky strike. In a world of rapid change, multitasking and social skills have become keys requisite of ability because resources, including time, are now limited.

In its quest for the competitive edge, enterprise latched onto social intelligence as key in the global interactive process. Intuition, the “feminine” side of mind, has thus been rediscovered.

Cont’d 2…learning without awareness