Wyzga On Words

Fear Or Compassion? Which Motivates Action?

I've been reluctant to kick the hornet's nest on this one.  Folks seem pretty divided on The Reptile Theory.  Like Paris - you either love it or you hate it.

The notion that we should regard jurors as reptiles to get some huge verdict out of them by playing to their fears has always struck me as cold-blooded, and not a little inhuman.  How we regard people and things becomes how we treat them.  I felt so strongly about this I co-wrote an article with Stephanie West Allen and Jeffrey Schwartz for The Jury Expert entitled "Atticus Finch Would Not Approve."  [Click AllenSchwartzWyzgaTJEMay2010 to read.]  My position has only strengthened.

I used to work with a beekeeper who insisted on calling the honeybees "really angry" when they reacted to us opening the hive boxes.  He treated them as if they were somehow "really angry."  He over-smoked them.  He was tense, jumpy and afraid.  His physical actions conveyed fear.  At the end of the day working with him I was a wreck.

And yet, there was nothing to fear.  We were suited up for the job.  We would get head-bonked by some of the guard bees; but that was normal behavior.  No bees chased us or swarmed us.  A honeybee has to be truly threatened to sting; when she does she rips out her guts and dies.  Not an action to be taken lightly. 

When I was trained as a beekeeper I was told to remember, "No jerks in the beeyard." While I have not yet gotten to the stage where I will work my hives wearing only a veil, I know that to bee Zen keeps everyone - beekeepers and honeybees - calm.

It works with people, too.  The Science of Compassion by the social scientist David DeSteno writing for the NYTimes shares the results of scientific research that shows empathy with the suffering of others is alive and well.  Excerpt:

"As a social psychologist interested in the emotions, I long wondered whether this spiritual understanding of compassion was also scientifically accurate. Empirically speaking, does the experience of compassion toward one person measurably affect our actions and attitudes toward other people? If so, are there practical steps we can take to further cultivate this feeling? Recently, my colleagues and I conducted experiments that answered yes to both questions.

In one experiment, designed with the psychologist Paul Condon and published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, we recruited people to take part in a study that was ostensibly about the relation of mathematical ability to taste perception — but that in actuality was a study of how the experience of compassion affects your behavior.

In another study, published in the journal Emotion, the psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I conducted an experiment ostensibly about music perception — but that actually investigated how feelings of compassion might be increased.

Our hunch was that compassion is easiest to feel when you have a sense of commonality with someone else."

And what did the scientists find?  Excerpt:

"What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly.

What does this mean for cultivating compassion in society? It means that effortful adherence to religious or philosophical dictums (often requiring meditation, prayer or moral education), though clearly valuable and capable of producing results, is not the only way to go. There is nothing special about tapping in synchrony; any such commonality will do. Increased compassion for one’s neighbor, for instance, can come from something as easy as encouraging yourself to think of him as (say) a fan of the same local restaurant instead of as a member of a different ethnicity.

Simply learning to mentally recategorize one another in terms of commonalities would generate greater empathy among all of us — and foster social harmony in a fairly effortless way."

I am not Pollyanna enough to believe that I can buy someone a Coke and the world will live in perfect harmony.  

I agree that there is fear in the world.  Look at everything from video games to the nightly news to the most recent midnight movie massacre in Aurora, CO.  You will get more than your share of a diet of human suffering. 

But fear does nothing to improve the situation - fear causes us to hide, bar the doors, become complacent.  Ironically, when we feel an empathy, a compassion for the situation we will act - whether for gun control, mental health, local food, a jury verdict, whatever.  How does it work this way?

"What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly."

Like my friend the angry beekeeper, you get what you name.  Whether or not the honeybees were "really angry," he perceived them as such and treated them that way.  It was how he perceived them that created the expectation of harm. 

I've had enough of fear.  I prefer to be on the side of those who encourage a deep compassion for human suffering and from that place articulate for action to lessen the plight of others.

Q&A Tuesday: How Does Storytelling Help Me As Well As My Client?

Q:    How does storytelling help me as well as my client?

A:    Stories are the stuff of daily life.  When we commit to becoming part and parcel of the story we need to tell on behalf of another, the commitment expands our awareness of our humanity.  From this place we become increasingly empathetic, compassionate, and relatable to other human beings, more authentic, believable and better at persuading, too.

Some years back I wrote an article with San Diego attorney Jim Parziale entitled, "Once Upon A Client - The Power of Persuasive Legal Storytelling."  [Click on the title to access the pdf.]  It's a treasure trove of information, thoughts and ideas gained over decades of my storytelling work which became translated into the litigation arena.  I bet you will recognize in these words much of what I have been speaking, teaching and writing about for almost 15 years.

I trust that this work will be of help to you and your clients.  If you intend to use it, please remember the integrity of attribution.

The Place Where You Live. Citizen Activists May Have Had Something To Do With It.

 

ORION Magazine carries a lovely section called The Place Where You Live.  Readers are invited to submit a contribution telling about the place where they live.  This following piece was printed in the July/August 2012 issue of ORION.  You should be able to access it on line when the September/October issue is in print.

Meanwhile, here is Gary Pace's beautifully spoken homage of gratitude to those who stood up to a nuclear site even after construction had begun and halted it - for good:

"Bodega Head, California.  I come to the Bodega Headlands often to make offerings and prayers.  Offerings to the land - the wild northern California coast - and prayers of gratitude to people who, fifty years ago, had the vision to block construction of a nuclear plant on this spot straddling the San Andreas Fault.  During the 1906 earthquake, this coastline moved 15 feet.

Tucked behind dramatic cliffs, and close enough to the ocean for me to hear sea lions and glimpse migrating whales, is a small pond called "Hole in the Head."  This crater is the site initially excavated for the plant's foundation; now it only hints at the disaster that could have unfolded.  The largest nuclear reactor of its era would have been built on the edge of the fault.

What outrageous hope gave people the courage to believe they could halt construction of a nuclear site even after construction had begun?  Who could have predicted their unlikely success, outlined in this understated park sign?

'Proximity of the San Andreas Fault would have significantly increased risks to marine, tidal, and atmospheric environments.  Citizens and scientists collected signatures, filed lawsuits, wrote letters, and appeared at hearings ranging from Sonoma County to Washington, D.C.  The project was finally abandoned in 1964 after 8 years of controversy and citizen action.'

If it had opened as planned, the reactor would have outlived its utility by now.   I would be standing here before the shuttered structures of cooling towers, looking out over the yard littered with barrels of spent fuel rods, a lonely witness to the radioactivity that would persist for scores of human lifetimes.  The electricity produced would have long since passed through local residents' light bulbs and dishwashers, and we'd be tapping new sources of power for our contemporary needs.

My thoughts drift to those folks who worked for such a reasonable outcome.  As the sea breeze blows across my face, I arrange flowers in honor of the legacy these activists left behind, an ephemeral monument to something that never came to pass."

 

Q&A Tuesday: How Does A Story Change By Revising The Context?

Q:    What changes when you change the context of a story?

A:     You can change the meaning.  The meaning can better suit your purpose. 

For decades now I have taught that a story in its simplest terms can be reduced to a formula: Content + Context + Value = Emotionally Meaningful Story. 

The content is all the facts, evidence, characters, relationships, and the like.

The context is the circumstances within which those facts took place, the characters came to be and how they related among and between themselves.

The value gives us the emotional juice so we can relate to the story whether it is about the Hobbit, a coach on trial for alleged sexual abuse or environmental changes.

It's all a story - and not just a story.

Apple is back in the news.  Not because it is launching another iThing but because its wages and payroll practices are pretty abysmal, "Apples Stores' Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay."  How would Steve Jobs change the context of that story?

Here's an example of how he created a "high ground maneuver" that set a new PR bar, as excerpted from the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. 

The iPhone 4 was dropping calls like crazy.  The reason was attributed to a glitch in the steel rim of the phone. If you held the phone a particular way or covered up the tiny gap that was part of the antenna mechanism, there could be some signal loss.  And it was a problem known to Jobs and the Apple engineers before the launch.

Media being what it is created "Antennagate" and Consumer Reports declined to recommend the phone after rigorous testing.

What's a CEO to do?

Jobs held a press conference.  He did not accept the advice of board members to show a little humility, damp down the pride a bit, offer an apology.  He changed the context of the story, "saying all cell phones had problems."  In a remarkably straightforward and neutral tone he said, "We are not perfect.  Phones are not perfect.  We all know that.  But we want to make our users happy."  Jobs denied the problem, dismissed the criticism, and spread the blame across the board of all smartphone manufacturers

And that was pretty much the end of that.

You could return your phone, but only a marginal few users did.

"Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon strip Dilbert, was also increduloous but far more admiring....Apple's response to the iPhone 4 problem didn't follow the public relations playbook, because Jobs deccided to rewrite the playbook," Adams wrote.  "If you want to know what genius looks like, study Jobs' words"  By proclaiming up front that phones are not perfect, Jobs changed the context of the argument with an indisputable assertion.  "If Jobs had not changed the context from the iPhon 4 to all smartphones in general, I could make you a hilarious comic strip about a product so poorly made that it won't work if it comes in contact with a human hand.  But as soon as the context is changed to all smartphones have problems,' the humor opportunity is gone.  Nothing kills humor like a general and boring truth." [page 523]

TIP:     Develop the context of your story to suit the purpose of your persuasion.

TIP:     Developing the accurate and appropriate context for your story is not lying; it owning the genius to persuade your listener or decision-maker.

TIP:    Lessons are everywhere we look. 

What's Really In That Plastic Bottle Of Bottled Water You're Drinking?

There's nothing odd about 3 corporations taking control of our drinking water.  It's just business.

Nestle, Coke and Pepsi have their eye on the future.  The future is water: who has it, who controls it, who needs it.

Mahatma Ghandi said, "There is enough water for human need, but not for human greed."

This is where we have arrived: corporate greed.

Yet, it's not all their fault.  Corporations sell what we buy.  When we stop buying we change things.

Water covers 75% of planet Earth; only 1% of that is drinkable.  In the next 15 years almost two-thirds of the human race will be struggling for clean drinking water.

Water is the new oil.

Now does it make sense?

Nestle, Coke and Pepsi are sucking the earth dry, bottling the water and selling it back to you at 1900 times the original cost to them.

What do you think goes into a bottle of Arrowhead, Ozark, Dasani or Aquafina water?  Pure mountain stream refreshment?

Over 40% of the bottled water on the shelves is merely good old-fashioned municipal tap water.

Recall a few years back when Atlanta was suffering the drought?  Lakes were down to dirt?  But the local Coke plant kept on bottling?

The joke's on us.

Compounding the problem is the petrochemicals that make up the plastic bottles that hold the water.  These cancer-causing petrochemicals leach out into the water you drink, you give your kids to drink.

And it doesn't stop there.  Not everyone gets curbside recycling service.  And even if we did there are not enough recycling plants or uses for the bottles.  So they end up in landfills where the petrochemicals leach into the soils and ground water.

And it doesn't end there.  Our oceans are becoming a toxic plastic stew as more and more bottles are swept into the lakes, rivers, streams and sea.  Marine life eats the broken down plastic pellets.

Here's a few sources you can check out to begin your research and then decide for yourself if it's time to give up the bottle:

Tapped - the movie. This 2009 Indie Winner examines the role of the bottled water industry and its effects on our health, climate change, pollution, and our reliance on oil. The high cost -- to both the environment and our health -- of bottled water is the subject of this documentary that enlists activists, environmentalists, community leaders and others to expose the dark side of the bottled water industry. Americans may rethink their obsession with bottled H20 when they learn of the unregulated industry's willingness to ignore environmental and health concerns, and the problems that arise as a result.  Produced by Atlas Films.  Trailer.

We made it easy for you: click here to watch Tapped, all 75 minutes of it.

Just to balance the argument a bit, here are Top 10 Reasons why bottled water is a blessing.  And from a Quaker.

Grading your bottled water.    

Advice To Graduates: Life Will Be Hard; Make Mistakes; Fix The World; Be True To Yourself; And So On.

Elliott Richardson gave the commencement address to my college graduating class.  I don't remember what he said so much as what he had done: as attorney general he stood up to then-President Richard M. Nixon and refused to fire the Special Prosecutor investigating Watergate.  His moral stand and subsequent resignation hearkens back to a much earlier time, one that Maureen Dowd longs for in her editorial, "Moral Dystopia."  Excerpt.

"EVERYONE is good, until we’re tested.

We hope we would be Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons,” who dismisses his daughter’s pleas to compromise his ideals and save his life, saying: “When a man takes an oath, Meg, he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

But with formerly hallowed institutions and icons sinking into a moral dystopia all around us, has our sense of right and wrong grown more malleable? What if we’re not Thomas More but Mike McQueary?"

Richardson was tested.  His actions are his legacy.

It would be too easy to say that in the years since I stood alone and applauded Richardson's address I became a lawyer and stood up to wrongdoers to model his role.  My mother would just tell you that I was always a head-strong independent soul rooting for the underdog while marching to a distant drummer.

What I do want to know is what today's graduates will take from the plethora of commencement speeches given by the notables and quotables whose earnest, funny, somber and encouraging words come to us in snippets in todays NYTimes, "Familiar Faces Offering Advice, Idealism and Humor."  Excerpt.

"But uplift and idealism still ruled. Graduates were exhorted to do great things, look out for others and maybe, just maybe, put aside their electronic devices for a few minutes. The nearest to universal advice was that graduates should chase what they love, and heal what ails humanity."

Here are a few of my favorites:

NEIL GAIMAN, AUTHOR

University of the Arts

“Nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either.” “Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. I.R.S. on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil, or it’s all been done before? Make good art.”

LAWRENCE LESSIG, LEGAL SCHOLAR

John Marshall Law School in Atlanta

“There is no one in the criminal justice system who believes that system works well. There is no one in housing law who believes this is what law was meant to be. ... The law of real people doesn’t work, even if the law of corporations does. ... The law has convinced most Americans that the law is for the rich, except that part of the law that involves the prisons. We, all of us, have a duty to fix this. To repair this. To make it better.”

CORY A. BOOKER, MAYOR OF NEWARK

Bard College

“Go out there and swear to this world your oath, not with your words, but with what you do. Not with your hand over your heart, but with your hand outstretched to a world that desperately needs your hand, your help, your insights, your creativity, your honor, your courage. It needs you.”  “My dad would always tease me: ‘Boy, don’t you walk around here like you hit a triple. You were born on third base, boy.’ ... I drink deeply from wells of freedom and liberty that I did not dig. I eat lavishly from banquet tables prepared for me by my ancestors. I sit under the shade of trees that were planted and cultivated and cared for by those who I will never know.”

AARON SORKIN, WRITER AND PRODUCER

Syracuse University

“To get where you’re going, you have to be good, and to be good where you’re going, you have to be damned good. Every once in a while, you’ll succeed. Most of the time you’ll fail, and most of the time the circumstances will be well beyond your control.”  “You’re too good for schadenfreude, you’re too good for gossip and snark, you’re too good for intolerance — and since you’re walking into the middle of a presidential election, it’s worth mentioning that you’re too good to think people who disagree with you are your enemy.”

To those of you setting out, every good wish for health, prosperity and joy.  For those of us still on the road take a moment to thank and learn from the ones on our (aging) heels.

Narrative Medicine And The Cross-Over To Law School And Law Practice.

What do internists, especially ones practicing narrative medicine, have to tell law students and lawyers? Quite a lot.  And all it will take is 39 minutes of your time.

Rita Charon, MD, PhD. a nationally renown physician, writer and educator as well as Executive Director/Founder, Program in Narrative Medicine College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University is at the top of the game of Narrative Medicine.

Click here to attend the Department of Medicine Division of Medical Humanities presentation "Narrative Medicine: Accuracy, Evidence, Allegiance, Joy" as Dr. Charon discusses the importance of the medical narrative as a tool for physicians to better understand their patients and themselves, and it's role in training a new generation of doctors.

What is so fascinating to this former pediatric nurse, life-long storyteller and litigation consultant is the cross-over between Dr. Charon's ideas on the dividends of narrative medicine and those that can be reaped in law schools and law practices.

Highlights with my comments in [brackets]:

*    Medicine must go beyond the bounds of knowledge with differential diagnostic brains.  That kind of fact-based thinking is inadequate to the task.  [Likewise, our reliance on "the facts and only the facts" gives us a distorted view of what happened to our clients and what matters to them.]

*    Illness unfolds in stories.  The thing that is amiss in the body tells the self that there is something the matter and eventually that story comes to the attention of the healthcare provider who will turn around and tell it to a colleague.  The idea being that the telling and retelling should lead one to know what to do.  [How do you see yourself in the internist's shoes?]

*    Medical stories are a matter of ongoingness.  A doctor's duty is to develop a sense of story that takes into account devastation, loss, grief, magnitude of hurt and pain.  [Our clients are in the same boat - and we are there with them.]

*    The big question: Are you available to receive the story, to “co-hear” the narratives of illness, to train yourself to know accurately and fully what the patient expresses to be more effective in care?  [For lawyers, are we available to hold the space for the client so we develop different skills interviewing our clients, determining what the problem is and how to remedy it?]

*    You must learn to heed the story, learn from the story, learn the skills to recognize it, stand in the gathering of the story and work with the patient and family - to experience what the patient and family go through and for the patient to learn what the healthcare people experience.  [Who here has often desired that ability to co-hear with our clients and our clients families?  We are walking parallel roads with these internists.]

*    What are the dividends?  We find this practice helps improve cohesion of healthcare teams, minimize burn-out, increase empathy, encourage taking on the perspective of another person, feeling a growth in affiliation with their colleagues and others, listening attentively and less defensively, recognizing the unique dimensions of colleagues, using parts of the brain that had gone fallow, and recognizing that stories are total storms rather than the typical pattern of beginning, middle and end.  [What would you give for similar practical and human dividends in your practice?]

*    Narrative medicine helps medical students and doctors stop squandering evidence by learning to retrieve it in narrative, grasping the patent's story in words and learning to plumb the meaning of the evidence.  [For lawyers that meaning will carry over to the trier of fact.]

*    When doctors are fortified with the competencies of listening, curiosity, empathy, imagination their practice changes, they make authentic contact with the patient cleared of biases and other fsact-gathering screens.  [All anyone wants is to be heard, even for a moment.  After you have given the client the chance t tell their story you can go back and collect the data you need for the lawsuit.] 

Dr. Charon's makes this introduction to every patient: " As your doctor I face you so you can express to me what you are going through in words - please tell me what you think I should know about your situation."  She sits with her hands in her lap and absorbs what happens.  By inviting the account she can learn without shoe-horning the patient into her own fact list.  [Beginning with law school we can encourage the development of attentive listening. It wil flow over to practice.  Imagine th transformations.]

I invite you to spend 39 minutes and change your practice with practical and human dividends.
                                   
















                          

Draw To Reveal The Story.

Who here doodles?

When we draw we are using a basic visual tool to help make sense of complex concepts, thoughts or ideas.  Drawing can help clarify and articulate our visions to ourselves as well as others in a conversation, presentation, meeting or trial.

I often use Post-It flip charts and Magic Markers when working with clients or audiences.  Drawing provides insight and problem-solving in a myriad of ways that mere conversation or brainstorming simply cannot accomplish as effectively.

Perhaps it's true that seeing is believing.

To see for yourself, visit Legal Sketchpad:

"BUSINESS SKETCHING FOR LEGAL CONFERENCES, STRATEGIC PLANNING MEETINGS AND TRAINING.

Legal Sketchpad promotes the use of basic visual tools in legal communication. As direct as possible, as low tech as possible."

I have no dog in this fight.  I am just pleased to help spread the word that PowerPoint is not the only game in town. 

TIP:    Fall back on what came naturally to you when a box of Crayola 64 helped unleash your imagination and creativity.

What Do I Mean When I Say "Power, Passion & Precision"?

 

Power.

            Passion.

                            Precision.

For decades now I have repeated my "3P Mantra" when speaking and teaching communication skills, story skills, and platform skills.  I use the "3P Mantra" on my office voice mail.

Power means coaching yourself to practice like you play.  The team plays to win.  The team practices to win.  You play to win - so practice like you play - with power.   A coach at my gym was training a member to get ready for her first tri-athlon.  It was the coach who kept reminding the trainee that she was getting ready for a race, a competition, to beat other people - not just taking a bike ride or a swim.  She took the advice and came in 4th in her class.

Passion means having life.  Does your case story come alive?  Or are you putting lipstick on a corpse?  Do you have a sense of affection for your work, for your client, for this case?  When my clients express exhaustion I always ask them, "For what do you have affection?  How do we marshall that for the task at hand?"

Precision means that state of being exact.  To be exact you must consider all the ways to get it right. To get it right you must develop the right story, right facts, right issues, right language, and right mindset. It can't be wrong when it's right.

Power.

            Passion.

                            Precision.

A Plethora Of Story Influences.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Click here for Question #5.