What Is A Shutdown
withMy partner declares I’ve “shut her down” regularly. It confuses me quite a lot since I can’t really see how it is a shutdown.
What is a shutdown
My interpretation of a shutdown is a irrefutable negation and rejection of what is being said. It’s not going to work, and there is absolutely no path to get there. It is final, absolute and is unanswerable.
What a shutdown isn’t….
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An Opinion: If it is subjective, it can’t be a shutdown. Even if there is objective data that supports a subjective opionion it’s still not a shutdown.
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An Alternate: Each person will chart a path based on their worldview, their understanding and the data that is available to them. An alternative with or without data is is still just an alternative.
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A Suggestion of Risks or Barriers: Even if there is partial agreement, a suggestion of risks, challenges or obstacles is not a shutdown.
What it sounds like
To my ear a shutdown will lead in with a negation, a rejection, declaration of impossibility, or an external personalization.
- That’s wrong
- It’s not impossible
- You don’t understand
What it doesn’t sound like.
A shutdown will not start with personalization. You can’t shutdown someone with a response of
- I don’t think that’s possible,
- I’m not sure if I agree
- My thoughts were”
Likewise a shutdown isn’t going to by providing an alternative
- We could do this instead
- How about doing
It’s also not bringing in other concepts, either factual or otherwise.
- X is an alternative
Combining any of these without the negation or the other personalization shouldn’t be considered a shutdown.
Is there a grey zone?
Assymetry of information can potentially be a shutdown, if the party with less information takes the volume of information as being negative or overwhelming their argument might feel that. However that is an overt response to missing data.
The feeling of “defeat” is real, but it’s not a defeat if the the other person was not intending to “win”.
In a lot of cases having more data helps enrich a discussion, and shouldn’t be a cause for considering it a shutdown.
What if there is that assymmetry
Assymetry is much harder to deal with. If based on the data a different view would be constructed it is completely fair to carry that view.
So how to manage discordant views that are based on differing levels of information? To be honest, I’m not sure. Some suggestions
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Fake it Feign delight, feign engagement, feign happiness. That’s definitely an option, but it is ingenuine and builds an incorrect view of an individual position.
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Give a win? Needing to always be right is not a good place to be. It results in brow-beating, creating false narratives and inventing facts. Note that this is different than being “objectively right” most of the time. In the cases where it doesn’t really matter, maybe just accept the sub-optimal alternative and move forward.
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Accept with Caveats Share some information but say, however, it’s due to xyz, I was thinking this other thing, however we’re fine to do that. The biggest risk with an accept with caveats is that the counter-data or alternative is possibly going to be taken as being negative.
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Give the big picture THis is fraught with many more risks, the bigger the picture you give, the smaller the other picture is. Even if with the bigger picture, there is still the risk of the other feeling that they are losing.
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Dig your heels in This is the opposite end of the spectrum. Argue every point, disagree with all items, but never actually say no. This may start with a simple converstation, but can very quickly expand out into an arms race of who is more right or who can counterpoint faster.
Is there a path?
Mutual trust, respect and vulnerability is the important part to choosing the path. Any option with trust and vulnerability should be equaly fine, since there is an assumption that the best mutual outcome is intended.
Without mutual trust, it becomes much harder. The only two options that aren’t poor are “give a win”, or “give the big picture”, but even then you are relying on a rational other in the discussion.
Without respect there is bias and negativety. The other is driving things out of spite.
Without vulnerability there is protecting againt being wrong. Defensiveness creeps in and there is little opportunity to allow oneself to be wrong when getting to the end.
Ultimately it comes down to mutual trust, respect in the middle that will make all the difference.