Are You More Like an Orchid or a Dandelion in Your Working Environment?

Why do some kids from really tough backgrounds manage to rise above the fray and survive while others wilt? Do these kids show up in the workplace as grown adults who manage the stresses well while others don’t?

Researchers Thomas Boyce (University of British Columbia) and Bruce Ellis (University of Arizona) coined an orchid-dandelion hypothesis based on the Swedish term “dandelion children”. Such children seem to be able to grow up in almost any environment unscathed. Boyce and Ellis added the term “orchid children” who blossom under good care but wilt when the environment lacks caring support.  Parental behaviour matters. Then, does organizational/leadership care matter? We know it does for everyone, yet for some it may be that which makes or breaks their motivation, engagement, happiness and overall productivity.

But hold on. The orchid kids might just have “heightened attention” to a new or ambiguous situation as Elaine Aron (State University of New York) posits. Their response might appear as “anxious inaction” when in fact they are “pausing to read cues and await opportunity.” It is somewhat akin to people who consider themselves “diverger” learners, generating options and taking a 360 view first. This “highly sensitive” response might be an evolutionary one from way back to our hunter-gatherer days when caution was a matter of life or death.

Steven Pinker (Harvard University) in his seminal book How the Mind Works points out that our minds are “designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life…understanding and out-maneuvering objects, animals, plants, and other people”. He contends that we are not especially well-adapted yet to the modern world. We have “complex genetic recipes” that are working ever so slowly to adapt well in a non-hunter-gatherer world. The aim as always is to problem-solve through complex issues with survival as a key outcome!

Nevertheless, some of us, according to the orchid-dandelion view are more highly sensitive than others to the social environment and the stresses related to it. For example, we know that introverts easily become overloaded in social environments whereas extroverts generally thrive on the social stimuli.

Ernest Hartman from Tufts University prefers to characterize the differences as “boundaries” in the way we operate in the world. Some of us are thick-skinned, others thin-skinned. We “keep out” or “let in” stimuli according to our tolerance for handling the “energy of feelings”.  In his Boundary Questionnaire (BQ) Hartman has found that women score thinner than men. But if we look at this through an evolutionary lens, both are adaptive skills for survival.

In the workplace, therefore, we can conclude that both are strengths that only manifest if leaders and the infrastructure of the organization support the different tolerances for social stimuli. You can’t go wrong if you are a high emotionally intelligent leader. Walk in the shoes of others. Lend a helping hand. Unconditionally support. Take obstacles out of the way that impede getting the job done. Magical!  

Tread carefully with conflict. Creativity might not be the beneficiary.

We are being encouraged to welcome conflict in group and teamwork to improve creativity. So says Jonah Lehrer in his new book Imagine along with a number of critics of the traditional brainstorming method. The classical method recommends generating and building on ideas first before judging.  What the critics don’t tell us is how to debate or butt heads without doing harm.

Interpersonal communication and coaching training universally emphasize “constructive” feedback and asking “the great questions”. These gold standards are useful guides as we learn better how to get more value out of creative encounters in group settings. Underlying the gold standards is the exploration of assumptions or frames for “seeing” a challenge or situation a particular way. Once shared and different assumptions are identified, novel ideas often flow because each person is more open to another’s point-of-view. This is the environment to cultivate for great brainstorming.

But there is an art to this. Teams at minimum are comprised of different personality types and increasingly different cultures. Introverts, who like to think in advance and ponder about the ideas swirling around for a bit, typically do not thrive in an emotionally-charged debating environment. As Erin Meyer points out in “Managing confrontation in multicultural teams” (April 6, 2012, HBR Blog), people from many Asian cultures consider confrontation to be rude. On the other hand, that is not the case for North Americans in general and to varying degrees, Europeans. For example, French teams intuitively encourage conflict to reveal hidden contradictions and stimulate new thinking.

To tread a little more carefully, here are ways that Meyer and neuroscientists suggest for offsetting the potential downside of conflict while improving creative thinking:

1. Enable people to prepare their thoughts in advance. Collaborative tools which honour anonymity, one-on-one phone calls or a few simple questions answered in the security of one’s own working space can set the stage for a productive and relaxed meeting.

2. Use constructive interpersonal communication approaches. As Meyer recommends, refrain from saying “I disagree with that”. Instead try “Please explain more why you think that”. Or, use the tenets of great questions starting with “how” and “what” rather than “why”?

3. Take advantage of a variety of creative thinking tools. Any method that does not put pressure on specific individuals yet adds an atmosphere of fun and non-judgment will open up minds no matter the cultural backgrounds and thinking styles of the team members.

Since wise decisions are the aim in problem-solving, a study by the University of Waterloo’s Igor Grossman on age and wisdom (April 7, 2012, The Economist) offers insights into leavening the “dissonance” challenge in society. The parameters Grossman and his colleagues used to compare and contrast wisdom among Americans versus Japanese encompassed five crucial aspects of wise reasoning:

1. Willingness to seek opportunities to resolve conflict
2. Willingness to search for compromise
3. Recognition of the limits of personal knowledge
4. Awareness that more than one perspective on a problem can exist
5. Appreciation that the situation may get worse before it gets better

No matter your conflict tolerance, these five interpersonal and intergroup principles are a more helpful guide to encouraging conflict and creativity than simply “let’s do conflict”.

Where brainstorming and introversion intersect

In the movie Dead Poets’ Society the teacher, played by Robin Williams, captivates and inspires his students with his confidence in their potential to make a difference:

You will learn to think for yourself…words and ideas can change the world.

This resonates with the emerging consensus on the limitation of group brainstorming – the danger of groupthink.

As the classroom scene unfolds, Williams tells his students to tear out a page from a textbook. The particular content focuses on analyzing poetry mechanistically which flies in the face of thinking for yourself.

The reactions of different students are hilarious. Some immediately rise to the challenge tearing out pages as Williams goads them on. Others hesitate briefly such as one student who after encouragement from his fellow classmates carefully uses a ruler to rid the textbook of the offending passage. We witness thinking for yourself in action and the different thinking styles that go with it.

The careful student is likely an introvert who needs some time to check out the merit of the action in his mind before jumping in. This isn’t brainstorming but it highlights the importance by the teacher and by the different student reactions that thinking for yourself is a sacred part of our identity.

Susan Cain in her book The Power of the Introvert in a World that Can’t Stop Talking underscores the contribution of thinking for yourself, extroverts included. People are generally more creative when they have some quiet time and freedom from interruption to let their minds search for new ideas and connections. This mind wandering gets below the surface noise of our conscious minds to enable imaginative work to be done.

Introverts thrive on quiet time to think first. A number of recent studies by researchers in neuroscience and psychology now point to the importance of this quiet time as a must for better brainstorming by any mix of people. The result is more and better quality novel ideas at the outset of the creative journey and as the process unfolds with a group or team. Team leaders and managers take note: build in this structured time for members of the group!

Electronic brainstorming tends to offset the problem of group think in real time. This may be due to the advantage of solitude in the midst of a group adventure. Crowdsourcing in large groups and teams that collaborate remotely seem to channel brainstorming well.

Taking a page from the preference of introverts as a start point, no matter the medium the principle of thinking for yourself is a useful guide for improving brainstorming. As Robin Williams says so beautifully in the movie, “The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”