Asking for Undisclosed Information |Dodging Landmines

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Host: I see upper management going in, out, in, out of closed-door meetings, and I have no idea what's going on. No one's talking. What do I do to get more information?

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Guest: Well, Cindy, first, I would ask you to examine your own motives about why you want more information. Are you looking to gossip maybe a little bit?

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Host: Oh, no. Not at all.

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Guest: Not you. OK. Well, then, hopefully your motives are pure. You'd like to either know for your own future, or maybe you'd like to help. And it those are the case, then there's nothing wrong with approaching some member of senior management, hopefully one with whom you have some trust, and asking not for specifically what's being talked about, but for some general, you know, what are the topics of conversations in these meetings, or you know, any I can help you with?

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Host: Yeah. I'd like to get more involved, say. Is it appropriate though to crosstalk -

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Guest: I don't think there's anything wrong with asking, and I don't think there's anything wrong with if they tell you some general areas, and you have some expertise in one of those areas, saying, "Hey, I could give you some data to support you in that meeting or -

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Host: Or I have some skills.

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Guest: I have some skills I could help you with that meeting. Offering help is never a bad thing, I don't thing.

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Host: OK. So what if I decide, oh, this is just too much trouble, and I really don't want to deal with this.

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Guest: Well, you can also choose to ignore it, and there's nothing wrong with that, but the risk there is that we have a thing called the ladder of inference, and it goes like this. I see something, and I infer something else, and I go up the ladder from there. So I see managers meeting closed door, and I infer it's important. I see them scowling, I infer it's bad news. I see them leaving and coming back, I infer that it's getting confusing. I see them scowling more, I infer that things are getting worse, and I build this case that is the worst case scenario in my own mind that has nothing to do with reality. Don't do that. If you're going to ignore it, ignore it. Go work on something else, but don't build a, a panic situation in your head and stress yourself out for no reason.

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Host: And go talk to everybody else about it.

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Guest: And then go talk to everybody else about the bad news, and, and now you've created a problem where there was not one before.

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Host: In summary.

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Guest: In summary, first decide what your motives are for wanting to know. If they are good and pure, then approach someone you trust and ask for general information. Offer to help if you can. Or decide you don't want to know, don't need to know, trust you'll get the information when it's time, and then focus somewhere else, and don't work yourself into a panic by inferring things that aren't real.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Techologies ====