Is It the Relationship or the Idea that's the Problem?

Previously, I’ve blogged about implementing change and introducing new ideas to teams.

However, there’s a specific element I’d like to dive deeper into in this blog post and that’s examining the relationship you have with someone before you approach them with an idea.

Earlier on in my career I believed my ideas would be able to hold on their own merit. That is, people would embrace any objectively good ideas I have (and that’s it, I was also naive enough to think I didn’t have bad ideas. Fantastic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect!)

But I was wrong.

There were times that I had (actually) good ideas, and they got ignored.

It took me a fair bit of time to figure out why exactly this was the case… And it wasn’t this:

Here is a rough idea of my thought process on whether I should work on the relationship first, or go straight into the idea.

Note: This doesn’t consider factors like knowing someone outside of work, having credibility with someone through association etc.

As I progress in my career and watch how ideas spreads around me, part of me has started to think that the following holds.

Good relationships > Good ideas.

That is, others are more likely to be aligned with the person they trust (regardless of if their idea is the best one or not). I haven’t fully made up my mind on this yet. I know a lot of people like to think they base their decisions on pure facts - but I feel there are way too many incognitive biases at play.

So I’m starting to think this is a rough model of how people view others.

Once you enter this spiral, then confirmation bias is at play.

confirmation bias

“people’s tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with their existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional, and it results in a person ignoring information that is inconsistent with their beliefs.” Source: Britannica

Now you may be thinking, what makes someone a trustworthy person?

Why, if you have built a relationship with them of course!

I’m not going to dive into how to build relationships in this blog post but you might finding this The Credibility Playbook for Testers Review helpful on this topic.

So if your idea is struggling to gain traction, instead of going straight into thinking if you need to better understand the problem, or maybe communicate your idea more effectively, ask yourself this:

Is it the relationship or the idea that’s the problem?