Thought Exercise: How to NOT Shoot the Messenger

It's all well and good to say "don't shoot the messenger," but what if it's Friday at 6:00 and your delivery is tanking?




When you are in Production in the animation industry, you are a necessary conduit of information and communication. Very frequently, we get bad news and have to deliver it.  Receiving bad news might be something like someone on your team isn’t going to make their quota, or that a key member of your crew is quitting. Delivering bad news might look like telling your team the client hated the latest version of a certain sequence and has called for a complete redo. Both situations happen, and in a creative, high-pressure, deadline-oriented environment like Animation, tempers can run high.

 In other words, the old adage “don’t shoot the messenger” is especially relevant for us. For today’s thought exercise, we’re going to go over a couple ways you can avoid shooting the messenger yourself.



First up, we have Annie Duke, former international poker champion and author of many successful business books including Thinking in Bets offers this strategy:

“[A] way to disentangle the message from the messenger is to imagine the message coming from a source we value much more or much less. If we hear an account from someone we like, imagine if someone we didn’t like told us the same story, and vice versa.”

- from Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke

Essentially, Duke reminds us that the key part of ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ means

“[…] don’t disparage or ignore an idea just because you don’t like who or where it came from […] Whether the situation involves facts, ideas, beliefs, opinions, or predictions, the substance of the information has merit (or lack of merit ) separate from where it came from […] the accuracy of the statement should be evaluated independent of its source.”

- from Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke

Now, if you’re watching this series, it’s probably because you genuinely want to improve your work and have more tools in your toolbox for when the going gets tough. I’m not saying it’s easy, and even I loathe to admit ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’ is something we probably all agree with on a good day, but what if it’s 5:00 on Friday and your delivery is tanking OR it’s just been a really gruelling week? 

Returning to the root of the issue, Duke reminds us that not shooting the messenger, at its core, is about valuing accuracy in the information you receive. She says, 

“If we’re going to improve our beliefs, we’ll be better off if we include people and information sources we’re likely to disagree with. Who better to raise the possibility that we’re wrong, and the reasons?”

- from Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke

 

We want accuracy and information because we want to overcome our blind spots. Related to this, Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist, researcher, and author of Insight further offers us four ways that we can overcome blind spots. These items in turn help us  to resist shooting the messenger. These are:

Four Ways to Overcome Blind Spots:

  1. Identify our assumptions
  2. Confront our assumptions
  3. Keep learning - especially in areas where we think we know a lot
  4. Seek feedback from others 

- from Insight: The Surprising Truth about How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think by Tasha Eurich


My own strategy for processing bad news is to take a minute - Remember, if you have time to respond, for goodness sakes take the time. Sleep on it, eat a meal, talk to a peer for advice, anything to avoid responding rashly and in the heat of the moment. 

Passion in this industry is important, and we must remember that passion for our work in animation is separate from being temperamental or arrogant.


RESOURCES

Season Three! Episode 71: Toxic Positivity at Work podcast of Don't Be A Jerk At Work

Best Of Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets

Thought Exercise: The Miracle Question 


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