The Uncanny Valley and #ReneeZellweger

Yesterday the news was filled with photos of Renee Zellweger. Lots of people have weighed in on her new look; my reaction is "live and let live." My only hope for her is that she is happy and ignoring the Internet right now. In my opinion, she is and was always beautiful.

Why are people reacting so strongly to her change in appearance? I was fascinated by the collective reaction and discussion. It reminded me of the Uncanny Valley, people's simultaneous attraction/revulsion reaction to things that are "almost" human, particularly virtual or robotic representations. Basically, people get creeped out. Check out this article for some examples.

I'm not suggesting that Renee Zellweger doesn't look human, but I am suggesting that she doesn't look like the Renee Zellweger we remember from Bridget Jones or Jerry McGuire. We have an expectation of the visual representation of "Renee Zellweger" and her new appearance looks "almost Renee Zellweger," just as many realistic human robots look "almost human."

It's that violation of our expectations that causes our reaction, that "close but not quite" feeling, causing us to make comparisons of what we're seeing to what we have seen and try to hone in on what is different. It's a tension that we struggle to resolve, and when we can't, we are revulsed, creeped out, angry or sad.

As an immersive learning designer, it's a good reminder that people have a deep, immediate emotional response when their expectations are violated, especially to discrepancy or changes in characters, often in a negative way. As a human being, it's a good reminder to be gentle with each other, and today, to be gentle with Renee Zellweger.

Open and honest questions

On Saturday I attended a retreat on how to ask open and honest questions as part of my ongoing learning and growth as a member of the Worship Committee at USSB. 

It sounds so easy! Open and honest seems like such a natural extension of being a good listener, no? 

Actually, no.

The goal of open and honest questions are to help the person you are listening to deepen their thinking and understanding of the situation they are sharing with you. They are questions in service of the speaker, a gift you can give to help someone better process their thoughts, think differently about a situation, or reach their own epiphany. 

Why are they so difficult? Because we typically ask questions in service of ourselves, the listener. We ask inquiring questions to satisfy our curiosity. We ask diagnostic questions to try to identify the problem and solution ourselves. We ask leading questions to "encourage" the speaker to see our perspective on a situation, or apply our opinions as a possible solution. In short, open and honest questions are difficult because as we listen we are really preparing for what to say next, how to engage in the conversation in a meaningful way but in a way that ultimately serves ourselves. 

Open and honest questions require you to listen deeply to what someone is saying, to hear the themes, and to identify questions in service to the person speaking. For example, after sharing a difficult situation about my children, one of my group members asked, "How would you define your role as a mom in this situation?" That question allowed me to think more deeply about what my responsibility is, and isn't, in relationship to the decisions my kiddo is making. It wasn't a question that gave an opinion or asked for more detail about the situation; it was a question that made me think. 

Open and honest questions are the ones that make you pause when they are asked, a total body response as the question "lands" on you, and the best ones are questions that hit at the core of the answers you yourself need to be able to find.  In that vein, one of the most interesting challenges of open and honest questions is that the questioner shouldn't necessarily expect an immediate response. When someone asks you the question you need to answer, it might actually take awhile. Even if the answer isn't immediate, the work is going on inside. 

How can we incorporate more open and honest questions into training and learning? Isn't this the core of motivation and behavior change? How can we marry open and honest questions with training content to get to not just the what, but also the how and why of change?