Burst your bubble – key questions to challenge your mindset and campaigning messages - Drew Lindon, Drew Lindon consulting
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Burst your bubble – key questions to challenge your mindset and campaigning messages - Drew Lindon, Drew Lindon consulting
- 1. 3/23/2017 1 Burst your bubble! Five questions to challenge your own mindset
- 2. 3/23/2017 2 1. Is your perception skewed by the most extreme views?
- 3. 3/23/2017 3 2. How strong is the evidence for your view?
- 4. 3/23/2017 4 3. Are you stuck on one solution?
- 5. 3/23/2017 5 4. Are you genuinely interested in hearing other views?
- 6. 3/23/2017 6 5. Are you ready to have your own opinion changed? Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanicsgroup/
- 7. 3/23/2017 7 My challenge to you: identify one of your beliefs that is based on shaky grounds
- 8. 3/23/2017 8 More from me… @drew_lindon uk.linkedin.com/in/drewlindon www.drewlindon.co.uk drew@drewlindon.co.uk www.campaignclash.com Or contact me:
Editor's Notes
- My name is Drew Lindon, and I run my own policy, campaigns and public affairs consultancy, following 13 years working in relevant roles in the charity sector. This is Break your Bubble. Giving light, but practical questions to challenge our own mindset. All the useful info we’ve heard/will hear about understanding audiences, listening, segmentation is vital, and I’m not taking away from that. But I’d argue that you’ve got to start with yourself and understand how entrenched your own views are first, before reflecting on what that means for effective campaigning. Another title for the talk could be: Lessons from talking to people I disagree with! Based on my experiences, research, reading, and meeting my business partner Leon for our project Campaign Clash (ask me later). In talking to Leon, I initially thought he was diametrically opposed to pretty much everything I believe on social issues and policy today…he pretty much is, but that’s by the by. He is actually a lovely guy, we just disagree! If time: Who’s read the Daily Mail this week? The Telegraph? Fox News? Breitbart? Will be talking a lot about 'us and them', and the 'other side'. To be clear, that's just for ease of phrasing - there is no uniform 'them' and 'us', or even just two sides to any issue. For shorthand, I’m using ‘them’ to refer to the person, group, organisation or other stakeholder who you don’t agree with, or whose perspective you just can’t understand.
- Explain: Or in other words, are the most extreme people making you think the whole group is like them? Other way to say this is – are you stereotyping? For any controversial issue – immigration, abortion, drug policy, international aid – there is a spectrum of opinion. We know that the loudest voices get heard most (and try to amplify the voices of our supporters and ourselves). But we often forget to apply that to our own thinking. Example: Truly, what proportion of Donald Trump’s supporters are raging racists? How many people who voted for Brexit actually want no immigration into the UK? Action: Solve this by actually talking to people who hold these views, in person, not on twitter, facebook or email. If you’re in the pub, start a conversation, and just listen – see Delyth Jewell’s or Nicky Hawkins’ presentations.
- Explain: We’re consistently looking to disprove what we perceive is ridiculous claims from the ‘other side’, and claim their approach is based on faulty or even false evidence. But even working for NGOs or charities, we can get into groupthink which can obscure whether we have solid foundations for our beliefs. Example: Both the left and the right are guilty of this. On one hand, we have opposition often on the right to immigration, on the basis of (amongst other arguments), the same or more immigration will undermine the culture and quality of life of people already living here. Taking another example, in the UK, any attempts to bring more market forces into public services such as the NHS are routinely decried on the left as a Trojan horse for privatisation. How much evidence is there for these claims? They may be solid, but equally, they are reinforced by endless repetitions of opinion. Action: Check your own beliefs. How much have they been reinforced by your friends’, colleagues, networks’ opinion, and is that buttressed by solid evidence, or just opinion? What are the ideological underpinnings of your view – does government have a responsibility to ensure all citizens have health care, for example?
- Explain: Are you fixated on one path to your outcome? Could there be another way to achieve the same outcome to which your fixation is blinding you? Example: E.g. mandatory sex education or religious education in schools – achieve by national fiat, or convincing school by school? Fundamentally you want all kids to have this education; does it really matter if that comes from government edict or local enthusiasm for the idea? One might look like an easier campaign than the other. (Westminster gov has recently announced sex education will be compulsory in schools now but how much does this apply to free schools?) Action: Try to think laterally – how would the Green Party look at it? How would a Conservative? How would a Libertarian?
- Explain: Think about something you are passionate about – human rights, capitalism, faith – are you ready and open to hear an opposing view? Have you been brave enough to hear (and not dismiss) dissenting voices? Example: Talking with my friend Leon – opened up my eyes more about how UKIP supporter could feel about immigration, and indeed where he and a lefty like me could agree on general principles. Truly, no one is in support of welcoming in violent criminals, yet this can be the ridiculous ground on which we argue. Action: If yes, then again talk with people. Also, set up different twitter accounts to hear from alternative views (but try not to engage to start with!), read media different to that you usually consume, and crucially, identify and limit your time with the media you like and agree with. Challenge people in your circle too if you see these things happening. See also Andrew Davies’ great ignite talk just now/before mine.
- Explain: By all means nail your faith to the sticking pole, but accept that you may be wrong. Or at least, wrong in part, so need to amend your opinions. Example: On a personal level. I was wrong about faith – I thought I could never be with, let alone marry, someone of faith, because my atheism was so strong. Not so much, and my perceptions of faith and in fairness my wife’s beliefs have been changed. Action: see next slide.
- My challenge to you: identify (at least) one of your opinions that is not based on evidence, or on shaky grounds If time: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty: Chapter 2, point 43: “if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is…vigorously and earnestly contested, it will…be…a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.”