What Else Could It Be?

I have a workshop that I enjoy doing with teams and organizations. At the heart of this particular session is the question, “What else could it be?” I share the idea that, as humans, we tend to make up a story when information is missing. My experience has been that we often fill our information gaps with negative things.

To emphasize this point, I include a group activity. I ask for one person to serve as the artist. That person will draw on a whiteboard on behalf of the group.

I then say the following statement: “Guys, this is all we know: There is smoke, and it is bad.”

I often sit back and watch as the comedy unfolds. While the details are slightly different for each group, the themes and the way the groups behave are the same. They start to yell things like; a house is on fire … grandma is stuck inside … the dogs are trapped too … there was an accident, and the fire department can’t get there … a tornado has formed, and it is adding to the fire … there is an airborne disease, and no one can save grandma!

Individuals are yelling, laughing, and building on what others are saying. The energy is high, and the voices in the room are loud! And then, I interrupt them and say, “Oh shoot, I read that wrong. There is smoke, but it is good.”

I turn the whiteboard around and ask them to start over. Every group responds the same way - silence, confusion, and blank looks. They are all thinking the same thing: how could smoke be good? Slowly, they develop some ideas, but the energy is always low. For every group, it is much easier to create a negative story.

We then unpack what just happened and address the fact that when we don’t have all the information, we typically run down a negative path. I encourage groups to think about when they have done this on their teams or organizations, and then I share a powerful question, “What else could it be?”

It serves us well to ask that simple question. This question reminds us that the negative ideas in our brains might not be accurate. There might be more to the story.

A few weeks ago, I faced my own “What else could it be” moment. I had flown into Long Beach, California, which may very well be the easiest airport in the United States! I went to Hertz and grabbed my rental car to drive about an hour northeast.

It had been a long travel day, and I was grateful to arrive at a quiet, clean hotel. I rested for a couple of hours and then headed to a local restaurant for some Mediterranean takeout.

While I am a night owl, my body was on Central Time, and I knew I had two presentations the next day. I headed to bed early, hoping to get eight hours of sleep.

When I woke up the following day, I immediately noticed a smell in my room. I walked over to the AC unit and noticed a slight smoky smell. It didn’t smell like an electrical fire, more like the smell of burning leaves.

I am not one to complain. When I check out of a hotel, and they ask me how my stay was, I almost always reply that it was fine. But on this day, I was a little irked, and I convinced myself that the next person who stayed in that room wouldn’t want to deal with the smell. I was working myself up to be honest at check-out.

As I made my way to the front desk, I gave myself a pep talk. I reminded myself that being direct about the smell would benefit the next guest. This is all about the next guest.

I walked up to the desk, and I was greeted with a friendly face and a smile. And then he asked the dreaded question, “How was your stay?” Urgh, I fought my default response, and I replied, “You may want to have maintenance look at the AC unit in that room. There was a smell coming from the unit. It was a smoky smell, not like an electrical fire, more like burning leaves.”

Look at me being direct and honest!

But as those words were coming out of my mouth, I heard the TV in the lobby talking about the wildfires in Southern California. I also heard two women talking about how close the evacuations – due to said wildfires – were to the hotel. And I could tell from the look on the employee’s face that he knew I was clueless about the wildfires.

I couldn’t get out of that conversation or the hotel lobby fast enough. I had failed to ask myself, “What else could it be?”

When people are missing information, they often create a negative narrative, and I was no exception to this reality.

And let me be clear: the fact that I share an example with groups about smoke and my real-life situation included smoke is not lost on me!

I’m a work in progress, friends.

Keep asking yourself, “What else could it be?”

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