A friend of mine, A, had left some money with me. She called me up and said a friend of hers, B, had asked A to deposit some money into B's account. I told my friend that I will transfer the money to B's account. Earlier too I have transferred to her sister's account.
A grimaced and said she wanted to go to the bank and deposit the money in B's account. I told A that she could save herself the trouble. But A was obstinate. I got irritated and told her she could do what she wished. She told me she wanted the cash immediately. I was surprised. I told her again that the easiest and faster way was to transfer to B's account.
A then told me that she had a guy waiting at the bank to whom she had to give some money, apart from depositing the money into B's account.
Aaah. Now it became clear. She had to go to the bank to give the guy money. And also deposit the money into B's account. But why didn't A say upfront that there was a guy waiting for her at the bank? That would have avoided a lot of my questions. Obviously she didn't want to tell me about the guy. Her communication to me was indirect.
I realized that I also had made a mistake. When she was so reluctant about my offer to transfer to B's account I didn't think of why she might be reluctant. And I didn't figure out that she had another reason to take cash from me. I processed the data that I had downstream instead of upstream.
Upstream processing (UP) involves figuring out what must have happened in the past that led to current events. Downstream processing (DP) involves processing the current events and figuring out where they would leadl to in future. DP led me to think that my friend was being silly and obstinate. UP, in hindsight, gave me a better explanation.
DP is logical and innocent and uses S1. UP is not as logical and straight forward but it involves a smartness, wisdom and maturity and uses S2.
Effective communication with feminine people needs S1, rather a suppression of S2.
Effective communication with feminine people needs S1, rather a suppression of S2.
For an intro into S1, S2 read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.htm
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