The Challenge Connecting with Facts

By now I think many people know the problem with making arguments solely based on facts.

First, people disagree about the facts themselves. Second, facts alone do not impart the importance of an issue.

People interpret facts based upon their personal histories, learned histories and current wishes, fears and priorities.

To understand the significance of a fact we need context. And we get context through narrative, a fancy way for saying story.

Stories need time and space

A twenty-year-old once told me that we no longer need stories because we have memes. In my mind, memes are the equivalent of facts without context. They share a point of view with people who already think the same way. They serve like a battle cry rather than sharing new information.

Why are we all in such a rush to shout out our allegiance and our point of view?

Why do we want to scroll, digest, get our dopamine or cortisol hit and move on?

Is there a way to stop this insanity of mindlessly consuming words and images?

A story unfolds over time, it brings together disparate or adjacent information and makes new meanings. It requires that we suspend our judgements and enter a new reality. It requires a liminal space.

The cortisol hit from contrary facts

Facts are often a point of difference rather than a point of common ground because of the way information is interpreted.

Solitary facts confront or confirm.

Rarely do they invite us into another way of seeing the world.

And yet, woven into a story, placed next to historical context, human experience, other points of view  – factual information can come to life and illustrate new or different interpretations of reality.

Facts can become doorways into new understandings of others rather than the means to provide cortisol rushes that fuel flight and fight reactions that manifest in anger, judgement and in some cases violence. 

Facts as illustration

So how can we share facts and make the impact we wish to make?

It goes back to storytelling and finding common ground.

I recently spoke with Dean Dori Tunstall for the podcast This Beautiful Shot is Not an Accident (episode coming soon) about her initiative to bring black and indigenous professors into the university through cluster hires, hiring a number of faculty at the same time so they have a cohort.

That fact that the university had not hired black and indigenous academics in any significant number for 140+ years could have been a point of contention. Instead she highlighted this fact as a point of invitation, we acknowledge this gap and want to change the paradigm.

We know there is a gap and we acknowledge that gap by sharing this fact.

She took it a step further when creating job descriptions for these new hires. Eschewing the traditional Ivy League academic lens of accreditation and number of papers published but a lens based on finding and embracing diversity and honoring the experience of people who have different but valuable skillsets that impact their way of seeing the world.

She came from empathy, looking at the things that this population might few and the things that might bring them joy and writing these into the job description and bringing the practice into the fabric of the organization itself. The job description itself became a beacon for the people who she wanted to reach.

Common ground – what are we fearing, what do we desire. It will be different for each audience. The fears and desires of black and indigenous academics differ from the fears and desires of their white counterparts.  

And yet, most job descriptions do not acknowledge fears and desires at all. Instead they look solely at the desires of the hiring institution and often ask for more than is actually required on the job which generally ends up filtering for the boldest applicants not necessarily the best for the job.

Putting Facts in Context

The process of putting facts in context is like meditation. We need to move above the story in our mind and see the story in a larger context.

Before creating a story I like to look at two narratives, how I got to the conclusion I have and how my main audience might have come to the conclusion they have. 

The resulting narratives form a third narrative, interweaving my understanding with acknowledgment of my audience’s way of understanding.

Common ground comes from our common set of fears and desires and can be illustrated through experiences and questions. In the next blog post I will share examples of finding common ground through experiences.

Blog Posts in this Series:
The Challenge Connecting with Facts
The Power of Experience
How Our Questions Connect Us