Perspectives Across Silos: Awareness, Empathy, Solutions

We all live our lives to our own default, and people who think their default is the ONLY way may find others’ different individual and collective defaults to be nonsensical.  Maybe even threatening.

Both a conclusion of nonsense or threat can create a lot of animosity as well as resented by the one whose default is dismissed or misconstrued.

Yes, I’m saying that maybe my Evil Program Managers weren’t evil after all—I just didn’t ask the right questions to understand their perspective, and they never asked mine, even though I, the Evil Contracting Officer, expected them to understand why I asked certain things of them.

As Stephen Covey wrote in his The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Still a great book that’s withstood the test of time.

As Robin Williams’ character said in Dead Poets Society, “I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.”  Worth a watch if you haven’t seen it recently.

And then there’s The Invisible Woman, a non-fiction book from Caroline Criado Perez, who shares examples of how the world is designed for the physical male default, right now to why I can’t reach the pedals in my car unless I’m snuggling with the steering wheel. This is one of my most recommended non-fiction books and really made me understand why some things just don’t work physically for me and why I always have hand-cramps from carrying my too-big smartphone.

All three of these books and movies have helped me change my mindset and perspective to solve problems more readily by looking at a different perspective, and they might change your mindset as well.

Or I could just give you a real life story that illustrates different perspectives that could have been bridged by simply asking the question, earnestly, “Why is this a problem for you?”  or perhaps, “What do you need so this isn’t a problem?” That would have required an earnest question and a forthright answer, with no passive-aggressive bickering.

About two years before my mom could no longer live alone, we convinced her to have her bathroom partially refurbished with a better bathtub, a handicap rail, and a new shower that would be easier for her.  She insisted on using a local carpenter she’d known for most of her life.  He was a very tall but elderly man with a small crew of workers he supervised, and he’d been an excellent carpenter in his younger days.  She trusted him to be in her house and never considered anyone else.

A few days after she had the new shower installed, I asked how she liked it and she made a few noises but never managed to get “It’s okay” out of her mouth, let alone any praise for it.  I could tell she didn’t like it but she wouldn’t say why, probably because she felt we expected her to like it and how much easier it made her life.

When I visited, I understood.  I couldn’t get it to work and had to call the carpenter, who wasn’t available over the weekend.  This was after I’d YouTubed potential solutions and still couldn’t figure it out. The carpenter explained to me, after I’d gone home, how to use the handheld shower wand, and I felt a little stupid that I’d missed the switch at the very top of the shower unit.  The carpenter visited my mom’s house a few days after, and he showed her the wand and how to turn on the shower by pulling/pushing a lever at the top of the shower head.

When I talked to her afterward, she would only mumble about it.  It was well-known in my family that she hated the new shower. One family member complained that we’d gone to the expense and “clearly just didn’t want to try something new.” He’d used the shower during most of his overnight visits and according to him, it worked great.

There was a problem with that, though, that he from his perspective just couldn’t understand until I explained the logistics of someone my height and my mother’s height—almost a full foot shorter—trying to use that horrible shower.

See, from my mom’s perspective and later from mine, we could barely stand on the floor or in the tub and touch the wand-holder and top of the shower, which had been built for a man over six feet tall.   For me to switch the lever on top of the shower, I had to stand in the tub on my tiptoes and still not be able to reach it securely.  I literally had to climb onto the side of the tub or grab a stepladder and lean through the shower curtain to flip on the … flipping lever.  My mom, in her late 80’s, could not reach it safely, and for that matter, neither could I.

Suddenly, for my very tall family member, the light dawned.   My mom wasn’t being hard to deal with or resistant to something new.  She wasn’t just giving us a hard time because she hadn’t wanted the new shower.  She hadn’t “forgotten” the instructions on how to use the lever properly.  Once he could imagine himself flipping that switch while standing on his knees, once he could see the problem from our perspective, only then could we understand what the fix needed to be.

I often hear engineers suggest a Contracting Officer cut out a certain number of days in the procurement timeline for solicitations and synopses and not understand why the Contracting Officer cannot comply—but never ask WHY they can’t.  The most frustrating conversations I’ve had is when I’ve cut all the fat out of a timeline that needed some padding to accommodate some risks but got yelled at for not cutting a minimum number of days required by regulation or statute.

The solution, in my opinion, to many of our failures to understand others—including those in different functional silos in Federal Acquisition—lies not in immediately disparaging the “no” or dismissing someone’s inability to comply with what we from our own perspective think is obvious. Instead, it starts with asking why. Why does the other person see it differently? What constraints are they facing that I might not be aware of? These simple but earnest questions can open up a dialogue that allows both sides to understand each other’s challenges, priorities, and limitations.

Once we’ve asked these questions and achieved a level of awareness, the next step is to practice active empathy. Empathy isn’t just about feeling compassion—it’s about putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and really trying to see the world from their vantage point.

For the tall family member, empathy wasn’t just about knowing my mother struggled with the shower; it was about imagining what it would feel like to use it from her height.

In the workplace, it might mean considering the legal or regulatory constraints a Contracting Officer faces or understanding the technical pressures a Program Manager is under. Only when we actively take on someone else’s perspective can we move from frustration to collaboration.

Empathy, however, is not the end—it’s the bridge to solutions. Once we understand why someone is saying “no” or pushing back, we can work together to find a way forward. Maybe that solution is a creative workaround, a compromise, or simply a new understanding that realigns expectations. This approach doesn’t guarantee easy answers, but it does open the door to mutual respect and cooperation, which often leads to better, more sustainable outcomes.

So, the next time you’re confronted with what seems like an unreasonable obstacle—whether it’s a contracting timeline that can’t be shortened or a new shower design that just doesn’t work—pause and ask, “Why is this a problem for you?”

Follow that with genuine empathy, and only then will you be equipped to find a solution that works for everyone.

First awareness, then empathy, then a solution. It’s a process that can transform personal interactions, professional relationships, and, ultimately, results.