The Third Space

When I was a little girl, I used to say that if I could have one superpower, I would want to see through other people's eyes. I still think about it. I'll wonder what a stranger saw when we crossed paths, what the person cleaning a building is going home to, or what happened in somebody's life that made them want to run a company.

I ask a lot of questions. I'm curious about people. And I'm aware that however much I imagine, I have never lived inside anybody else's life.

In the new podcast, I use a car to explain it. Imagine me in the passenger seat and my son driving. We're on the same road at the same moment. He has his whole life going on in his head, and I have mine. Then there's what happens between us: what I say, what he hears, how he responds, and what I decide his response means.

That is the third space I'm interested in. The way I'm using trialectical thinking here is to pay attention to my perspective, the other person's perspective, and what our two perspectives are creating together. That third thing can become a problem neither of us intended. It can also become an answer we wouldn't have found alone.

A mother offers help. Her grown son hears that she doesn't trust him. He shares less, so she worries more and offers more help. Each response seems to confirm the other person's story. Neither person set out to make the relationship feel that way, but now there is a pattern between them.

That's the theme I want to carry through this month's Observation. I can see it in consulting, in a mortgage conversation, in family, and in the opportunities people notice or walk past. I also think about the spaces we need within ourselves, including the place where I have room to grieve Dylan. The phrase takes on different meanings as I move through my life, and I want to explore those with you. I also want to talk about what happens after we see more, because eventually there is a decision to make.

I led a project recently that went really well. Looking at it afterward, I could see where the people at the top were coming from, where the team leads were coming from, and where the new people needed more attention. I was trying to accommodate all of them.

Somebody called that being a peacekeeper. I've heard versions of that my whole life. My sisters have said it. Other people have said I stay gray or don't want to make a decision. The funny part is that I make decisions really fast. I think seeing several positions at once helps me get to enough information sooner. I'm considering what the decision looks like from more than one seat.

At work, that can be useful because the person explaining the assignment and the person doing it may be solving different problems. A leader needs the project finished. A team lead is trying to make that happen with the people and time available. Someone who just arrived may still be trying to understand what a good result looks like.

If the new person asks again, the team lead can hear a failure to listen. If the team lead answers impatiently, the new person can hear that questions aren't welcome. The next question goes unasked. Later, the mistake seems to prove that the new person wasn't paying attention. You can see how the relationship starts helping to create the problem.

Looking at that third space gives us something specific to work on. We can look at where an instruction became unclear, what happened when somebody asked for help, and whether the next person received what they needed. We can make a decision with more of the situation in front of us.

One of the examples in the episode comes from Mary Parker Follett. She described sitting in a library where someone wanted a window open and she wanted it shut. The other person wanted fresh air; she didn't want a cold draft blowing directly on her. They opened a window in the adjoining room. Once they understood what each person wanted, there was another answer available. Read Follett's example in this report (PDF).

That is the kind of possibility I want to be able to see in a consulting conversation. Sometimes the answer really does require choosing. Sometimes we have been arguing over the first two options without asking enough to discover another one.

The part I have to watch in myself is what happens after I understand everybody. I can start trying to accommodate all of them. Understanding the whole situation should help me make a decision. It can't mean promising every person the outcome they came in wanting.

In his 2016 shareholder letter, Jeff Bezos wrote about making many decisions with roughly seventy percent of the information you wish you had. He also pointed out that many decisions are reversible, so they don't all need the same slow process. Recognizing a mistake and correcting it matters too. Read the shareholder letter.

Sponsored by Shortform.

63% of adults read fewer than 5 books a year. Shortform gives you the key ideas from Atomic Habits and 15,000+ other books in minutes. Start learning!

I owned a mortgage company. When someone sat across from me at closing, they didn't understand how everyone gets paid. You've got the title attorney, the title company, and the title insurance company. You've got the insurance people, the realtors and their brokers, the loan officer, the appraiser, the home inspector, the survey, the courthouse fees, and the taxes.

People look at that and think, "My loan cost eleven thousand dollars," and most of that was never the cost of the loan. It was everybody else.

Two people at the same table, looking at the same paperwork, and living different realities. From my side, those charges had different purposes and went to different people. From theirs, it was what it cost to get the loan. The space between those two understandings is where the explanation has to happen.

That can start before anyone reaches the closing table. Imagine two people looking at the same house. One sees a place where the family could finally settle. The other sees a payment that could make every change at work feel more frightening. They're looking at the same listing and answering different questions about their lives.

If they only argue about whether the house is too expensive, they may never get to that difference. The person who wants it can start hearing that their hopes don't matter. The person who is worried can start hearing that their concern doesn't matter. Then the house becomes evidence in an argument about the relationship.

There is a third thing to look at: the decision they are making together and the life that decision would leave them with. What would help one person feel settled? What would help the other feel able to handle a change? Which parts of the plan are essential, and which parts are simply the first version they imagined?

Those questions help people understand what they are actually trying to solve before they commit to a particular answer.

They also help separate the questions that need an answer from the uncertainty that comes with making a decision. The couple may need to work through the payment, how long they expect to stay, or what a change in income would mean for their household. Those are real things to examine. A promise that nothing in their lives will ever change is something nobody at the closing table can give them.

A house is a significant commitment, and changing course can be expensive. There is good reason to take time with it. The third space can help both people use that time well: understand the concerns, work through the facts, and make a decision they both understand. They may still decide to wait. At least they can say what they are waiting to learn.

The same thing can happen between a borrower and the person explaining a loan. Someone can explain the terms accurately while the borrower is still trying to understand how those terms will affect an ordinary month. A nod doesn't tell us everything about what the other person understood. There is room to ask them to explain what they think happens next.

This is where the third space can help with money. It gives us a way to look at the conversation as well as the figures. We can check whether we're answering the question somebody asked, the question we expected them to ask, or the question they haven't yet found the words for.

You can understand someone else's hopes and still use your own judgment. I want people to have enough of the picture to make their own decision and to know what they are agreeing to together.

I think about this with my own son. I'm aware of my need to be his mother. I'm also aware of his need to be a man and run his own life. If I over-mother him, that isn't good for him. Both needs are present in the same relationship.

I can try to imagine what something feels like from his seat. I still have to ask him. Otherwise, I can spend a lot of time responding to a version of his experience that I created myself.

That is a limit I want to keep in view whenever I talk about seeing different sides. Being able to imagine several explanations doesn't tell me which explanation belongs to the person in front of me. They get to tell me that.

Psychologist John Gottman studied newlywed couples and watched what he called bids. They're the small moments when one person reaches out: "Look at that bird," or "How was your day?" The other person can turn toward that bid, away from it, or against it.

Years later, the couples who were still married had turned toward each other's bids most of the time. The couples who divorced had done it about a third of the time.

Those ordinary exchanges are part of what two people are making together. Someone reaches out, the other person responds, and over time that becomes part of what it feels like to be in the relationship.

I'm interested in whether the people in a relationship can understand that pattern well enough to change their part in it. Sometimes that might mean asking a question before offering an answer. Sometimes it might mean saying what you need more plainly, instead of hoping the other person will work it out.

And this is where the gift-or-curse question from the episode comes in for me. Seeing where somebody is coming from can help. Trying to carry every feeling and resolve every discomfort can wear a person out.

Caring has to leave room for the other person to have their own experience and make their own decisions. I can stay curious without deciding that understanding someone's pain makes all of it my responsibility.

Sponsored by The Deep View.

Your inbox is flooded with newsletters. Your feed is chaos. Somewhere in that noise are the insights that could transform your work—but who has time to find them?

The Deep View solves this. We read everything, analyze what matters, and deliver only the intelligence you need. No duplicate stories, no filler content, no wasted time. Just the essential AI developments that impact your industry, explained clearly and concisely.

Replace hours of scattered reading with five focused minutes. While others scramble to keep up, you'll stay ahead of developments that matter. 600,000+ professionals at top companies have already made this switch.

Join them today, for free.

The other part of this is how I see opportunities. I've described it as being able to twist the room. I can turn something and look at it from several viewpoints at once. A possibility that wasn't visible from one position can become visible from another.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman asked people who described themselves as lucky or unlucky to count the photographs in a newspaper. On page two, a message took up half the page, in type more than two inches high: "Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper."

The unlucky people mostly missed it and took about two minutes. The lucky people noticed it and took seconds. Another message offered £250 to anyone who told the experimenter they'd seen it. The unlucky people missed that one too.

Nobody had better luck. Some people were looking at the whole page. That's what I mean when I say I can twist the room. When I look from another position, I can see something I would have missed if I stayed focused on the first thing I was told to look for.

There is a version of that in training. The person teaching may know the material so well that a step no longer feels like a step. A newcomer has to stop there and figure it out. The experienced person's knowledge and the newcomer's question can help create a better explanation, if there is room for the question to be heard.

There is a version in business too. A customer may be asking for something that sounds impractical because they haven't described the problem underneath it. If the conversation ends at the first request, nobody finds out whether something else could have helped. Asking what problem they're trying to solve can change the options.

This is part of why I enjoy asking people about what they do and how they got there. Their answer can show me something I wouldn't have known to look for. I don't have to become them or agree with everything they believe to learn from where they're standing.

For me, this connects the work of consulting, teaching, and facilitating a conversation. In each one, there is something to understand about the people involved and something they may be able to make together once they understand more.

There is a catch, though. When you can see several sides, you can also see dozens of possible outcomes. A person can keep looking for the choice that has no downside and never make one. There is always another possibility to consider. While you're considering it, your life is still going on. Doing nothing becomes a decision too.

I don't tend to freeze there. I trust myself to handle what happens after I choose. I've lived through enough of what happens next to know I can adjust. I don't need a guarantee before I can move.

That's how seeing more and deciding quickly fit together for me. I can look at a possibility from several directions, ask what I need to ask, and choose based on what I can see. If something changes, I can look again. The third space helps me find an option, and then I still have to do something with it.

When people talk about needing a third space, sometimes they mean somewhere they can go outside of work and home. I work from home, so I don't have that same separation. Some of the space I go to is in my own mind.

For Dylan, I have a third space that allows me room to grieve. I have a relationship with him that exists inside my own soul and heart. It's where I go to visit and be with him, and to try to understand the loss. I'm still trying to find the words for that, but it is a space I have that I get to visit.

This is another way the theme shows up for me. Earlier, I was talking about what happens between two people in a conversation. Here, I'm talking about an inner place where my relationship with Dylan continues and where I can be with my grief.

The Foundation gives me a place to continue putting love, remembrance, writing, and generosity into the world in his name. Dylan was a whole person with his own life, and I want the things that carry his name to remember him that way. Alongside that work, there is this place in my own heart where I get to be with him.

The new episode is called Who Benefits From the Story You Tell About the Other Person? It follows this question through people who lived the same events and came away with different accounts, people who found a way to work across those differences, and the cost of standing between several perspectives. It also gets into the part we don't always talk about: how to make a decision when you can see plenty of reasons it might go differently than you hope.

The part I keep coming back to is what happens after I think I understand someone. Do I ask them? Do I leave room for them to disagree with my explanation? Can I see what our responses are creating between us?

That's what I wanted to bring into the monthly Observation. The work, the money decisions, the family relationships, and the opportunities don't happen in separate lives. They're all places where I can be curious, get something wrong, learn more, and decide what to do with what I see.

If you want to try this, choose one conversation you've been turning over in your head. Start with what you actually know: what was said, what happened, and what you added when you explained it to yourself.

Then consider whether you could describe the other person's view in a way they would recognize. If you haven't asked, that's still an open question. You can be honest about what you don't know.

The next thing I'd look at is what keeps happening between you. Does one person push while the other withdraws? Does a question get heard as criticism? Is there a need underneath the disagreement that nobody has said plainly? Use what you learn to ask the question that's missing, say what you need more plainly, or change the part of the pattern you can see yourself repeating.

That's trialectical thinking: your perspective, theirs, and what the two of you are making together. I'd love to hear where you see this in your own life, and whether noticing that third space changes what you try next.

Michelle Vaughn