Is it a good thing to be reasonable? Instinctively, you would think so, but a quick internet search reveals a range of views on reasonableness:
‘There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable’ Sam Harris
‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’ George Bernard Shaw
The notion of striving to always be reasonable is close to my heart. The aim to be reasonable is a touchstone, or value, that I hold dear – I have always strived to be reasonable in my dealings with people, although I know I have fallen short at times, maybe often. This blog muses on the importance of being reasonable, and also outlines a problem with the hypothesis.
How to be reasonable?
The steps in the bullet points below are what I aim to do in my job, when it comes to the big things – preparing for important meetings, making important decisions and announcements etc… (life outside work is not so organised!):
- Think things through in advance. I try to avoid making last-minute, hasty decisions (not always possible, admittedly)
- Think about the range of alternatives available, before choosing one, and being clear why I have chosen that one
- Listen to others: think hard about the views of people who take a different view from mine: What do/can I agree with? Is there a compromise that can be made?
- Listen to others: encourage team discussion and aim for consensus or a majority view – ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’ – not always possible to do
- Listen to others: propose a thing in draft form and ask for views; often, something comes back that improves the proposal
- Be prepared to change tack later on, in response to feedback (listen to others), and/or our own evaluation of how things are going etc…
When people can see we are striving to be reasonable, they are far less likely to be difficult/confrontational/unhappy; they are more likely to be willing to ‘give it a go’, even if they disagree – people appreciate other people being reasonable, just as they appreciate when people are even-handed, temperate, measured and reflective.
The problem with the Be-Reasonable Hypothesis
The main problem is that different people often have different opinions about what is reasonable – your reasonable may look very different from mine. I remember a meeting with the parent of a student who kept getting into trouble (when I was Head at another school), that went like this:
Me: So what can we do to help John improve his behaviour, Mr Smith? Things are not going well at the moment.
Mr Smith: Staff at the school need to cut him more slack – they pick him up on every tiny thing and he gets cross.
Me: I understand that point. Ideally, what would you like us to do when John behaves badly going forward?
Mr Smith: Just be reasonable. How about that?
Me: What does reasonable look like, Mr Smith? Whose view of reasonable should we go by: yours or ours?
An article entitled ‘Is rationality overrated? Sometimes it’s better to be reasonable’, by Sigal Samuel (2020), reflected on research published in the journal ‘Science Advances’ that recounted how researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada wanted to understand what prompts people to use rationality — or deviate from it — in their decision-making. Igor Grossmann, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, said being reasonable might make better sense than being rational when tackling explosive issues like climate change.
“When you’re arguing for a behavior that’s for the common good, you may be more successful with the reasonableness frame” said Grossman.
When you start digging around on the topic of reasonableness, you find a lot of literature comparing a reasonable approach with a rational one. if it’s either or, I choose reasonable. I work in education; Igor Grossman at least appears to support me.
People seeing things differently is inevitable; it has always happened, and will always happen, and the George Bernard Shaw quotation above points to the progress that may result from that willingness to think and do differently.
I think we should aim to be reasonable, accepting that we are always viewing the world through our own personal prism. I see your point, George, but for now I’m sticking to trying to be reasonable. Of course, I may change my mind on this in the future – after all, I’m a reasonable person.
