Re-freshing Reading Skills
How good are your reading skills?
It sounds like a silly question - but there are many forms of ability to read, and many types of data.
Reading a balance sheet for example, requires a different literacy than the ability to read a novel.
Then there's the ability to read a room - having a sense of intuition.
Or the patience required to read for longer periods of time - picking up a book and spending more than say 5 minutes getting involved.
And finally - is your reading somehow impacted by bias, cultural or other.
Shifts in Reading Patterns
The reason I raise the topic: I suspect we're all "reading" differently in a digital first age: more e-mails, less time on reading more broadly. Our attention is likely very narrow-focussed, transactionally attuned, with some mental muscles eg filtering for personal business relevance, boosted. Other more empathetic muscles are neglected.
Add to that bigger picture stuff: we are all getting educated towards a STEM focus in a formal aspect, to ensure that the monies invested in education lead to a relevant employment later on. Languages and literature are losing out big time.
Plus the major push in the workplace environment in embracing diversity - so emphasising reading with a view to identifying and managing bias, conscious or otherwise.
All good - but we need a broader reading lens as well.
Emotional Literacy
The balance needs widening: to include "reading" abilities of intuition, emotional intelligence - of being able to interpret sensitively a range of languages that reveal how people feel. Emotional literacy.
The way people look, express themselves. The language they use. Body language. Written language.
In terms of economic uncertainty, these essentially social skills are useful in all sorts of business situations - businesses that are tasked with implementing change, or introducing new practices for example.
They're often framed as leadership skills, yes - and for many they don't have a pay-off in the immediate present. But they are relevant at all levels of a hierarchy, and in all aspects of relationship building.
And they're an underutilised skill that researchers invariably possess.
Researchers as Expert Readers
Qualitative researchers have these skill sets in spaces - the value added in qual research isn't just about talking to a bunch of people, either in a room or online. It's in the reading the researcher offers of what's been said - or left unsaid.
Ditto for quant. folk - data is there aplenty, but being able to read it, make sense of multiple strands, offering suggestions about potential misfits and then highlighting possible ways fowards, these are essential reading skills.
We all do it - but do we actually pratice, expanding our range even? Trying a spell of lateral rather than literal thinking, for example. Learning new words, expanding our empathy bandwidth.
So often we are pulled back to our smartphones rather than engaging in in-person conversations and real-life eye-contact. De-empathising habits that can become hard to break and ultimately diminishing.
Researchers can be great readers - we just need to keep our skillsets tuned. Whether it be informally, actually reading a new book say, or attending a class such as the upcoming UK MRS course (Managing our bias in research) on understanding and managing bias.
Figuring out humans in business decision making is a lot to do with reading skills. Who better placed than "market research" with all our sociological, psychological, behavioural skill sets to deliver?
Curious, as ever, as to others' views.
Photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash