Grasp “essentially contested concepts” for smoother productivity

Relationships are a murky business. They deal in high stakes and high emotions and can often feel like sailing a roiling sea with a wildly spinning compass. Every action and every utterance is scrutinized and reinterpreted, and any kind of certainty is squinted at through a glass darkly. Love is messy.

One of the reasons for this is an ambiguity buried in the very idea of “love.” If we imagine two people, Burt and Brenda, sitting across from each other in some romantic setting.

“I love you,” Burt says.

“I love you too,” Brenda replies.

They both feel good about the moment. They are both sincere in what they say. They both have no idea what the other actually means. This is not simply a philosopher’s game where we say, “We don’t know what it’s like to be someone else.” It’s a linguist’s game, too. Because the word “love” is thick with so many confusing, complicated, even contradictory understandings that the word becomes trouble.

Words like “love” are an example of what the philosopher Walter Bryce Gallie called an “essentially contested concept.” And learning how to identify and resolve these concepts might be the most important thing you can do.

Define your terms

In the 18th century, David Hume wrote an essay about free will, where he said the entire debate hinged on hugely ambiguous definitions of what free will is. People would spend hours debating the topic without bothering to even check what the other person thought. As he put it, “a few intelligible definitions would immediately have put an end to the whole controversy.”

This is true for almost all of our dead-end conversations. We only go round in circles because we haven’t clarified what we mean by the certain terms that we use. If discussing God, what does that term mean for you? When discussing abortion, what makes something “a human life,” according to you?

The problem is that many of the words we commonly use are not so easily understood. They are “essentially contested concepts.” Gallie lists a few words, like “power” or “justice,” that are incredibly important ideas but also swampy and disputed. These words pop up all over the place; they’re in ethics (“fairness”), religion (“divine”), politics (“society”), and aesthetics (“art”). Gallie suggests that when we come across an essentially contested concept, we essentially have three options: first, we accept one person’s definition. Second, we invent and use a new definition of the term moving forward. Or, finally, we agree the term is irreconcilably subjective and suggest ways to work with that.

Essentially contested workplace

Given how common these essentially contested concepts are, it should be no surprise that they also undergird the language of business. Here we look at three commonly used examples and suggest ways to resolve them based on Gallie’s three solutions.

Work-life balance. If ever there were a 21^st century corporate buzzphrase, it’s “work-life balance.” It’s thought that 73% of workers consider work-life balance a core factor in choosing a job, second only to salary. In a seminal study on the topic, Greenhaus, Allen, and Spector not only argued that work-life balance was important to most workers, but it even had health implications too. But what does “work-life balance” actually mean? According to the study, it’s “the degree to which an individual’s effectiveness and satisfaction in the roles of work and family domain are well-matched with the individual’s life priorities.”

It’s a good definition, but it’s a vague, moving one. Not only are an “individual’s life priorities” changeable from person to person, but the words “effectiveness” and “satisfaction” are, themselves, in need of pinning down. The problem is that for some people, “work-life balance” might mean working from home and a blending of work environments. For others, it might be clear, delineated boundaries, like no emails out of hours. The solution to this is for job postings and official documentation to clarify what your company means by “work-life” balance. Don’t simply use it as an opportunity to pay lip service to the latest trend.

Collaboration. “Let’s collaborate on this,” your boss says, and you wholeheartedly agree. You took extensive notes at the last L&D away day, and your resume explicitly highlights your proactive love of collaboration. So, you find five slots over the coming week to arrange 30-minute meetings to collaborate.

“Oh, what?” your boss says. “I was thinking we just throw our ideas into a Google Doc.”

Even if we agree that collaboration is a good thing, there is no one way to understand what “collaborate” means. Part of this is to do with how much interpersonal time people can cope with, and part of this is to do with simple definitions. But, as the Grammy Award-winning singer Mary Chapin Carpenter puts it on Big Think+, collaboration is not an exact science but rather an “art.” Check out her definition of collaboration, and try to use that when the word next comes up.

Professionalism. Most people agree that the workplace is functionally different from our homes and leisure spaces. We behave, talk, and dress differently in each. But how different, and in what way? For example, do you ever swear at work? Do you ever turn up late? Do you use your phone during a meeting? Not only do certain workplaces have their own unique attitudes to “professionalism,” but each member in that workplace will have their own attitudes to “professionalism.” Some people are a well-dressed picture of respectability and punctuality. Others are a cursing, scruffy, “broad brush strokes” kind of person. Outside of the most prescriptively authoritarian framework, most workplaces leave a degree of interpretation to “act professionally.” And, usually, that works okay. Within a range of “acceptable,” people can work and form relationships as they want. But the lesson here is to always be vigilant to the fact that others will have their own definition of what’s “acceptable.” It’s best to establish that before you start high-fiving and suggesting an office-chair jousting competition.