OBSERVATION 101

What I was actually doing was observing.....I feel like my local focus frees me from the global bias that gets in the way of top-down thinkers

Temple Grandin (1947—) is an American scientist and activist. She is a prominent proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter and the author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal behavior. She is a consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior and an autism spokesperson. She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to document the insights she gained from her personal experience of autism. She is currently a faculty member with Animal Sciences in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University.

In her work with cattle, she noticed details others missed about what the cattle were experiencing. For example, she noticed that rapid movement, light/dark contrast, equipment left on the ground—were things that spooked animals. Simple moving a flag pole in front of the veterinary facility saved the whole building from being down. Temple crouched into the chutes to see what cattle were seeing. She spotted things like a coat on a fence, shadows, and a hose on the floor, a chain hanging down—were environmental “pictures” that she removed to calm the herd.

“Autism helped me understand animals because I think in pictures. Since animals do not have language, their memories have to be sensory-based instead of word-based. … There is scientific evidence that animals think in pictures, and that this learning is very specific. When an animal is trained to tolerate one type of activity, it does not easily transfer to another similar activity. For example, habituating a horse to tolerate the sudden opening of an umbrella does not transfer to a flapping tarp. Animals often get specific fear memories that are associated with aversive events. A horse that had alcohol thrown in its eyes during a veterinary procedure became afraid of black cowboy hats. A white cowboy hat was safe and a black hat was scary. He was looking at a black cowboy hat when the alcohol was thrown.”

Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.

OBSERVATION 101

Observation skills require our senses to recognize, analyze, and recall our surroundings to gain information.

Observation is more there merely seeing. It requires skills that are dependent on several other abilities and attributes, such as:

Active Listening: Hearing the subtext of what is being said, by paying attention to verbal and nonverbal cues (tone, mood, body language, and facial expressions).
Self-regulation: Calming our inner static helps us take in more information from our environment.
Critical thinking: Analyze context and facts so that we can thoroughly understand a topic or problem, requires us to remain objective as we identify issues and develop effective solutions.
Attention to detail: Ability to approach and accomplish tasks with thoroughness and accuracy. This skill plays a strong role in productivity, but it's also key to effective observation because it allows you to recognize small details and adjust your actions to accommodate them.

We need to always be observing and maintaining an open mind. Eagerness to improve increases our awareness, which increases our choices and ability to improve. Except for personal experience, we learn everything we know from someone else. We learn by watching others, reading, or listening.

How do we increase our ability to observe?

PRACTICE

Improve observation skills by:

Make Time. Schedule time each day to pause what you're doing and try to pick out as many details as you can from your surroundings.
Be Present. Focusing fully on the moment enables more meaningful contribution. During a meeting, taking notes is a great way to ensure that you remain engaged. Move past the obvious to find some of the smaller, less noticeable qualities—what forces are working for or against our ability to make progress?
Check-In. Observing another’s facial expressions and body language helps recognize how they're interpreting the information they are receiving. It’s still important to directly ask about their understanding and experience. By giving them a chance to share what they're thinking or feeling and then actively listening to their response, we can make sure that we are communicating effectively and address any misunderstandings before they become bigger issues.
Obsess the details. Look for relationships or patterns. Being detail-oriented allows us to observe situations and surroundings more critically, but it's important to observe how these small details fit into the broader scope. This allows yous u to better understand issues so that we can develop solutions or increase influence.

COMMIT

[ ] I commit myself to increase my ability to observe by engaging my senses, managing my emotions, thinking critically, and obsessing over details.

In her words…

“Nature is cruel but we don't have to be”—The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's

“I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.”

“But my favorite of Einstein's words on religion is "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." I like this because both science and religion are needed to answer life's great questions.”— Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

“In an ideal world, the scientist should find a method to prevent the most severe forms of autism but allow the milder forms to survive. After all, the really social people did not invent the first stone spear. It was probably invented by an Aspie who chipped away at rocks while the other people socialized around the campfire. Without autism traits, we might still be living in caves.”—Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism

“I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal, or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors... All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain.”― Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

“Animals make us Human.”

“[T]he only place on earth where immortality is provided is in libraries. This is the collective memory of humanity.”― Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

“Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.”—Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

“I believe that the place where an animal dies is a sacred one. There is a need to bring ritual into the conventional slaughter plants and use it as a means to shape people's behavior. It would help prevent people from becoming numbed, callous, or cruel. The ritual could be something very simple, such as a moment of silence. In addition to developing better designs and making equipment to ensure the humane treatments of all animals, that would be my contribution.”— Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

“There’s a saying in engineering: You can build things cheap, fast, or right, but not all three.”—Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

“The big companies are like steel and activists are like heat. Activists soften the steel, and then I can bend it into pretty grillwork and make reforms.” ― Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

“If language naturally evolves to serve the needs of tiny rodents with tiny rodent brains, then what's unique about language isn't the brilliant humans who invented it to communicate high-level abstract thoughts. What's unique about language is that the creatures who develop it are highly vulnerable to being eaten.”

“My mind can always separate the two. Even when I am very upset, I keep reviewing the facts over and over until I can come to a logical conclusion.” ―Thinking In Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life With Autism

“Animals like novelty if they can choose to investigate it; they fear novelty if you shove it in their faces.”― Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

“The word “autism” still conveys a fixed and dreadful meaning to most people—they visualize a child mute, rocking, screaming, inaccessible, cut off from human contact. And we almost always speak of autistic children, never of autistic adults, as if such children never grew up, or were somehow mysteriously spirited off the planet, out of society.”―Thinking In Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life With Autism

“Sometimes you have to go outside your field of study to find the right people.”— Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

“In a noisy place, I can’t understand speech, because I cannot screen out the background noise.”― Thinking In Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life With Autism

“Label-locked thinking can affect treatment. For instance, I heard a doctor say about a kid with gastrointestinal issues, “Oh, he has autism. That’s the problem”—and then he didn’t treat the GI problem.”― The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum

“I replaced emotional complexity with visual and intellectual complexity. I questioned everything and looked to logic, science, and intellect for answers.”― Thinking In Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life With Autism

“Teachers who work with autistic children need to understand associative thought patterns.”―Thinking In Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life With Autism

“My thinking pattern always starts with specifics and works toward generalization in an associational and nonsequential way.”— Thinking In Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life With Autism

“The easiest words for an autistic child to learn are nouns because they directly relate to pictures. Highly verbal autistic children like I was can sometimes learn how to read with phonics. Written words were too abstract for me to remember, but I could laboriously remember the approximately fifty phonetic sounds and a few rules.”— Thinking In Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life With Autism

“Neurotypical people seem to think and feel that it's okay to be rigid as long as their ideas are shared by enough people.”― Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through Autism's Unique Perspectives

“Many autistic children like to smell things, and smell may provide more reliable information about their surroundings than either vision or hearing.”—Thinking In Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life With Autism

“When something is "all in your mind," people tend to think that it's willful, that it's something you could control if only you tried harder or if you had been trained differently. I'm hoping that the newfound certainty that autism is in your brain and in your genes will affect public attitudes.”—The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum

“Fieldwork is probably always more likely to be holistic than lab work or mathematical modeling because in the field you can’t get away from the whole when a research project starts.”―Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

“One of the problems in understanding sensory issues is that sensory sensitivities are very variable, among individuals and within the same individual. A person can be hyper-sensitive in one area (like hearing) and hypo-sensitive in another (like touch). —The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's: 32 New Subject Revised & Expanded

What we don’t see on the resumes we review or the job descriptions we want is the litany of emotional entanglements we bring to our roles, uninvited, to the team and organizations we work in. Alongside technical skills, people who can master a range of subjective skills are better able to influence, deal with ambiguity, bounce back from setbacks, think creatively, and manage themselves in the presence of setbacks. In short, those who learn lead.

Observing subjective qualities in others past and present gives us a mental picture for the behaviors we want to practice. Each figure illustrates a quality researched from The Look to Craftsmen Project. When practiced as part of our day-to-day, these qualities will help us develop our mastery in our lives and work.

OBSERVATION 101

What I was actually doing was observing.....I feel like my local focus frees me from the global bias that gets in the way of top-down thinkers

OBSERVATION 101

Observation skills require our senses to recognize, analyze, and recall our surroundings to gain information.

PRACTICE

COMMIT

FURTHER READING/ WATCHING

In her words…