The Thing About Onions

My son has a name for onions. 

He calls them the devil's vegetable. 

To him, there's simply nothing redeeming about them. If onions make an appearance on his plate, they're carefully picked out and pushed to the side. 

Meanwhile, millions of people would argue that onions make almost everything better. They're the foundation of countless recipes around the world. They're inexpensive, versatile, flavorful, and even contain nutritional benefits. 

The truth? 

Both perspectives contain a piece of reality. 

Onions can elevate a meal. 
They can also ruin one for someone else. 

They're nutritious for people. 
They're toxic to my labradors. 

They're wonderful in one context and harmful in another. 

That's the thing about onions. And, perhaps, that's the thing about people.  Of course, we’re reminded of the very common metaphor about onions and that of peeling back the layers.  That’s a great discussion, but it’s important to look at what may be happening before we even get to the layers, and I would argue increasingly so. 

Somewhere along the way, we've become increasingly comfortable reducing complex human beings to a single characteristic, opinion, vote, label, or belief. Once we decide where someone fits, we often stop wondering who they are.   

We replace curiosity with certainty. 

"They believe that..." 

"They support..." 

"They think..." 

And before long, the conclusion becomes: 

"...therefore I know everything I need to know about them." 

Leadership suffers the moment we begin confusing a person's position with their personhood.  I would see this regularly in my counseling office when meeting clients for the first time.  Friendly greeting, introductions, nothing too out of the ordinary.  Then they start telling their story.  My goodness – you’d never know by looking at them.   

Every person is an entire story. 

They have experiences we don't know. 
Losses we've never seen. 
People they love. 
Fears they carry. 
Values they're trying to protect. 
Reasons—sometimes very good reasons—for arriving where they have. 

Understanding those reasons doesn't require agreement. 

It requires respect. 

Conflict rarely becomes productive because someone suddenly changes their mind. 

It becomes productive because someone feels understood enough to stay in the conversation. 

That's an important distinction. 

Curiosity isn't surrender. 
Listening isn't endorsement. 
Seeking understanding isn't abandoning conviction. 

It's simply recognizing that people deserve to be seen as more than the one thing we disagree about. 

I've often wondered whether one of the greatest leadership skills of the next decade won't be persuasion at all. 

It may be the increasingly rare ability to stay genuinely interested in another human being after discovering you disagree.  As we remark time and time again in our conflict management classes, we seem to be losing our ability as a society to have constructive conversations with people with whom we disagree.   

To ask, 
"Help me understand how you came to that conclusion." 

To listen without immediately preparing a rebuttal. 

To separate the person from the position. 

Because once we stop seeing people as whole human beings, we've already lost something far more valuable than the argument. 

We've lost the relationship. 

The best leaders I've known possess an unusual ability. 

They refuse to flatten people into caricatures. 

They look for strengths before weaknesses. 
Character before categories. 
Humanity before headlines. 

They know every person is more complicated than a label. 

Just like onions. 

Useful in some situations. 
Unwelcome in others. 
Capable of making one person smile and another reach for a glass of water. 

Neither entirely good nor entirely bad. 

Simply more complex than we first imagined. 

Maybe that's the invitation for all of us. 

The next time we're tempted to write someone off because of one opinion, one disagreement, or one belief, perhaps we should remember the onion. 

It turns out the world isn't divided into good onions and bad onions. 

It's filled with people trying to make sense of life from where they've stood. 

And leaders don't begin with judgment. 

They begin with curiosity.