Choosing conflict.
I recently spoke with someone who was experiencing ongoing conflict with colleagues.
Quite a lot of emailing, memo sending, and such types of communication were described. Misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and mounting frustrations had come to define the relationships.
I listened. And then asked one question. “Have you tried speaking with them?”
A pause. And then, maybe with a little bit of wonder, “No, I haven’t tried that.”
No in-person conversations had happened between these folks. No relationship building, understanding seeking, principled negotiating to resolve conflicts before they came to define the relationship.
If you’ve gotten stuck in such relationships, I hope you’ll consider this simple suggestion. Spend more time and energy trying to understand and be understood than identifying how those other people are wrong or bad or not in right relationship with you.
It’s much harder to other that other person when you’re looking right at him or her. It’s much harder to build a relationship with, to have patience and understanding for that other person, if your relationship is all through email and memos: faceless but not voiceless things that can’t look you right in the eye.
We can approach our work from a place of partnership. We can consciously strive to recognize our shared missions. We can focus on the us, the interdependence, that is work. Especially in the standard office.
Now successfully having conversations that get us to this good place, especially with difficult people (or if you are a difficult person … we all can be sometimes), is not as simple as this post. But even trying and not exactly succeeding is better than stewing in stress.
I’m eager to have my next conversation with my frustrated friend and learn how things are going.
We can choose conflict. We can choose to try. We can choose to build partnerships. It’s always up to us.
