CHAPTER 13
You are always creating your own reality. We all are. When you find yourself in conflict, your great brain floods with emotion and loses its rational capacity. That doesn’t feel good. As a result, the reality you create gets skewed.
In fact if you are like most people, you tend to believe conflict is being done to you rather than by you. The villains are out there, and you are the hapless victim.
This perspective creates distance between people and their own involvement. They play the blame game to make themselves feel better and defuse inner tension.
We know you are more sophisticated than that. But take a moment to remember the last time you got into a significant disagreement at work. Did you rationalize your behavior, even to yourself? Maybe you even used that classic line: It’s not personal. It’s just business.
Now think about a time with your spouse, or even better, your teenage child, doing just what you asked them not to do. Wasn’t their behavior simply out of line? Or wrong? And now you can’t play the not personal/ just business card, can you? It’s very personal, and it feels like they did it just to make you mad!
When you as a leader take the point of view that conflict happens without your full participation—meaning it’s not personal—you reduce your influence and effectiveness, especially in the midst of conflict. Luckily, the reverse is also true: when you opt in and take responsibility for your part in creating the conflict, you have the power to change your response. By understanding the ME, you can influence the outcome more productively and creatively.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ME
We committed to a year-long engagement with an information technology consulting firm. We had the role of leadership team advisors. Henry, the CEO and managing partner, had worked with us at a previous company and wanted support getting his new team up to speed.
At the three-month mark, we arrived onsite to facilitate a strategy meeting. The team talked about a recent problem with closing new clients. The cause of the slow-close rate came up in discussion.
Jessica, head of Business Development, piped up with full force, “Well, that’s easy. Rob, you’re too anal! These are simple proposals. We just need a two-page discussion document. You’re taking forever and making them way too long. I can’t close clients with that!”
“Really?” Rob retorted. “You’re saying my work is too detailed?”
“Don’t take it so personally,” Jessica shot back. “I just don’t need a thirty-page white paper. I need something to let them know we can understand their pain and know how to help them.”
You might be thinking Jessica’s point is logical and valid. Logical, yes. Data-driven, maybe. Influential? We’re not so sure.
The biggest issue was that Jessica fell into the classic blame game. It’s not uncommon. Blaming others means you don’t have to acknowledge your part in the problem (and you do, by the way, have a part in the problem).
What’s missing is self-responsibility. It’s a ME part of the equation.
We define self-responsibility as taking responsibility for creating your own experience or acknowledging how you have contributed to the problem. This might be as simple as an unhelpful reaction.
The concept of self-responsibility, and the idea that we create our own experiences, can be hard to swallow. On the reverse, we easily assimilate concepts like It’s not personal. It’s just business. But that point of view creates distance between the event and our own involvement.
Is it really just business? All our clients seem to take their work quite personally. They commit their time, energy, heartbeats, and passion to what they do throughout each day. How is that not personal?
Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, took charge of his experience while locked in a German concentration camp for Jews. He wrote, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Often, the stimulus evokes a feeling so strong that we override or separate from that emotional response through a rational reaction. By more fully developing emotional intelligence and allowing for the feeling, we are more apt to respond, and not simply react!
We bypass the choice point when we go immediately to blame. In so doing, we give away our power.
There are probably times you do a good job of pretending not to feel anything in the midst of conflict. That convinces you that you’re not responsible for the problem. That distance from your genuine thoughts, feelings, and intentions, however, creates the biggest problem. When you get too far from yourself—when you forget the ME—it’s easy to forget that you are a player and that you create your experience and impact others’ experiences. You also can easily deny that you care about the impact you have on those around you. This pretense leads to inhuman responses that don’t help resolve conflict.
You impact your world at home, at work, and heck, even while commuting. Ask yourself these questions in the midst of conflict to better understand your impact and to avoid blaming others for your situation:
- How much am I influencing the situation?
- What responsibility am I willing to take for my impact?
- Am I up to the challenge of owning what I create: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful?
Truth be told, it takes tremendous courage to say yes to the last question. It’s not personal. It’s just business is way easier. But that’s the coward’s way out. Are you up for the challenge?
Taking responsibility means owning what you create. When you’re at odds with someone else, take responsibility by:
- Turning inside yourself and being aware of what you think, feel, and want. It may take you some time to get through your automatic defenses. Slow down, take a breath, and really sense what is happening for you.
- Determining what to bring back out. Choose what you will say and do to take responsibility for the situation in order to make a positive influential impact.
- Taking responsibility for what is happening inside of you. Blame blocks energy. Your openness will foster amazing, creative solutions.
Let’s go back to Jessica. She started with direct blame: “Rob, you’re too anal! These are simple proposals.”
Points for Jessica: at least she is communicating directly to Rob (albeit in a blame-y way), rather than having hushed conversations about Rob with a coworker. “Rob is so anal. He can’t put a simple proposal together!” We call this gossip blame. It completely undermines team trust and is toxic for the company overall.
CrisMarie jumped in, “We appreciate your viewpoint Jessica, but you seem to have decided you’re right and Rob is wrong. I’m curious what happens (inside) for you regarding these proposals?”
Jessica slowed down, turned inside to the ME, and noticed what she was thinking, feeling, and wanting. “I realize I feel stressed trying to walk potential clients through such a detailed proposal. I am relationship-based. I suck at the details. Plus, I haven’t closed a single client. So I’m not feeling so great about my results. I know I am good at what I do. I want to get my sales success back!”
With this clarity, Jessica was able to see her role in the situation. She now had more influential input than when she pointed her finger and complained about Rob.
She said to Rob, “I’m uncomfortable with how long your proposal documents are, and I’m the one that has to walk the potential client through them. I really want to have something simple that I can use and be successful with so I can win some business.”
As a result of this interchange, Rob and Jessica collaborated to create a solution that worked for both of them. They designed a five-page slide deck that could be easily customized for different clients and worked great with Jessica’s conversational style with clients. They closed more clients, made more money, and felt successful!
BREAKING THROUGH TO CREATIVITY
It is easy to assume someone else is to blame for conflict and miss that you are always creating your own experience. It’s easy to fall back to: It’s not personal. It’s just business. But when you do, you miss out on taking self-responsibility, showing up authentically, and influencing with a creative solution.
Rather than focus on what Rob was or was not doing to make her world miserable, Jessica had to own her discomfort and be explicit about her style and her burning desire to be successful. Taking responsibility empowered her to make a different choice—to influence Rob. Even though Rob is more detail oriented and takes more time developing proposals than Jessica likes, everything is on the table now, and there is more room for creativity.
Bottom line: you can’t change the Robs on your team, but you can have powerful influence by saying what is happening inside of you rather than blaming others. Do that, and watch the energy and innovation increase on your team.
Next, we’ll show you what to do with emotions (e-gads!) at work.