Posts Tagged ‘Perception’

I’m buried in some projects that I hope to be announcing in the next few weeks. These projects are keeping nearly all of my writing time occupied. I’ll have more information to share soon. In the meantime, here’s a great post by Tammy Lenski you might enjoy:

In workplace conflict, don’t mistake your experience for reality

My Daughters

I prefer to be alone. I value people. I respect people. I can appreciate people. I don’t necessarily like people.

I am doubly task-oriented. That means I have significantly more task orientation than people orientation. I don’t want bad things to happen to people. I don’t want people to be harmed. I just prefer to be alone and working than with people and interacting. Even relational activities tend to become tasks in my mind.

Some people will read this post (roughly 65% of all people are more people-oriented than task-oriented) and feel that I am a little bit rude and inconsiderate.

Other people (the other 35%) will read this post and think that they finally found someone who “gets” their perspective.

Potential conflict looms in that difference of perspective.

Here’s a story to illustrate my point.

Several years ago, my wife and I began taking our daughters to school on most mornings to have time to connect with them for a few minutes in the morning. One morning about 18 months ago, I came almost entirely unglued with them as we were leaving because we were “behind schedule.”

For clarity sake, let me explain the situation. If we leave home before 7:40 am, we get ahead of the school buses, and I get back home at about 8:10-8:15. If we leave home after 7:40 am, we travel behind the school buses, and I get back home at about 8:30-8:45. So, a 2 or 3 minute variation in departure time can make a roughly 30 minute difference in my total drive time. Either way, the girls get to school on time. The only issue is when I return home.

On the morning in question, I had no appointments or specific time commitments that would be impacted by the extra drive time. Still, I was ready to kill my daughters because they were making me “late” for appointments that I didn’t have.

Looking back, it’s really pretty funny. I chose to do something for a relational purpose and, for me, it became a task. I completely forgot the relationship side of the “drive the kids to school” plan, and I started to focus only on the task component (the time invested in it).

Fortunately, I realized my misplaced focus, and I apologized to my daughters that evening. We all learned from the experience, and we moved on to a higher level of mutual understanding.

Conflict can come from many different things. In my experience, a large number of workplace conflicts come from a difference in these perspectives. Task-oriented people viewing relational activities as tasks and people-oriented people viewing tasks as a chance to interact with people. When the two perspectives collide, sparks can fly.

In my case, I have to force myself to see the importance of investing time in building relationships with others. I have to quiet the voice in my head that constantly asks me what I am accomplishing every waking minute. I have to accept that building a relationship can actually be “doing something productive.”

I have learned that one of the keys to effectively resolving conflict is the ability to see both the people AND the task side of an issue instead of taking a people OR a task perspective. Both are important. Both bring value.

Which way do you naturally lean? What do you need to do to be more in balance? When you are in balance, you can be the catalyst for resolving many workplace conflicts.

Several years ago, my friend, client, and colleague, Tom Butera called my office shortly after driving by a billboard with the following statement on it:

Listen and silent have the same letters.

This statement struck me that day and has stuck with me ever since. I have thought about the implications of this simple observation. I have reflected on the times when I failed to listen well. I have observed what other people do that sends the message to me that they are not listening.

Too much talking, or lack of silence, is the common thread through virtually every conflict situation I have experienced that escalated quickly to anger and frustration by one or both parties. In this case, I am not referencing the type of silence associated with withdrawing from the situation. I am, rather, focusing on the type of silence that gives you the time to absorb and process information so that you can make an appropriate response to what the other person says or does.

In both my observations and my reflections, I see that silence is not just the lack of talking. True silence, for the purpose of listening, involves silencing the mind as well as the tongue. To be silent, we have to stop the desire to plan our response, look for what is wrong in the other person, defend our position, or justify our past actions.

To listen, we must be silent both externally and internally.

Thought for Thursday – Look for opportunities to practice intentional silence with the goal of understanding the perspectives of the people around you.

I have two colleagues. Both of them contribute something valuable to our personal and professional relationships. Both of them are good at what they do. Both of them have strong opinions. Both of them feel free to express their opinions. Both of them have direct and bottom-line communication styles. Both of them have a very strong task orientation. Both of them have a sarcastic approach to humor.

I respect what both of them “bring to the table.”

One of them makes a statement that I laugh at and accept as a joke. I might even reply with my own humorous sarcasm.

The other makes a similar statement that I take personally and accept as criticism. I might even directly challenge why they said something sarcastic to me.

What’s the difference? Why does one of them bring out a protective response and the other brings out a humorous one?

Is it them? Or, is it me?

While there are differences in their approaches. There are far more similarities than differences. The similarities make me wonder, “Could I be overly sensitive with one of them? Could I be looking for a reason to take offense?”

I’m not with you every day. I don’t know everything about every interaction you have. I am with me, and I know that sometimes (maybe  I should say “often”) the response other people get from me has more to do with my perception and my thinking than it has to do with them.

I think I need to check my thinking about some of the people in my life. I think I need to work on receiving them more openly and  less judgmentally so that we experience less conflict, our relationships can move forward, and our business ventures can prosper.

Over the next week,  I plan to focus on asking the question “Could it be me?” rather than assuming the problem is with them. Won’t you join me?

Guy Harris, The Recovering Engineer

     Have you ever been absolutely sure that you were right about someone else’s bad thoughts, hostile feelings or harmful intentions only to later find that you were wrong? I have.

     During the time that you held this mistaken view of their perspective, did you act in ways that made the conflict worse? I did.

     When you later learned of their true thoughts, feelings, or intentions; did you then realize how harmful your own words and actions had contributed to the escalating conflict between you? That was my experience.

     The title of this post has become one of the most powerful conflict resolution concepts that I personally work to apply. Learning to question my perspective before judging someone else’s (my spouse, my kids, my colleagues, or clients) has saved me from speaking or acting in harmful ways on more occasions than I can now recall. Sadly, when I don’t question my perspective and rush to action based on my judgment of someone else’s intentions, I usually get it wrong.

     In an effort to offer some practical guidance to assist you in this process, I’ll give three questions you can ask yourself the next time a conflict starts to brew:

1) Did they mean what I think they mean?

Maybe they really are angry. Maybe they did mean to insult you. Maybe they want to harm you in some way.

Or, maybe they are hurt. Maybe they didn’t realize that you took their comment personally. Maybe they are reacting to fear with a desire to protect themselves but no desire to harm you. Before you get angry, find a way figure out what they really meant.

2) Is there something going on here that I don’t understand fully?

Are they angry, or are they tired? Did they have a tough night with their sick child last night? Are they sick? Are they frustrated over lack of progress on a project? Any of these issues could cause the stress to push people to say and do things they would not ordinarily say or do. Before you judge too harshly, find out what’s happening in their life.

3) Did I do something to trigger that response in them?

Do I owe them something that is now late? Did they have an expectation of me that I did not meet? Did I say something that they received as an insult or put down? Even if the action was unintentional, any of these could generate a negative response from they other person. Before you decide that they are the problem, check your own past actions.

     Learn to question your perspective. It can take the edge off of your response so that you resolve conflicts faster and more productively.

     Guy Harris, The Recovering Engineer

   As I read through some of the blogs I really like this morning, I found two posts that intrigued me. One comes from Victoria Pynchon at Settle it Now (Negotiating Influence How to Help Your Opponents Change Their Minds) and the other is from Diane Levin at Mediation Chanel (The Mind and Magic Conjuring Up Ways to Improve Awareness). They are both really interesting, and I suggest that you take a look. I’ll quickly summarize what I got from them individually, and then I’ll comment on the connection I saw between them.

   As Victoria says in her post, she will have more to say on this topic, and I’m looking forward to reading what she has to say. For now, she points to research that indicates the positive impact that face-to-face communication has on persuasion. Her comment that ”… opposing parties resist sitting in the same room with one another when attempting to settle litigation” really struck me. I have the same experience in workplace situations, people involved in a conflict often refuse to sit face-to-face to discuss it.

   Diane’s post links to How Magicians Control Your Mind in the Boston Globe. This article reports on research done to understand how we perceive things. It’s also a fascinating read (with some great videos). The research shows that we have gaps in our perceptions so that what we think we see may not really be what happened. In other words, our perception may be our internal reality, and it will drive our thoughts and emotions. However, it’s not necessarily the objective truth (what actually happened).  

 To keep things simple, I will outline the connection I saw with a progression of bullet points:

Redirected to it’s new location at www.BusinessRelationshipRx.com.