Has it happened to you too? Somebody shows disagreement with you, or comes with a suggestion you don’t like, and you lash out – perhaps more than absolutely necessary…
Here is a finding that helps us keep cool during disagreements, so we don’t get carried away.
What we found (in ourselves and working with other people) is that humans have a tendency to take comments very personally. When a colleague, friend or family member suggests us to do things differently, we start inferring things like “they think I’m not doing it well”, “they consider I’m not good enough to decide on my own”; “in fact, they probably find me not good enough… ” or “you see – they don’t appreciate me”…. We make the entire disagreement about US. No wonder it touches us so personally, and we react so viscerally.
Imagine for example that our spouse says “our children don’t study enough – we should be more severe with them”. How do many of us react? We think “my spouse is criticizing me – (s)he consider I’m not doing enough…”.
Or imagine our boss tells us “this project is not going as planned”. What do we infer? “My boss is disappointed with my work – (s)he thinks I’m not as good as I ought to be…”.
Reality is that most of the time, the other party isn’t trying to tell us WE are the problem. They just try to explain their point of view – they DO see things differently, but it’s not about US. In fact, what we found is that, most of the time, they just disagree on one of the following:
- WHAT needs to be done
- HOW it should be done
- WHO should do what
What are they trying to tell us?
If, during disagreements, we manage to become curious – wondering “what are they trying to tell us?”, without getting carried away, we are in for the most fruitful discussions. If we ask questions to better understand the other party (and to constructively challenge them), we will probably learn a lot ourselves.
Don’t make it personal
So don’t make it so personal – identify the elements where you don’t agree (what, how, and who) – and then dig deeper with Socratic questions. You’ll be happy you had the conversation together!
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