Any time we come into contact with other people, there’s potential for conflict to occur.
(This is as true for our personal relationships as it is for the professional ones.)
Contrary to popular opinion, most conflict is avoidable.
To think that friction is an inherent, mandatory part of engaging with other people is limited at best…
And a self-fulfilling prophecy at worst.
Two other important points:
- Things that begin badly don’t need to remain bad… but it certainly helps to start off on the right foot.
- A relationship that starts off on good terms doesn’t always stay that way.
These are worth bearing in mind because it’s easy for us to make snap judgments about people.
Relying on our first impressions is a time-saving initiative. The less energy we need to expend on working out whether someone is “good” or “bad”, the better.
Put another way – we’re biased to see things the way we expect them to be.
But the way things have been isn’t the way they always need to be.
Inertia, familiarity, our preference for stability (even when it’s uncomfortable): these are forces which can either keep things stuck as they are, or leave us blind to seeing how the situation has changed.
Whatever the reason, whatever the circumstances, it’s not a question of blame. It’s a question of responsibility – and intent.
Broken dynamics make a poor foundation for anything worth building.
It may not be our fault. We might not have been unaware until this very moment that something needed to change. But now that we know, what are we going to do about it?
We can suffer in silence. Or we can make the decision to do something different.
You can cajole. You can influence. You can persuade. You can nudge, guide, and push for things to change.
Ultimately, you can’t control what any other person does.
The only things that you can control:
- The actions you take
- How you react to the actions of others
The choice to continue engaging in a manner that perpetuates broken dynamics is one every person involved makes for themselves.
And just as that choice to continue is one we all make, there’s another option available to us:
To do something different.
Because when we get right down to it, improvement doesn’t happen by accident.
If change is the goal, then change is required.