30 Mar March Madness
“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
And maybe if you’re a communication skills trainer, every solution looks like better communication.
Considering much of the madness in our lives now, it seems like that bias is credible. Many of the madness moments out there are not ours to solve, but often the tensions of external disruption trickle into our own world and cause disruptions that are ours to solve. And here’s where the communication bias comes in.
Disagreement is everywhere and normal. He wants vanilla, she wants mango-raspberry; this team wants a virtual meeting; that one wants the conference room. From disagreement can grow mischaracterization, personalizing, blaming, stretching of facts, imagining of horrors to come, predictions of doom, and paralysis. The solution clearly is not to hope for no disagreement, but rather to learn how to do disagreement in a way that is productive. In fact, it is from disagreement that innovation and growth can flourish.
Communication. Let’s learn how to disagree and argue; how to collect information and examine it; how to value different shades of opinion; how to speak and offer ideas without bashing others; how to ask for what you want and how to collaborate. How to act with grace and patience.
It can be done. Let us help. We don’t always have to use our hammers.