Reflections
Lead 2 Succeed strives to continuously offer reflections based on experience gained in working with many different companies, organizations, managers, and employees in Scandinavia.
Open and hidden conflicts drain the bottom line
Resolved conflicts create synergy and increase the bottom line, and unresolved conflicts drain off the bottom line. They cause delays, poor quality and bad mood. Even peripheral and indirectly affected employees are affected by demotivation.
This applies not only to the large, clear and open conflicts, where the consequences are so clearly unacceptable that intervention can not be avoided, but also to the smaller and more hidden conflicts that we ‘live’ with to an excessive extent, close our eyes to and especially neglects the meaning of and thus tacitly accepts in everyday life.
Typical signs of such conflict states are more stereotypical perceptions of each other, habitual avoidances of certain people or certain situations etc. The danger of accepting hidden conflicts is that one creates a cultural acceptance of an unaffected well-being environment where one resigns and talks frustratedly about each other instead of making healthy contact with each other.
Conflicts can and should be seen as non-taken confrontations or unfinished confrontations that need satisfactory outcomes. The key to resolving conflicts is nuanced empathic and confrontational dialogue, where the mutual human contact and respect is re-established before the problem is sought to be solved – and it is an ability we all need to train and stay sharp in. Because it pays off!
A characteristic of the conflict is that it seems static and locked. But almost all conflicts get, through active conflict resolution, an outcome that far exceeds the hopes, and the people involved get important lessons for life. It matures them!
Active conflict resolution is a way of balancing a sincere respect for the people involved (not to be confused with their behavior), with the development of a win-win-win situation for the parties and the organization.
In Lead 2 Succeed’s work with the individual conflict, your own resources are involved in the process, which also provides lasting learning and inspiration for the company’s future management of conflicts.
The dialogue - and its typical detours
True dialogue creates development and synergy – but is rare!
That we depend on dialogue to talk together, create a framework, agree on cooperation on a daily basis is a matter of course. But unfortunately, far too many unintentional disruptions and misunderstandings occur despite our good intentions.
One is what we say and listen to each other. Something completely different is all that we expect from each other and thus fail to put into words. In dialogue, there are just two deviations, and they are so normal that we are led to believe that they are part of the communication. In other words, we think it has to be that way.
Bilateral monologue is camouflaged – and often unaware conflict!
When we go astray, dialogue is replaced by monologues. Both parties suddenly listen with less open mind and try to control both the conversation and each other’s behavior – albeit with widely differing behaviors. One way of dialogue covers an entire spectrum, from being a little too self-assured on behalf of the other to becoming completely dictatorial.
Here, the sender thinks he/she is being clear, but evokes distaste, unwillingness, and retreats disguised as passive agreement instead of sincerely for the real thing.
The second deviation of the dialogue covers from not taking a proper position in the present to focusing on defending, dodging and explaining oneself instead of performing.
Here, the objection, protest or reluctance is not expressed clearly or shown openly – and therefore not perceived as a lack of acceptance.
It applies to all of us that we at times fall into both ditches in different contexts.
True dialogue creates increased value!
True dialogue presupposes a basic will to both hear, understand and accept the other’s position and to express oneself sufficiently to be heard, understood and accepted. The reasonably simple task can from time to time be quite difficult to succeed because our expectations and perceptions of reasonableness and justice often do not match.
On the other hand, it always feels like an increased value when it succeeds. Successful dialogue creates co-responsibility and buoyancy in the company, strengthens the relationship between us and increases the sense of self-worth. Therefore, we are often affected in the situation when we experience it happening.
Enriching hassle!
We may need help on the sidelines to talk liberatingly together – especially in relation to those with whom we have difficulty succeeding in dialogue. We prefer to avoid this important conversation, and that is a paradox, since it is here that the need is strongest because it is most difficult. The paradox is furthermore that the difficult conversation also usually becomes the most enriching, insightful and self-developing for both parties.
Lead 2 Succeed has the expertise which can ensure that dialogue and learning come to fruition and create increased value.
The power of perspective
Our agenda is more influenced by our views than our statements!
Quite fundamentally, it is our perspective that forms the basis of our actions and rationales, and the perspective is far more subjective than we usually make ourselves aware of. The perspective and thus how we prioritize is dominated by our life baggage and how we have learned to live/survive with it.
Through adult role models – positive as well as negative – and upbringing, all adults have developed their own pattern in what one emphasizes to observe and how one looks at it. This applies to both situations and behavior, you approve/reward and ditto, you dislike and punish. Because that perspective seems fully automatic to ourselves, it seems obvious, rational, and objective.
The perspective we put forward thus automatically sets the agenda both on what is to be done, weighted and recognized – and not least on what is to be omitted, forgotten and sinned. Below are just 2 of many possible examples.
The yoke of perfectionism
Some people find it difficult to see anything other than the workloads ahead without automatically experiencing an expectation pressure to address them. It creates bitterness and locks the perspective. Thus one loses the ability to distinguish essentially from insignificant as everything feels essential.
With this mechanism, the scope becomes insurmountable, and fulfilment hardly occurs. At the same time, it creates an environment with too much criticism and too little praise, because nothing seems to be solved sufficiently. It is the yoke of the perfectionist leader, and thus also of the employees.
The monocular for the blind eye
Other people have an ability to unilaterally focus on the positive in all possible aspects of everyday life and in the interaction, which, at the same time, is an avoidance of all the troublesome things that need attention. The person observes optimistically as through a pink filter. All the problematics are toned down and thus postponed indefinitely.
When the person thereby avoids taking necessary confrontations as well as preventing others from doing so, conflicts and frustrations in those around them escalate. When the frustrations finally come to light, the person is incomprehensible in the face of the negatively accumulated mood. It is the yoke of the jubilant positivist leader and thus the employees.
Great return on small effort
When you sharpen the attention to and thus the responsibility for your own visual filter, you also get the opportunity to interact more appropriately with your surroundings and a deeper recognition that you are not a victim of the perceptions of the surroundings, but to the highest degree able to influence your local environment with your attention and behavior.
Lead 2 Succeed focuses on the power of perspective and the great increased value that can be gained by calibrating one’s subjective attention. And it creates great benefits with little effort.
Stress - The dark side of job obligation
You can both release yourself of stress – and increase life quality
Lead 2 Succeed sees stress as a prolonged state of internal conflict between oppositely directed needs that urgently claim one’s attention. It creates physical and mental discomfort and is experienced as a loss of control over one’s own quality of life. With the advance of the information society, the number of stress-affected and stress-stricken people in the business world has exploded.
Being important obliges limitlessly
In their work, employees are in contact with far more people than before. The communications and information part of most jobs has grown incredibly since the 90s. In many companies, globalization is felt quite concretely in the form of daily international contact or correspondence.
On the positive side, you have become more important to other people in your work function because you act as a key figure in various physical and electronically based collaboration networks. The networks, on the other hand, depend on delivering quality on time – no matter what obstacles arise! And conversely, you yourself are dependent on the quality and timing of others.
The downside of being significant to – and dependent on – others is that the inner pressure of expectation also rises sharply. One does not want to fail, but also does not have full control!
Having too much on your plate
In addition, electronic communication tools – e-mail, internet, mobile phone and laptop have become a matter of course in everyday life. These aids increase our efficiency, but also make it harder to withdraw, finish, or complete. We experience many daily disruptions in our work actions, which increases the internal pressure.
You feel responsible in relation to other people at work and in the family, but increasingly ignore the personal needs (relaxation, rest, sleep, food and drink, personal pleasures), in addition to the feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration. The two existential needs – to take care of oneself and to be something for others – are conflicting each other, and it is felt as unease, inadequacy and discomfort. You can say that in order not to disappoint others, you harshly let yourself down.
Stress is also contagious – understood in the sense that some managers have a kind of basic stress without being aware of it. They have grown accustomed to normalise living with constant selfpressure and thus find it natural to treat other people in the same way – regardless of the fact that it creates unhealthiness and undermines priorities. This creates an unintended stress culture, where the most committed and overly responsible employees also get the worst stress reactions.
Leadership of own life
Getting stressed is a crisis that needs relevant attention, and it is also an opportunity to create an even better life quality. The best medicine for stress is to get stress coaching deepening own awareness of the self-destructive patterns in orders to break these patterns, reestablish footing, create sound perspective, take back control of life and work, and not least influence the workplace and environment.
With Lead 2 Succeed, you do not just get tools to deal with stress. You learn to prevent stress as well as create fulfilment in life as a whole. Whether you “just” have symptoms of stress or even are on sick leave, Lead 2 Succeed can help you. Through a process of confidential conversations, both your life quality and your energy reach new heights!
Do you want to know more?
You are always welcome to contact Lead 2 Succeed if you have any questions, want further information, or want to book a spot on one of our courses.
We help you achieve your goals, results and success through increased authentic, emotional, and social competence!