You’re in a meeting and it literally is going no where. The same topic, that was brought up the last meeting AND the meeting before that AND the meeting before that, is now back on the table. Your peers are saying variations of things that you have heard many many many times before. You have a crystal ball that can accurately predict what phrases and sentences will fall out of each mouth at what time and it is driving you nuts!
You’re tired of sitting at meetings that are not productive, not collaborative, and not moving anything forward. You have a big vision for your team, the business, and clients but why are you stuck in this rut?!
It is because there is an elephant in the conference room and it is ginormous. The elephant that everyone knows about, can smell in the air, and can feel the overwhelming anxiety inducing presence of but no one talks about: conflict.
In the presence of this elephant called conflict, people hold back and bite their tongue. They get nervous and skate around the issues. They focus on optimizing on the one thing that will enable their team to be more effective but don’t have the capacity to take in the bigger picture, as well as the need to optimize that bigger picture. It’s uncomfortable to be the one bringing up these contradictions in logic because it falls on deaf ears.
You are getting frustrated, annoyed, and stressed because your work is dependent on collaborating with others teams but collaboration seems impossible given the elephant in the room.
Here are some strategies you may have tried to deal with this elephant:
- Fight it with guns blazing with your truth and declarative statements of what is the right thing to do
- Freeze in front of it because your usual skills in critical thinking is frozen with these repetitive meetings and interactions that don’t lead to a satisfying resolution
- Ignore it since you’re exhausted from fighting and freezing so you hope someone else will deal with it
Have these worked? If these solutions worked, then you wouldn’t be reading this article.
If these solutions did not work, then let me suggest a different way to deal with this ginormous elephant in the room: befriend it.
Befriend it so that you don’t have to resent yourself or anyone else as this conflict drags on. Befriend it so you can find another path forward in togetherness with your peers and team. Befriend it so you can find new roles for everyone instead of having each person in the box of who they should be.
Start by saying hi to the elephant.
“Ah, but the elephant is so big and I am so tiny, so how in the world can I befriend an elephant?!”
It is possible to befriend elephants with these 3 principles. Note that principles in my world operate in this way: the more X I have, the more Y I have.
Here are the 3 principles to befriend the elephant in your workplace:
- The more you connect your mind to your animal body, the more you unblock your critical thinking skills and reduce anxiety.
- The more compassion you have for yourself and the other person in conflict, the more roles and pathways you create for people to contribute with increasing effectiveness.
- The more micro adjustments you make via feedback and communication, the more trust you build which helps you get closer to your goals.
Over the next few weeks I will be diving deeper into each principle so you can learn how to befriend the elephants at the workplace. If you are curious, then say hi to the elephant, hop on, and I’ll demonstrate to you how to ride out conflict with compassion and critical thinking with your peers, team, and management.
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Nancy Li is the person you want to go to when you’re tired of ignoring the elephant in the room.
You can learn more about Nancy and the conflict-centered work that she has done here https://pannapanya.com/about/
Tired of the elephant in your workplace? Email me at nancy@pannapanya.com