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If you are lucky enough to work alongside like-minded passionate people who like you want to be the best. Gosh, don’t take that for granted. It’s a very rare thing. I think we’ve all been in that situation where we are the person in a job that cares more than those around us and it is the worst. So if you’re fortunate enough to now be in a place where you work alongside other people that care, celebrate that. And recognize that with it will come tension. Because when a group of people who are passionate agree on the destination, they will constantly disagree on the right way to get there.
We had a lot of tension in our company. We wanted to be the best in the world. We all came from different places. And so we had ways to navigate through it. First, if you and I were ever really disagreeing on something, either of us could at any point say, “Time out, switch.” Which meant I now had to start arguing for the thing that you wanted and you had to start arguing for the thing that I wanted. Funny thing about human beings more often than not we just want to be right. The moment you start arguing for the very thing you were just arguing against, now you want that to win. It’s actually a beautiful shortcut to empathy.
Second, sometimes that wouldn’t work. And at any point, someone could say “Time out again, third option.” Which meant that, hey, if after this long neither of us has been able to convince the other of our individual idea, perhaps it’s because neither of those ideas was good enough. And maybe this is a beautiful opportunity for us to work together in identifying a third option. A third idea that’s better than either of the first two.
But sometimes that wouldn’t work. And either person could at any point say, “This is important to me.” Which was a beautiful invitation to the other to recognize that if it mattered more to you than it did to them, they should just let you have your way. Recognizing that if you do choose to employ that third one, no one’s allowed to overplay the “this is important to me” card.
But how you navigate through tension exists in far more scenarios than just a disagreement between two individuals. You can, through thoughtful selection of words or even other forms of communication, identify better ways to navigate tense moments within your organization.