Can you be understood if you don’t understand?

Adopt an emotionally resilient attitude to make it happen.

Blocks in business usually involve conflict. This can be conflict within, manifesting as cognitive dissonance, as well as conflict with others.

Resolution can be found by considering what is ultimately important to both parties, or to use jargon, “values”.

Unfortunately when terms like “values” seep into corporate life they can rapidly lose lustre and become a part of a bland landscape. Use the term too often and people roll their eyes or worse, feign interest. The term has been used and, some say, abused at a macro level in vision and mission statements and at a micro level within change programs.

Fundamentally “values” are a representation of what is ultimately important to you. Anything attached to importance conjures up emotion. Emotions are representations of feelings. If you are human you have them!

Conflict is emotional and where emotion resides rational thinking races away. Do you feel it? When someone offends, you often feel it before you even think it. It is most likely a clash of values.

A crucial aspect of emotional resilience is about owning your emotions and about being able to direct your responses.

This means having a strategy to immediately get that you are reacting emotionally, being able to own it and know that the other person is also doing so, and being able to find a position of wisdom and influence to resolve the situation.

Your values are “right” for you, not simply “right” in the broader sense. As soon as you begin to be curious about the other person’s values, what is important to them in this context, you begin understand. This sets you on a path to resolution, wisdom and being understood.

How wisely do you behave? And… How quickly does the wisdom kick in - before you respond or somewhere in the midst of an ongoing conflict when someone must take a stand to resolve it?

Please let me know what you think, I would love your stories and feedback…
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