Pick a fight or create an outcome?

There are three options available with every situation -

1. Ignore whats happening and put your head in the sand.
2. Pick a fight with someone and lengthen the amount of time that it will take to create a real outcome.  Maybe even land yourself in hot water with Human Resources.
3. Seek out positive and complimentary outcomes and reduce the amount of time needed to fix the situation.

My advice is to seek out positive outcomes and look for where bridges can be built rather than creating negative situations that only lead to more trouble.

Cards anyone?

Personality Poker - 5 deck set

Product description

Personality Poker by Stephen Shapiro

5 deck set includes: 5 decks + instruction manual  + streaming video

If your organization is having a difficult time staying ahead of the curve, it’s probably suffering from sameness—the widespread condition in organizations where commonality is valued above individuality. Unbeknownst to most, chronic sameness destroys innovation and creative thinking. 

Introducing Personality Poker, the playing card tool for driving high-performance teamwork and innovation. 

 

http://changethis.com/product/show/4-Personality_Poker___5_deck_set

Taking a stand when you have to!

I'm a chicken.  There you go I admit it.

Confronting someone who may pose a violent physical threat (in both the literal and metaphorical sense) is not my idea of being smart.  I firmly adhere to the 'flight' option as opposed to the 'fight' option.

Don't get me wrong - in case of emergency or threat to family I'll happy foot it with the best.  That is at a time when the brain has no option but to immediately react.  The rest of the time (like the other 98%) I am happy to sit back consider my options and do something different.

When it comes to work though - you have to draw the line somewhere.  For example we deal with a wide range of people from various backgrounds in my job.  Some pleasant and some not quite so pleasant.

So earlier today when I had to 'confront' a student - my first reaction? "Hey, can you deal with this?”  Chicken.  Man was I wrong!

After a few minutes and some serious contemplation I decided to man up and do something about the situation.  Now there was no immediate threat of physical retaliation or whatever but believe me this guy was a gorilla and is known for his serious gang connections.

So what happened? 

1.  I got my paperwork together.  I got armed with everything I could to make an air tight case and gave the person no room to argue.

2.  I got a support person.  Having a second person in the room who was amicable with the person helped break down any issues that may have arisen.

3.  I took the lead and did what a manager should do.    It was my responsibility to deal with a possible negative situation and I did it.

In this case the situation could have resulted in becoming nasty.  Fortunately it didn't.  But I learnt a fair bit today about how to handle bad situations.  It looks like common sense stuff and the way handled it was - but sometimes common sense has to be acted upon before we realise we did it right!

 So now what situations do you find yourself in?  Do you find yourself fobbing off the hard decisions onto others that you should be dealing with?  Harden up, make a plan, and yes you do get the option to 'phone a friend' but I recommend you actually take a friend rather than phone them later (from the comfort of your hospital bed).

 

(Thats a joke too by the way...)

Conflict Management

It is easy to become bogged down in the non-essentials of life and business. Mission statements are designed to keep us on track and focused on what we are trying to achieve.

It is easy to become distracted from what we are meant to be doing. My point in case is the feud occurring between two of today's best musical people around (depending on taste) - in this case it is Eminem and Mariah Carey.

There are a couple of ways to look at this situation.

1. Who cares? Not I.
2. What can we learn from this? Quite a bit.

Don't sweat the small stuff. Do any of their arguments matter or make any difference?

Got a gripe? Sort out your issues in private before they become public. Keep it between you and the other party involved. Discuss the issue in a closed forum before leaking your laundry to your friends, your workmates and ultimately to the world.

Focus on what you are good at. Anytime spent worrying about what another thinks of you or what they are up to is time you are not spending constructively.