“Thanks for your openness to fix this issue,” I said, “It’s refreshing.”
“You make it easy,” he said.
“Thanks,” I replied
I could feel us both relax, sooth and groove into a glassy-smooth pool of safe relating — which, by the way — we had generated by not letting relational anxiety ruffle our water.
It was two bullfrogs, easing off a low rock together, and slipping into a calm pond for a good swim.
Our conversation involved fixing something that wasn’t working well, it involved change, it involved moving from a mildly shaky and a-tad-bit-risky to more orderly, professional and reliable.
And we did move there, without criticism, hurt, blame or drama.
Conclusions can be drawn from this.
When anyone makes a mistake, fails to perform, does something other than what is the best practice, the way forward is though simple honesty about what didn’t work, and simple candor about what we can do together to improve the situation.
To all supervisors, bosses, spouses, teachers, parents and various and sundry knuckle-headed leaders of all kinds — as you oversee your team, your family, your staff, as they make mistakes, as you make mistakes, as all of us forget to do things or fail to act out the organizational culture that we want fostered — do the following ten things to keep things good:
- Stay calm; quell anxiety; slow down; slow time.
- Avoid making quick assumptions and impulsive responses.
- Proactively and bravely initiate face-to face discussions of problems; ask questions; understand what happened; circle up and investigate together.
- Through the use of neutral verbal tones and a relaxed verbal gaits, create a conversational atmosphere where it is safe to be imperfect and safe to talk about that.
- Don’t blame or criticize, rather be gentle, be kind.
- Own the problem together, suffer it with each other, take it on as a team.
- Look forward, not back. You can’t change the past; you can change the future.
- Explore and suggest solutions that work best for everyone.
- Stay humble; be reasonable; keep in mind that better (not perfect) is still good.
- Finally, keep it real, keep it located on the planet, no one is perfect — not even you.
Recently, a most precious family member and I dove into a common problem of precarious proportion.
We were very honest about our feelings, and our preferences, and we were very tender with each other regarding our imperfections.
We made it easy on each other, or as easy as possible.
Partial solutions came to mind over several days — not several minutes — they were coated in kindness, drizzled with gentleness, and baked in love.
We were pilfering old wisdom, plundering ancient relational truth, “above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
Colossians 3:14
Thrive! 