“I don’t like confrontation.”
That is a phrase I hear remarkably often.
The perception there is that to be a great leader, you have to like — or at least welcome — confrontation. But confrontation is hard. It’s vulnerable and scary and for too many of us we feel unarmed, no matter how well equipped and/or prepared we might be about the facts of the confrontation.
You know that old joke: when is a door not a door? *
Well, what if we asked that same of confrontation?
Question: When is a confrontation not a confrontation?
Answer: When it’s a conversation! (I know, it’s not much of a joke, but it’s true).
For so many of my clients around the issue of confrontation, there is a simple shift of perception that can change the game completely.
Start here: What is a confrontation? An argumentative clash, a conflict, an encounter… between what? That’s right — people. The first breakdown exists when we lose sight of the fact that we are talking to a person and instead see them as an opponent, an enemy, a label.
Consider this: Think about the “confrontations”/challenges we have with our children, even when we want to change their behavior or teach them something important. We see it less as a confrontation — and more as an opportunity to help them. Why? Because they’re a child. We don’t read any ill-intention into their actions. They’re just people learning how to grow up.
Change this: When we have confrontations with adults, however, we read into every meaning, tone, intention, and body movement. We listen with bias and baggage, we think ahead of their words, not listening to their meaning but strategizing our response. With a child the conversation would be a happy one, but with an adult it becomes difficult.
Go Here: What would happen if, in that moment you felt the fear and worry of confrontation, you pictured your son or your daughter at 6 years old? Regardless of your “opponent’s” behavior, try to honestly care for them, seek their well being, recognize that they are a person with feelings and passions. Then, what if instead of becoming a wall of confrontation – something for them to run into – you used the language of conversation, invited them into a discussion, had the single objective of seeking understanding by asking powerful questions? What then would become of your confrontation? It would become a conversation, a connection, a dialogue.
When is a confrontation not a confrontation? When you care more about the humanity of the person you are speaking to than the point you are trying to make.
* When it’s ajar.
