Confrontation

By: Jeff West

“I have several times made a poor choice by avoiding a necessary confrontation.”

John Cleese – Actor, author.

Take a second and reflect on what went through your mind when you saw the title to this article. Were the thoughts primarily positive or negative? How you answer will give you serious feedback on how successful you will be in business, relationships,,,, life.

If you see confrontation as a positive part of your life, something that allows you to deal with issues head on, resolve them and grow, feel free to skip on to the next article. If your first feelings were of fear and dread read on.

Time and again while working with business leaders I hear about “the employee” or “the customer”. When we dig deeper into the issue I invariably ask, “Have you talked to them about this?” At that point I get one of multiple answers that sound like this:

• They’ll react emotionally.

• They’re completely irrational.

• I could incur retaliation.

• I don’t want to hurt their feelings.

• Confronting them could just make the problem worse.

• I could be rejected.

• Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,

By rationalizing our avoidance in this way what have we accomplished toward solving the problem? Look at it from another perspective. By not confronting someone with an issue what are the best case results? Chances are the issue will eventually generate enough pressure with someone reacting emotionally anyway. Do you think avoiding a situation really saves someone else’s feelings? By not confronting the problem doesn’t your fear of rejection continue indefinitely?

The bottom line is, for every excuse for not confronting someone’s behavior the outcomes we fear are practically guaranteed to show up anyway. The difference? By facing a problem head on we have a fighting chance at fixing the problem and growing as individuals. Ignoring issues because of our fear just means waiting until the bomb goes off. At that point many people get injured with little chance to resolve the problem effectively like adults.

How many people do you know, co-workers, family, friends, who have an issue with someone else and have avoided doing anything constructive about it? What’s the state of their relationship? Are they happier for not having the courage to tackle the problem? How many relationships have ended poorly, never to be repaired, because we continually evade the elephant in the room?

I often ask the following question at our workshops. On a scale of 1-10, if someone has an issue with you, with 10 being someone right in your face with the issue and 1 meaning I’d like them to avoid it completely, where do you rate yourself? I’ve yet to have anyone tell me less than 8. So if most of us really want to know when someone has a problem with us, why do we tend to think others don’t want to hear it?

President Lincoln had a saying. He called it “Cultivating our Better Angels”. By that he meant, it takes guts to candidly express our thoughts when every fiber of our being is telling us to be cautious. On the other side of the scale, it takes great humbleness and modesty to admit we might have missed something or be wrong. Be honest with yourself. Do you really think avoiding an issue will magically make it go away with no consequences? If not, why do we continually tiptoe around people rather than face the problem head on and be able to check it off our list of concerns? The world can be tough enough on its own. We don’t need to continually carry around baggage of things we have the power to take care of.

There’s a high price to be paid for being passive and silent. Often, issues only grow worse when we fail to address them quickly. Worse yet, how do you feel about passive people? Do you respect them? Passive people often appear not to respect themselves and therefore just make matters worse. While not as refined as we’d like sometimes, how do you feel about people who always let you know where they stand? Personally, I love being around people like that, even if I don’t agree with them. I like never having to guess what they’re thinking.

So, how to make that courageous step? Think about how you’d like someone to address an issue they have with you. For example, you might walk into Joe’s office and say, “I’ve got something I need to talk to you about. This is difficult for me and will probably be difficult for you to hear, but I value our relationship too much to let it slide.” By ‘speaking to our fears’ first we set the tone for the conversation. We approach it in a mature manner with honest intent to make the situation better.

Who do you need to be having the essential conversation with? With that feeling in the pit of your stomach, lump in your throat and sweaty brow, go have it! Like any new skill it takes time and practice. With practice though, you’ll find your anxiety will start to fade. These types of conversations rarely end up being as bad as our imaginations make them out to be. As you tackle issue after issue, you’ll find your relationship with others will improve greatly.

The small print side effect? You’ll quickly begin to realize how much better you feel about yourself, how much richer your relationships have become and how the stress from the fear of confrontation no longer controls your life.