Tag: values

Important and not

FabrizioLeave a comment

Can you listen to an argument you do not support without interrupting?

Can you accept someone speaking at a public event near you about a topic that is sensitive and towards which you have a strong opinion, without mounting a protest and demanding the event cancelled?

Can you survive your favourite TV show being cancelled, or ending, or going through a disappointing season, without getting in touch with fellow fans and coming up with displays of affections towards the show that almost cross the limit of aggression?

Can you continue on your path when your community is led by a person you vividly dislike and disagree with, without being sucked up into the cult of that person and discuss what they do, say, tweet at every occasion, in disdain and disgust?

Some things are important, and worth figthing for.

The vast majority are not.

At some point along the road, we have lost the capacity to distinguish between the two. Everything upsets us, makes us mad, forces us to take unprecedented measures, promotes us to paladins of moral enlightment and rightfulness. We do not realize that even just by doing that, we flatten a multitude of interesting topics, solid arguments, and valid positions into an ocean of noise, resentment and, eventually, irrelevance. And that, slowly, happens also to us.

“Distraction” is a very appropriate way to describe all this. It’s a form of resistance that prevents us from persistently doing the work that eventually will lead to actual change.

Building bridges

FabrizioLeave a comment

When you engage in a new connection, expect friction.

You are trying to tie-in two (or more) parts that were separated before, and therefore it is granted there’s going to be misunderstanding, resistance, overreaching and suspicion.

Your role is to not misinterpret all of that as a signal a connection is not needed or wanted. Building bridges is the only way to progress, and you have to keep motivation high and fear low to gather people around a vision, a concept, an idea.

Hang in there.

All the same

FabrizioLeave a comment

Diversity is a tough sell because in the short term it only adds complexity.

In a context in which all that matters is what you achieved yesterday and what you are going to be doing tomorrow, adding someone to the team that might have different habits, different thoughts, different ideas, a different language, different ways of doing things is only problematic.

What is everybody else going to say? How are they going to adjust? How can we deliver against the targets if most of our time is spent aligning our views? Wouldn’t it be easier to just hire somebody like us, someone we don’t have to explain everything to?

Of course, if your mind is set on the long term, instead, the benefits of diversity are very easy to understand.

What team do you want when everything you have done so far is not going to work anymore (I promise you, it will happen)? How many points of view are you going to consider when that difficult problem nobody can crack is going to be presenting itself once again? What background should your organisation have the next time an interesting new market is going to open up in front of you?

Diversity is always enriching, you just have to give it time. As with most good things, truly.

You are right

FabrizioLeave a comment

When you are in an argument, understand this: as long as the two sides stand firm in their respective positions, no progress is possible.

If you just keep repeating your view, even with different words and from a different perspective, even if in time that view gets substantiated by additional facts and events, even when you get to the point in which you raise the ante certain it’s going to be the final move, most likely nothing is going to happen. Except, the other part is probably going to be even more convinced you are wrong.

Get into every argument open enough to be able to say “you are right”. Accept that the person in front of you is not idiot, delusional and mean. At the very least, try to ask questions to understand what they care about, what’s their sets of values, how is it so that they see the world so differently from you.

And then, try to build on that. Find common ground, things both of you find important, see their arguments as an opportunity for you to learn something, thank them for raising your awareness on something you were totally blind to.

Should that really not be possible, change the narrative. Run from the argument, reach for a topic that is not so directly in contrast with the other’s point of view, focus on explaining what you want to achieve.

Staying in the argument would just be a waste of time.

A way to hide

FabrizioLeave a comment

For years, I have built a narrative for which everything that happened was done to me.

I had the feeling everyone and everything was against my legitimate pursuit of happiness and success, I was constantly complaining about any tiny little difficulty, I would break relationships because in front of my grandiose gestures the counterpart would not reciprocate.

Now I am lucky enough to see that was a convenient way to hide.

Hide from my responsibilities as human being, employee, partner and friend, and most of all hide from my feelings. If others and external circumstances were responsible for them, why should I bother investigating them further? The most reasonable thing to do would be to simply build a wall around myself and make it as impenetrable as possible.

We are powerless with respect to what is going to happen tomorrow, and yet we can have total control on the way we are going to face, absorb and narrativize it. That’s where we should spend most of our time: building this form of control.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

Epictetus