Complexity at Work

‘How come you can’t just give us the right words to say?’ Cheryl asked in a kind of whiny voice, showing her frustration with herself and the training process. “I mean life should be simple. We should be able to say the same thing to each person who comes in here and nuts off.”

We were just getting into workshop material. Cheryl realised that she wasn’t going to get simple answers. The others in the group were grappling with this problem themselves.

It was not so much about WHAT to say. Rather they needed to learn HOW TO RESPOND in difficult moments. The learning was about HOW TO WORK OUT what to say. They were starting to do this in the group. It was a challenge.

In the TUF: Thriving Under Fire we don’t give you a phrase book of what to say. People are much more complex than that. People have contradictory feelings inside them all the time. You have contradictory feelings inside you all the time.

Remember the Diamond of Opposites on the first morning of the TUF programme? You set out on a grid the measure of how you feel for something and against something at the same time. There were a number of questions.

  • The pull to do something familiar and the pull to do something new.
  • The pull to listen to a customer who is upset and the pull to not listen to a customer who is upset.
  • The pull to accept a customer as they are and the pull to not accept a customer as they are.
  • The pull to show anger in a frustrating situation and the pull to not show anger in a frustrating situation.
  • The pull to complete this lesson reminder right now and the pull to not complete the lesson reminder.

In dealing with emotional situations the positive and negative pulls are operating all the time. Sometimes the resulting conflict of feelings can cause confusion in the other person and in you. It is just not simple to do something or not to do something, no matter how much we want it to be simple.

When you respond to someone who is upset, emotional, angry or whatever be aware that they will have different feelings at the same time. They may be expressing one feeling strongly, but there are others. They themselves are not just an angry person. Rather they are a person who right now is expressing anger and that anger could well change, especially if they get to be heard and seen by you.

‘You don’t have to have the two numbers adding up to ten?’ Cheryl queried as she pondered the scores she had written all over the diamonds on her book.

‘No’, replied the facilitator, ‘that is the nature of complexity – you can have equally strong conflicting pulls to do something at the same time. Of course other people have these contradictory feelings too. So using stock phrases to say to people just doesn’t work.

‘Well what do you say to people? I mean it makes communication seem incredibly difficult if you have strong pulls in opposite directions and they do too!! How the devil can any of us be expected to communicate successfully, ever?’

Now she was getting some idea about the complexity of human interaction. She was right though – we can’t just glibly use ready made phrases if we want to respond effectively to people who are angry or upset.

The first thing we need to do is be aware of our own ‘pulls’. For instance, the pull to fight someone or the pull to make peace with them. We first acknowledge those pulls to ourselves. Then we make a decision not to fight. Not fighting is usually a much better option for people working with customers.

There was a catering business in Auckland  a while back. One of the clients wrote an email to the owner. She pointed out a few problems with the breakfast the caterers delivered to the client’s function. The owner wrote back a stinker of an email. She said there was nothing wrong with the food and the client shouldn’t complain. Several over-the-top vitriolic emails followed from the caterer. The whole country laughed when these were made public. Here was a caterer with egg on her face.

She had a strong pull to fight, which she gave in to. Most successful business people, while they may have a strong urge to fight, also have enough sense not to fight. Just because you feel something doesn’t mean you have to act it.

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In future reminder emails we will look at ways to generate the right thing to say.

Question: Using stock phrases to deal with upset customers doesn’t work because people are
c………..x

You can visit any of these topics previously covered by clicking on the link below:1. APE
2. Drama Triangle