I was recently in a confrontation with a co-worker in my 9-5.  Things have been hectic as I have a department with no staff and I’ve been taking on additional responsibilities as well as working the front line.  A few emails came through from one of my other teams and we didn’t receive the help we needed, we got push back.  After the conference I went to last weekend and having a successful interview with a higher up, I felt no need to deal with that type of nonsense especially when we had an agreement about who would be responsible for a certain function.  So when the team responsible for it said no, I called them on it.  Soon my boss got involved and started asking questions about my team and their status and how many positions I had open so I immediately became defensive.  I knew exactly where it was going: this was somehow going to come back to my team even though I’m short staffed in two departments—and that is a challenge because we run lean anyway.  When the other leader involved showed up at work it was evident that she was upset over something.  I assumed it was me and didn’t say anything.  She had her meeting with our boss and she started to leave saying that our meeting was going to be pushed to next week.  I stopped her and asked if she was ok and she burst into tears. 

Needless to say all the crap went out the window and I immediately started working with her to figure out what happened.  It was unrelated to our issue but I knew that she needed support.  I had been prepared to go in strong but I can’t help but stop the crap and try to get to the root of the issue.  There is something to be said for a human who can put aside their ego and still offer compassion and caring—it tends to break down any wall that we have, and I’m not trying to say I’m special or anything but I know that I would want the same courtesy.  Every time I think I’m going in to control the situation or handle something I often find myself in this position.  Just as I’m trying to maintain a boundary, I get to the root of the issue and I am grateful for it. There is a moment when working with difficult people or working in a difficult situation when the façade breaks.  Suddenly you see the person who seemed against you for what they are: a human being. They’re fragile.  They’re scared.  They’ve probably been acting confident the entire time you thought they were making you miserable intentionally.  Seeing the reality break through the shell is a sobering moment. 

We all create these defenses because we don’t feel we can trust that being seen as ourselves is safe.  How sad.  We’ve forgotten how to relate to each other.  We’ve forgotten how to be with each other.  We’ve forgotten how to hold space for each other because we’ve been set against each other as the enemy or that we are competition.  We’re so afraid that if people see us as vulnerable they will take advantage of us somehow.  That has absolutely happened to me and I’ve often felt miserable and regretted it when it has happened.  But I know in my experience, as soon as we see that vulnerability, there is no need to go at arms with anyone.  We are fully capable of talking it out and working with each other.  We don’t need to dominate each other, we need to learn to work with each other.  We are all on the same rock floating through space and everything we do impacts each other so there comes a point where we have to understand how much we need each other, how interdependent we are.  In the grand scheme of things I don’t care about having power over people—I want to make situations better so we stop treating each other like crap.  That all starts with treating each other with compassion, how we want to be treated.  At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if people showed us the same courtesy or respect—they are operating from a hurt place too.  It’s how we help each other get through it.