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The Urge to Fundamentalism
Oct. 9th, 2013 10:45 amLearning how to navigate the minefield of work in corporate America has been a fascinating learning process. I'm learning a lot more about how to deal with a wide variety of different personalities with different goals, while still trying to get things done. It's frustrating, confusing, but ultimately I've learned that I'm really interested in it. I try to bring in a Zen mindset by reminding myself that the person I'm speaking with has their own perspective, and they've arrived where they have through a set of circumstances and decisions that make sense to them. If a behavior is baffling or illogical to me, I try to remind myself that it's only because I don't have the information that they do. Even if someone has a bad reason for doing something, it's still a *reason*. Most people try to do the best they can with what they have. You have to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Still, there are a lot of times where I find myself digging in my heels on something. I'm a bit of an idealist, which is one of the worst things you can be when you're in a position of working with others to get things done. I get it into my head that there's a certain way things should be, based on my limited perspective and experience, and I'll draw a line in the sand. Once that happens, my coworkers are no longer individuals with their own ideas; they're obstructions between me and my goal. They're not people who have the same desire to be understood that I do. They're deficient because they don't hold the same values that I do. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where a coworker stops being a collaborator and starts being an enemy, but that turning point is a subtle but fundamental shift. That perception inhabits everything you do from that point on.
In the day-to-day business of making sure my job gets done, it's easy for me to get so close to my perspective that it basically overcomes my way of thinking. I'm almost positive that this is something that happens to everyone: you believe a few things that should be fundamental, objectively true, and you're baffled that anyone else could think differently. What's best for the department/company/nation/planet is obvious, so much so that anyone who disagrees must simply not be looking out for the best interests of the collective you're thinking about.
It's a short jump from the personal to the political, here. It's easy to think that our fellow citizens across the aisle must not have America's best interests at heart because, well, how could they? For Republicans, it must seem that liberals just want to bankrupt the country giving everyone free rides. Maybe to them, programs like the ACA (and Medicare, and Social Security before that) only contributes to a culture of entitlement that leads to a lazy, soft-working society. And to folks like me, Republicans seem like heartless assholes who are only concerned about themselves and have no sense of compassion or responsibility to the society we're all engaged in.
I'm perfectly willing to admit the biases I have due to the limits of my perspective and personality. It's difficult to remember just how subjective a lot of my "objective truths" are. I think the one of the basic problems in our society, political and otherwise, is the lack of ability to step outside yourself and remember that the person at cross purposes with you is actually just like you; you have the same goals, but vastly different perspectives on what those goals look like and how to get there. If we could understand what those goals look like to someone else, maybe we could stand a better chance at communicating with them and coming to some sort of compromise that gets us both closer to where we want to be.
I'll be trying to recenter my perspective at work to remember that my coworkers are collaborators, not enemies. Maybe there's a way to make my perspective known and understood, and reach out to make sure I understand theirs, too. Once we know what we're looking at, we can start talking about how to get where we both want to be.
Still, there are a lot of times where I find myself digging in my heels on something. I'm a bit of an idealist, which is one of the worst things you can be when you're in a position of working with others to get things done. I get it into my head that there's a certain way things should be, based on my limited perspective and experience, and I'll draw a line in the sand. Once that happens, my coworkers are no longer individuals with their own ideas; they're obstructions between me and my goal. They're not people who have the same desire to be understood that I do. They're deficient because they don't hold the same values that I do. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where a coworker stops being a collaborator and starts being an enemy, but that turning point is a subtle but fundamental shift. That perception inhabits everything you do from that point on.
In the day-to-day business of making sure my job gets done, it's easy for me to get so close to my perspective that it basically overcomes my way of thinking. I'm almost positive that this is something that happens to everyone: you believe a few things that should be fundamental, objectively true, and you're baffled that anyone else could think differently. What's best for the department/company/nation/planet is obvious, so much so that anyone who disagrees must simply not be looking out for the best interests of the collective you're thinking about.
It's a short jump from the personal to the political, here. It's easy to think that our fellow citizens across the aisle must not have America's best interests at heart because, well, how could they? For Republicans, it must seem that liberals just want to bankrupt the country giving everyone free rides. Maybe to them, programs like the ACA (and Medicare, and Social Security before that) only contributes to a culture of entitlement that leads to a lazy, soft-working society. And to folks like me, Republicans seem like heartless assholes who are only concerned about themselves and have no sense of compassion or responsibility to the society we're all engaged in.
I'm perfectly willing to admit the biases I have due to the limits of my perspective and personality. It's difficult to remember just how subjective a lot of my "objective truths" are. I think the one of the basic problems in our society, political and otherwise, is the lack of ability to step outside yourself and remember that the person at cross purposes with you is actually just like you; you have the same goals, but vastly different perspectives on what those goals look like and how to get there. If we could understand what those goals look like to someone else, maybe we could stand a better chance at communicating with them and coming to some sort of compromise that gets us both closer to where we want to be.
I'll be trying to recenter my perspective at work to remember that my coworkers are collaborators, not enemies. Maybe there's a way to make my perspective known and understood, and reach out to make sure I understand theirs, too. Once we know what we're looking at, we can start talking about how to get where we both want to be.
