In our work organizations, we often face challenging people who stop us dead in our tracks from breaking through and truly being transformational in what we are trying to achieve.
Do you have somebody in the workplace who's really critical of you doing an excellent job? Is this person is a blocker? Is this person difficult to work with, or you don't sync with this individual, or you have a different point of view?
If the answer is you do, I'm about to throw you a curve ball.
The problem is not that individual, it's you.
Here's the bottom line. At the end of the day when you're trying to create transformation, you will always find individuals that have different professional points of views or they just are difficult, sticky people.
There will always be obstacles that get in your way. Your abdication of making that relationship work is your responsibility. Your indulgence that you actually maybe even don't like that person and you're just going to rest on not liking that person and not moving that agenda forward, despite the erosion of shareholder value... that is all on you.
I am the worst violator of this in my career, no question. I have been cowardice and afraid of people, that we act negatively and I just don't want to deal with them because I'm conflict avoidant. Lazy, indulgent, cowardice: all of these are just excuses, but the reality is that as leaders in a transformation-pressured world that we live in today, it's all on us to forgive all eccentricities, to surpass them, to build the relationship and to make stuff happen.
As a parent, when our kids are acting out and behaving inappropriately, we don't cross our arms and say, "When you're ready to behave like an adult, I will be your father."
My job is to be a father no matter what and to show up. Sometimes you have to go 99.9% of the way the entire teenage years until they become the kind of young humans that we'd hoped that they would become. It's not about shutting them down or shutting yourself down. It's by patience, by forgiveness. It's by asking yourself the question, "What is my part?"
Take a moment to learn how to handle these situations and create co-elevating teams.
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
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