You Do Not Have to Fire Negative Friends
868 words When you Google ‘negative friends’ it virtually immediately offers up the highest performing results of the 340,000,000 out there. Of the ones I examined, most offered survival advice – how to cope with or avoid the negative person, and if all else fails, how to dump them and find a new friend. In my […]
Syrian Refugees: Who Helps the Helpers?
<1160 words> The harsh truth about helping Canada’s Syrian refugees is with us now. The state of their kids’ teeth, our inability to communicate in Arabic, and all that. I’m sure there are many misunderstandings that have the potential to gnaw at the goodwill cloud that swept the Canadian nation when first our new PM […]
Response to Fear: Fascism or Openness?
<932 words> I read Kathy Jourdain’s new blog this morning on her blog page and ended up writing such a long response that it turned into the blog below. She starts out with: “Be afraid. Be very afraid. But not for the reasons you might think. We are living in precipitous times. We are in danger […]
The Elephant in the Room
<520 words> I was at a meeting a while back, in a room with a low ceiling, comfortably seating about 8 people around a board room table; plastic water bottles and everything. During the conversation someone mentioned that there was an elephant in the room – with reference to something we all knew and thought […]
The adversarial nature of dispute resolution procedures
We can monkey around with rearranging words without changing meaning or intent, or we can be serious and reframe our conflict resolution procedures to truly restore trust, respect and engagement. <783 words and a sound clip of 30.26 minutes> Sometimes I have clients who request coaching with me to revisit experiences they’ve had at work. They feel […]
Four New Things for the New Year
<292 words> Stop. Think. Choose. Do. You’ve come through Christmas ok, haven’t you? Kept your mouth shut when you wanted to speak out? Went home before the same old quarrel kicked into gear? Dreading going back to work to face the bully again? Are you always going to be like that? Avoiding […]
PERSONAL SAFETY IN THE FACE OF GLOBAL TERRORISM
The recent spate of fundamentalist terrorist attacks across the globe had triggered exactly the weapon it was intended to unleash: fear expressed as anger, causing confusion, separating us rather than bringing us together. It is a time when we may be so exhausted by confusion and fear that we readily sacrifice the rights and freedoms that are so hugely important to us. We’re at risk of running backwards. I’m not prepare to do that.
Fairness is simple. Bring culture into it and bedevil everything.
The way of breaking through cultural barriers to fairness is to return to our human origins. Fairness is the default position; culture is the way in which we express and judge it. The more culturally divergent a workplace is the less likely it is we’d have consensus on what constitutes ‘fairness’.
This paper explores Brown’s human fundamentals via Pinker; Frans de Waal’s research on the moral behaviour of animals; and then human culture via Hofstede, with a view of stimulating HR to look at how they ‘do’ fairness differently. What is being done currently doesn’t quite meet the human standard of fairness.
And so, how does one set that standard? The answers are in your approach and your level of cultural competence.
Some ideas are offfered on how fairness might be viewed and enacted differently – if someone has the curiosity and courage to do it.
Love and introspection shifts a world
Sometimes when you’re engaged in a quarrel with someone the things takes on a momentum of its own…..The person who blinked first was hurt and puzzled….it became imperative that a peace be brokered in a family that felt like it was falling apart, before it was too late.
Our own role in creating conflict – how human are you, in my eyes?
How do we see other people? I know so many people who say ‘I don’t like conflict…I avoid conflict….’, and yet I’ve heard them talk about other people in ways that invites particular behaviours – behaviours that reinforce their (usually negative) perception of those other people.
We create our own conflicts typically without consciously intending to, and then we’re surprised when we discover that other people have seen us in ways we don’t think are true. If I see you as a lesser being; if I see you as an object; it is much easier to feel justified in how I characterise and judge you.