Monday, June 28, 2010
Week One Reflection
“While no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a career, a company, a relationship or a life - any single conversation can.”
This concept expressed to us on the first day of our Foundations course has continued to resonate with me throughout our class. I take the ideas of using a conversation to enrich a relationship and that the conversation is the relationship as the core of this overall concept. If every conversation has the potential to change your life you should use that potential to better a relationship with someone. There is no relationship without communication - you cannot expect people to read your mind - inviting a person into a conversation invites them to develop a relationship with you. The value of a conversation is immense and should never be overlooked.
I often default to the “less is more” idea and while you should allow silence to do the heavy lifting when it is appropriate, you also should not miss the opportunity to engage in a conversation. From personal experience I know the power that one conversation can have and I hope to take advantage of that with future people that I may mentor or work with. I hope in the future to use conversations to enrich relationships. The idea that any one conversation can change your life shows that you need to take advantage of opportunities to improve your relationships. I intend to pay more attention to subtle invitations to a conversation I may receive from other people. However, I also intend to engage or invite conversations myself.
In engaging others in conversation I will not back away from conflict. I hope to be able to implement the confrontations model - of course only when appropriate and hopefully not often. With the help of the model I have a better sense of how to construct and engage in such a conversation. While I have been able to see multiple sides of an argument I have struggled with how to make a difficult conversation constructive and not argumentative. The confrontation model will help me get around that problem. With the help I hope to turn a difficult situation into an opportunity to enrich my relationship with the other person involved in the conversation as well as promote progress through an issue rather than dissent.