Negotiating with Your Intentions

Our thoughts are a powerful force. Quantum physics has shown that our thoughts and intentions help create and our world. The specifics of want we want (or don’t want) in a conflict is critical.

At a training I led recently a participant (I’ll call her Susan) spoke about a co-worker who was habitually late. When I asked her what her intention was in addressing the conflict with the co-worker she said, “To get her to be on time.” While this is a perfectly reasonable intention to have, the result of this intention is likely to be that the co-worker will perceive that Susan is trying to change her and will become defensive.

If our intentions are to help facilitate resolution to a conflict they must be acceptable to both parties. In this example, in addition to wanting her co-worker to be on time Susan might also want to lower stress in the workplace, or to have good working relationships with her co-workers. Both of these are intentions that the co-worker might share. If Susan starts her conversation with the co-worker by saying, “You know, there is something I want to talk to you about and I want to talk about it because I am committed to having positive long-term friendships with my co-workers and something is getting in the way of this goal for me,” the co-worker is much more likely to be willing to engage in the difficult conversation.

So, two rules of thumb in having a difficult conversation are:

1) Negotiate with your intentions until you find one that you think the other party would also share
2) Once you have found a mutually acceptable intention, make it clear to the other party.
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