Our relationship was like an old house with a failing stone foundation, crooked rock upon crooked rock made something that was kind of flat, but ultimately, not very pleasant to look at and something rather problematic to be settling into.
No students, no facilitation, just good ol' chin yanking. But it was also a lot of energy in a place where there was a lack before.
Adequate relationships can be on accident and haphazardly formed, coming from a certain amount of je-nes-se-qua. Great relationships, however, require energy, effort, awareness, and intentionality in quantities that I had not been expending.
Ultimately, the saving of that energy (and time) was really to my own detriment and that of my organization, because we then had to spend a whole day getting things sussed out. By not rocking the boat and figuring out where our messages were getting twisted, we were in fact making more work for later.
So, now we're back down to the foundation. I think we've got a pretty good slab of concrete, and I hope that my own actions: working harder to listen, being more attuned to what I am doing and how that looks to other people, and consciously saying please and thanks, will be nice, stable, flat bricks setting onto that foundation as we will be co-facilitating some of our newly-arrived summer staff during the next 5 weeks.
We'll see in a couple weeks how things are progressing! And I'll be sure to let you all know, too.
How have you handled rocky foundations in work relationships in the past? What role did intentionality play in resolving conflicted relationships?
