Conversations are the barometers of organisational health but personal objectivity about the quality of our contributions to them can be like asking a fish to describe water. Mostly they're a constant, unnoticed system in which we conduct interpersonal relationships. And it's never just us involved: we inherited many of our practices uncritically from our families-of-origin as our parents inherited similarly from theirs. Because they may be based on redundant or unhealthy patterns, the topic's … [Read more...]
Hostility: it’s probably not about you
To what extent is boredom and dissatisfaction behind picking fights? If the author and journalist Gaby Hinsliff is correct or if what she suggests is right sometimes, we ought be able to make very useful shifts in our responses to much of others' "difficult" behaviours: annoyance, antagonism, hostility, nastiness, unkindness, spite, meanness, malice, malevolence, plain old bad-temper and other forms of poking sticks at people. I believe she is right and that the insight, coupled with … [Read more...]