Because, as leaders, we enter many relationships, we often find ourselves bothered by and reacting to other people’s actions. Whenever and with whomever we repeatedly feel angry, rejected, unsafe, or criticized etc., we have joined them in an unpleasant dance.
Intellectually we can see that it’s not all them; we own at least half of the problem. But we join the dance before our intellect knows what’s happening. Subconsciously, we run a program that says, in effect, “When they do X, I judge them in this way–it feels bad to me as I do, by the way–and respond like this. To do otherwise would be wrong or hurtful to them or me.”
And it’s not true. We have better choices.
We can catch ourselves getting tripped by their behavior. We can flip our judgments to thoughts that feel good. We can commit to win-win.
Doing so, we put our best foot forward to lead a new dance.
In your corner,
Mike