Dear Rachel, I have a complex relationship with a work colleague (we do not work closely daily, but have had partnerships in the past). Last year, she pulled out of a collaborative project very suddenly, and this year, approached me again to collaborate. I value her contributions to the community and want to support her in this project, but she approached me without apology or acknowledgment of her dismissal last year, which has me feeling undervalued. How can I approach this conflict with curiosity and understanding and keep at bay any kind of grudge or only give her a “surface level” second chance, while still respecting and acknowledging my experience?
Sincerely,
Do-over
Dear Do-Over,
Approaching a conflict with curiosity and desire to understand someone’s reality, while also wanting your experience to be seen and understood (your words, slightly reconfigured) is the secret sauce of peacemaking. If more of us held this intention, our world could be a different place. Just saying.
Of course you want some acknowledgment for how her discontinuing the project affected you. When people make unilateral decisions that impact us without sharing their reasons or acknowledging the ripples of their decision, it leaves us in a void of information and care. Letting your colleague know you were affected is one way to head off the “grudge” and “surface level second chance,” and rebuild the trust that makes collaborating fun and generative.
Before you approach her, it will be helpful to imagine what possibly could have led her to disband the project without acknowledging it at the inception of round two. This exercises the muscle: Seeing Others’ Humanity. The more we strengthen this, the less we see others as willful or clueless jerks, but rather as fellow humans responding to a set of often invisible (to us) conditions as best they can. Doing this removes ourselves as the central character in other people’s behavior, which is a gift to us. And, I know I’m on the right track when, through considering generous narratives of others, my righteous indignation begins to melt into something closer to sadness for our individual and collective human limitations.
Let’s practice!
Some potential narratives:
She left the original project because of some personal stress and was too overwhelmed to follow through on explaining the circumstance and one year later is a bit embarrassed at how it all went down and is hoping it might have been forgotten.
She left the original project (because: personal stress, lack of capacity, fill in the blank) and didn’t realize her participation mattered to others involved, and thus didn’t realize an acknowledgment would be comforting.
Tell your colleague, “I value your contributions to the community and want to support you in this new project. And there is some tension for me around how things went with our collaborative project last year. It was confusing to have you leave suddenly and without explanation. I want to hear what was going on for you. And it would really help me to know that you care about how this was for me. Could we get coffee, have a blame-free conversation about last year, and discuss how we want this new project to go?”
Good luck!
Rachel Turiel is a nonviolent communication mediator and coach who supports people to hear each other and work things out. Submit a question at rachelbturiel@gmail.com.
