Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Harmony

"You look for areas of agreement. In your view there is little to be gained from conflict and friction, so you seek to hold them to a minimum. When you know that the people around you hold differing views, you try to find the common ground. You try to steer them away from confrontation and toward harmony. In fact, harmony is one of your guiding values. You can’t quite believe how much time is wasted by people trying to impose their views on others. Wouldn’t we all be more productive if we kept our opinions in check and instead looked for consensus and support? You believe we would, and you live by that belief. When others are sounding off about their goals, their claims, and their fervently held opinions, you hold your peace. When others strike out in a direction, you will willingly, in the service of harmony, modify your own objectives to merge with theirs (as long as their basic values do not clash with yours). When others start to argue about their pet theory or concept, you steer clear of the debate, preferring to talk about practical, down-to-earth matters on which you can all agree. In your view we are all in the same boat, and we need this boat to get where we are going. It is a good boat. There is no need to rock it just to show that you can."


This is so me... It's funny though how I would usually describe this part of me as a "bad thing" - Generally I would say "I like to avoid conflict" or "I need to get better at difficult conversations" I'm not sure I agree with the last couple of sentences though, I'm not sure why, maybe the boat analogy just doesn't do it for me... And I'm not sure if it's just productivity that drives me to dislike conflict, I think there's more to it than that.

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  1. Anonymous6:13 am

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