Hot Topic with Cool Communications

At a Leadership Conference I am attending, last night’s homework assignment. was to discuss something “hot” without:

Exaggeration

Sarcasm

Animosity

When the assignment was given, I thought, “There are several topics I couldn’t discuss within the confines of those rules!” Here we are, the week before the big, long-awaited, hotly contested Presidential election and there are things I just can’t talk about with someone from the other side!

Well, guess what? My group of five dinner companions decided to talk about - who else - Sarah Palin. Two of us admitted up front that we didn’t think we could abide by the rules while discussing that topic. But one guy, a West Point graduate who had a career in Special Ops, said he was undecided about who to vote for, and that convinced me to accept the challenge. Our group made another rule. We had to say something we admired about Sarah Palin and something we didn’t like. Leader that I am, I volunteered to go first.

I was afraid I would just sputter with frustration but in fact I spoke with passion and convincingly - and I stayed within the rules. Everyone else did the same and with apparent ease. What surprised me was how much I agreed with everyone. We all were fair. We all have positive and negative things to say. And I probably wasn’t alone when I thought of how much better the whole country would be if the media and the candidates themselves would speak with civility. What if questions are answered with respect? What if points made are acknowledged and misunderstandings are corrected?

During this long campaign, I’ve been painfully aware of how people line up behind their candidate and listen to only those who have the same point of view. During the last election this tendency caused a giant rift in my own family. After my side lost, I wrote about how I wish there was more communication between the different sides because surely there were things we could agree on.

What ensued was a fight. I wish I could say it was a snowball fight but it felt to me like a rock fight. People quoted their favorite statistic and thought the other guy must be crazy to believe what they believed. I was as guilty as anyone in this overheated discussion. Instead of creating a bridge between people with differing opinions, I created and participated in a clash that to this day has been a wedge between me and my brother and sister-in-law and their children. How different things would have been if we had begun by setting the rules of communication I described above!

I feel I tried to mend the fences - or at least build a gate through them, but there’s no communication these days and that makes me very sad. I will try again now that I have a different view. In the meantime, I hope that Special Ops, West Point grad guy was swayed appropriately by my point of view.

© 2008, Jacqueline Hale

Life Coach
510-548-2585
jacquie@vibrancecoach.com

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