Don’t worry if the fur flies

We tend to avoid ‘real’ conversations – as in difficult ones – because of the emotions they might unleash. But if we’re navigating tricky situations we should be more afraid of ‘unreal’ conversations, because all they do is kick dirt over a smouldering fuse.

In workshops people often want to know how to deal with an issue without it getting ‘difficult’.

You can’t. If we avoid the difficult part we just go round in circles, because the place we’re trying to avoid is the very place we need to get to before we can go anywhere else.

I did a workshop for a schools framework that was going wrong. Meetings with the teaching staff were fraught and exhausting because the contractor was protecting its contractual position. Finally, in one meeting, the project leader blurted out that there was no way the project would be complete by the deadline.

Silence fell. This was definitely not the party line.

The headteacher took a breath and said: “Thank you. That’s the first time anybody’s admitted that in two years.”

Immediately, the tenor of the meeting changed and people started talking honestly about the problems and what to do about them.

As someone said to me once, “Tell the truth and watch the fur fly.”