by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A simple question can start a meaningful conversation that prevents bad things from happening.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As I write this post, our elected representatives ended a partial shutdown of our Federal government a couple of days ago. Such shutdown set some type of record and brought lots of grief to thousands of people. I know this involves politics and as such raises blood pressures and the volume of speech but keep reading as the solution is applicable to many different situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before such a standoff occurs, gather the folks in a room and ask, “What do you want?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Answer honestly and candidly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Well, we have certain constraints here, what can we eliminate so that you have what you want?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Further honest and candid conversation as both sides say what they want with brevity and clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No on belittles what the other wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note: if what you want is to embarrass the other party, say so. Honesty and candor are essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, you want to embarrass me? Okay, I can take some ribbing and be the butt of your jokes. What else?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can picture our current elected representatives engaging in such. Perhaps I am silly, but I can picture this. I can also picture the needless loss suffered by thousands of innocent bystanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Move to my regular day-to-day job. Same question applies. Same honesty and candor applies. Same conversation applies. We can do better with simple questions like, “What do you want?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dwayne Phillips A simple question can start a meaningful conversation that prevents bad things from happening. As I write this post, our elected representatives ended a partial shutdown of our Federal government a couple of days ago. Such shutdown set some type of record and brought lots of grief to thousands of people. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[286,396,20,9,247,67],"tags":[287,399,142,132,248,187],"class_list":["post-4507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation","category-leadership","category-learning","category-management","category-questions","category-work","tag-conversation","tag-leadership","tag-learning","tag-management","tag-questions","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4508,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4507\/revisions\/4508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}