When wanting to avoid something people have a tendency to focus on what is to be avoided. It’s as if there was a magnetic effect.
While answering questions, participants work to provide their best possible work and a clear answer. They work hard to explain everything thoroughly and in detail. Seeking a perfect answer it has become a sea of details. The reader is overwhelmed and finds it hard to find his way into the story. The details describing the writer’s stream of thought prevent the reader from connecting the dots and gaining a clear picture.
Having feared to lack clarity, to forget the important detail, the writer lost the reader in details. Lacking the big picture, the reader couldn’t see it.
A team wishing to avoid conflict works hard to avoid problems. When problems pop up, teammates help to remove the problem. When a disagreement appears, the team tries to satisfy those involved in the hope to avoid any appearance of disagreement. Being busy to solve potential problems, the team has shifted its focus to problems solving.
As most engage in problem-solving, the actual work has moved out of sight and priority. It’s the moment where beneficiaries of the work start to complain and the team has to find a solution. The solution left is to be in conflict with the customer or to start a conflict with the teammates who “prevented” the work from being done.
Looking for recognition, an individual starts to ask for feedback. As the feedback trickles in, they show up as helpful comments, recognition of specific aspects, dislikes and likes. It becomes necessary to plow through the feedback and to assess what it means.
Having started out with a quest for recognition, the variety of feedback is disturbing and confusing. The reader becomes entangled with the suggestions to grow, the specificities of the feedback. Their contrast with the hope for appreciation creates doubt and uses it to filter the feedback received. Doubt wins over appreciation.
Three situations in the very thing we want to avoid prevent us from achieving our goal to create something good for ourselves. Fighting the very thing we wanted to avoid allowed it to happen.
