Pushing Boundaries: Confrontation

I'm hitting the edge of my boundaries again - and I'm not liking it much.

This week's boundaries have been around confrontation of others and managing relationships, two things which are the least enjoyable to me.

Confronting others on issues where there is disagreement is not something I've ever really been good at. It's a function of the fact that I like to be liked; it's also a function of the fact that I don't like to be yelled at, which really doesn't happen that often but which I perceive much disagreement to end in. The corollary to that, managing my relationships, is being able to draw the boundaries between friendship and relationship, between making the work environment a pleasant place to be and being sure that the work that needs to get done gets done.

I'm being driven by this as much as by anything else - pushed, if you will, into going over that wall and into the great big world beyond by two - Maeve of Connaught and Boudicca of the Iceni, who seem intent - kindly and helpfully so, but intent none the less - of pushing my boundaries out, of making me a better manager (dare we suggest leader), of making me "tough".

It has to be one of the most psychically painful things I have done in a long time.

What I'm finding is the actual confrontation itself is not the issue - it's what I do in my mind before and after that's the issue. Before, I'm constantly agonizing over what needs to be done, how do I phrase it, what will be the reaction of the person. I go through ever conceivable scenario in my mind in excruciating detail. After the fact I replay it in my mind: did I do okay? What are they thinking? Will I get fired? Will they quit? Will they ever talk to me again?

It occurs to me as I write this that maybe - possibly - I'm overdramatizing the whole thing in my mind a bit. Maybe I am - but maybe I also have this unreasonable dislike of conflict. At the same time as I write, I realize that I really do follow that process each and every time I go through the exercise.

Henry Ward Beecher said "I don't do more, but less, than other people. They do all their work three times over: once in anticipation, once in actuality, once in rumination. I do mine in actuality alone, doing once instead of three time."

Maybe pushing my boundaries is not only in how I deal with people, but how actually do how I deal with people. Decide and do, not decide and think about/do/think about what I have done.