Interesting conversation with a coachee the other day about personality clashes with work colleagues. We had been looking at how hard it is to really "get" the fundamental differences in another's world view, and even harder still to deal with them.
As a throwaway comment my client said "It's so much easier outside of work... I just wouldn't have these type of people as friends". But then we looked at this claim more closely. And actually their friends were not all clones, they included representatives of virtually all personality types, in particular this type that was causing them so much difficulty at work.
So what is the real problem at work? Why can we deal with difference in friends better than difference in work colleagues? Here are a few thoughts we came up with. For a start, we often see friends less frequently than work colleagues, so that the irritations from difference don't build up. Many friendships wouldn't last the intensity of a week's holiday together! When a friend's different world view annoys us we can cool off by not seeing them for a while. Or the friendship relationship means we can usually be more direct in dealing with it. Lastly, our primary objective during our interactions is clearly on enjoying the friendship rather than achieving any particular task, so we can usually allow ourselves to be more flexible and let things go rather than gripping them ever harder.
Does this analysis help? Well, one thing it tells us is we may be better at dealing with difference than we consciously know, and our friendships may provide more useful guidance than we expect. More importantly, it tells us to relax and just accept difference as something we have to (and do) deal with... everywhere. It really wouldn't be a "perfect world" if everyone was the same as you!
