Meet "Snarky"

A snarky remark, a specialty of mine, landed me in the doghouse with a coworker recently. I will give you this, it was snarky but also funny. This temptation, to gamble with humor, gets me in trouble occasionally. I knew she was mad at me and asked her if she was. She laid it all out for me, intensely, loudly, and with a good deal of emotion.

I went straight to empathy. I wanted her to know that I understood where she was coming from. My remark had triggered some deep feelings in her. I then went to affirmation, listening attentively and whole heartedly.  I took the time to write an apology just in case her heightened emotions got in the way of her hearing my verbal apology. And then, I gave her some space. weekend's worth of space to figure out if the incident was worth our close working relationship. I made it clear that I felt like our relationship was stronger than the incident and offered to talk with her about a resolution whenever she was ready.

I saw my coworker again four days later. She said she wanted to talk to me. She discussed the trigger and her feelings about how she reacted to my snarky remark. She accepted my sincere apology offered that she had over-reacted due to a trigger. We ended up hugging and laughing and knowing more about one another. Friendship, like all other relationships, are complicated at times but so worth the work we put into them.

This weeks resources are a goldmine for helping us all do better in conflict. Good stuff.