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5 Ways to Breathe Life into Workplace Conflicts: Do Not Embarrass Your Mother

5 Ways to Breathe Life into Workplace Conflicts: Do Not Embarrass Your Mother

Last updated on: May 1, 2015 at 10:09 am by Sarah Conrad Sours

5 Ways to Breathe Life into Workplace Conflicts: Do Not Embarrass Your Mother 2015-05-01T10:09:54-06:00 Sarah Conrad Sours

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This post is the last in a series suggesting a process by which some workplace conflicts can be defused, resolved, or eliminated. I’ve already suggested taking a deep breath and reminding oneself that People are People or that Money Doesn’t Exist or that going beyond what the law requires is a good thing or that Garbagemen are Cooler than You.

Most of my prior suggestions have harnessed the heuristic power of incongruity. That is, I have suggested deliberately inducing counter-intuitive thoughts when you are stuck in a conflict, because those are the sort of thoughts that can stimulate unexpected reflections. They can break the mental and emotional logjam that often accompanies trenchant conflict.

Truly, the best way to make new thinking possible, to give fresh perspective, to reboot your conscience, is to invite the paradoxical. Unconventional thinking helps, especially when you feel trapped in a situation with no clear out.

It helps that the counter-intuitive thoughts are also, in a sense, a kind of spiritual wisdom; to invite such wisdom into one’s mind is perhaps to invite the Holy Spirit into one’s heart.

But wisdom sometimes comes dressed in plainer clothes; sometimes it has been there all along, sitting in the corner in a rocking chair, telling stories you’ve heard a million times, nattering on long past your willingness to sit and listen.

Sometimes the only thing that can resolve trenchant conflict is a return to the mundane wisdom of convention.

In other words, all of philosophy and ethics is summed up in this, that you do not embarrass your mother.

(This is the look your mother will give you for violating copyright laws.)

Now, if your mother is not the right person to invite into your head at the moment of a workplace conflict, you can borrow mine. She’s thoughtful and generous and wise and kind-hearted and open-minded and perfectly willing to tell you when you’re being a jerk.

Whatever you do, do not imagine a dispassionate ideal observer. You might be tempted to argue with him, rationally explaining away your baser actions. He’s no help at all.

You need to imagine someone who loves you, who thinks well of you, who thinks you’re a really good person. And who would be shocked and grieved to see you behave as anything less than the good person she thinks you are. And who might die of shame if a video of whatever you’re in the middle of doing were to be leaked to the evening news.

You need to imagine someone who knows the difference between right and wrong, who cares which one you do, and who believes you are already in the habit of doing the right one.

You may believe that your profession or career or job requires sophisticated ethical discernment that is beyond your mother’s capacity to understand. It may be true that your mother is incapable of being employed at your workplace, that she lacks the education or experience to do your job well, that she is not up to the task of actually doing the right thing in whatever ethical dilemma you find yourself.

But that is irrelevant.

As a matter of fact, you should stop being so dismissive of your mother’s moral sensitivity. You’re probably equally dismissive of women’s business leadership, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Don’t do that. Shame on you.

Shame is, of course, the issue here.

Often, a failure of workplace ethics is a failure of shame–a failure to be ashamed at doing what one knows or senses to be wrong. It is a mother’s job to install that shame button, and by and large moms do a good job of it.

If your mom has somehow mucked up the process (and some moms do), it may be harder for you to call on an imaginary benevolent and invested third-party witness to the exchange.

Perhaps in that case you might call on an actual benevolent and invested third-party witness, namely God.

But for most of us, when we’re having a hard time hearing God’s voice speaking into a workplace dilemma, we would do well to listen for a voice that’s a little closer to home. I wouldn’t be surprised, in fact, if the voice of God speaking to us comes, more often than not, in the tones of the very first voice we ever heard.

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