I managed to dip in to this amazing well-being event today. I caught part of a workshop about Wing Chun martial art, which has links to qigong and Kung fu.
The presenter said that it was essential for there to be contact so that parties could be guided by what they felt and respond appropriately.
Now of course, this was related to physical combat, but it struck me as equally relevant to ‘verbal and emotional combat’.
Yesterday I talked about incivility and in particular, low level civility. Well, you could call it a form of verbal and emotional combat, couldn’t you?
If you consider feedback as being the contact relevant to verbal and emotional combat, you could modify that key phrase to say…
In work, it is essential for there to be feedback so that parties can be guided by what they feel and respond appropriately.
Only when #incivility is followed by contact, in the form of #feedback, can parties be guided in how to respond.
If we don’t maintain contact following that moment of combat, neither party can respond, meaning that the next moment of contact may be yet another instance of combat
If we connect, feedback and speak up we have the chance of reducing verbal and emotional combat. When we withdraw, we eliminate that opportunity for contact, meaning there is no learning and there is no change …..
What do you think?