Pushing ideas especially big ideas, is a high-status play.
It sounds more important and macho than worrying about fluffy icky things like relationships. I am sitting writing this in an IdeaSpace which sounds much more business like than a RelationshipSpace. That’s where you’d go for marriage guidance, right?
Of course, if you want to one-up the guys talking about ideas, the easy play is to bang on about the importance of execution. So if you want to trump a think tank, you offer a do tank. Well done.
But I get bored at a lot of meetings when they descend into what I call propositioning. There are often heated arguments about ideas, where people interrupt each other a lot usually to put each other right on a certain point, or to forcefully put forward a personal experience. On the surface, it seems all very grown up but I can’t help feeling there’s a lot of semi-conscious hurt feelings and foot stomping going on.
So although it seems like we’re having an exciting clash of ideas, I suspect we’re often screwing up relating and undermining collaboration.
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