Profound Understandings

The importance of listening to achieve a profound understanding

Years ago, I was involved in an ugly conflict with a coworker at Microsoft, both of us leaders in a large team. It became quite dysfunctional, so much so that mutual trust was destroyed and motives questioned.

Rather than just firing us due to our immaturity, our mutual manager said, “One week from now, we will meet and the two of you will present each other’s position to me to the satisfaction of the other. If you fail at this, both of you will be fired.”

It required a mediator, but we successfully reached a clear understanding of each other’s viewpoint - which we embarrassingly discovered were not even in conflict - and presented them to our manager in that do-or-be-fired meeting.

More importantly, we regained trust and respect for one another, which empowered us to forge a powerful partnership. We remain friends to this day.

Our manager said, “I hope you both have learned how important it is to reach a profound understanding of the viewpoints of others.”

Indeed.

I also learned a bit about thoughtful leadership from him - specifically about not giving up on people who are gifted in some areas but still have some growing up to do in others.

Timeless lessons that never grow old.

(Depicted: The significant overlap between managing an engineering team and refereeing boxing.)