Picture this, you are sitting in a work meeting and a topic comes up. You share your opinions about the topic and a direction that you feel should be taken. To be honest you don’t care a whole lot about the topic or have strong feelings on a coarse of action. You just shared to be part of the discussion. Then one of your colleagues responds to your ideas negatively. He strongly states that a different coarse of action would be far superior. All of a sudden you find yourself arguing for your ideas. The discussion gets heated as each of you become more entrenched in your opposing positions.
Fast forward to the next day when you realize that you really didn’t care two hoots which option the company went with! You just got caught up in defending your idea because it was being argued against. Was it worth it? Not at all!
Recently a friend shared with me a quick trick to deal with situations like this. When you share an idea in a meeting ask yourself… On a scale of 1-10 (With 10 being I care about this so much I’m willing to die defending it and 1 being “What idea?”) how would I rate myself? If you ask yourself the “How much do you care about this?” question and are below a 5 you might not want to waste the energy and time needed to prove your point. If you are at an 8 or above then taking the effort to move others to your way of thinking is probably worth it.
You can even share this with others in the group. When a discussion begins… Ask them, “On a scale of 1-10 how much do you care about the idea you are offering? Imagine how much time and energy will be saved by just asking this simple question!
Have an amazing Monday!
Leanna Fredrich, Stress Management Consultant
Leanna@amazingmondays.com