Chapter 9. Handling Conflict
“The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.”
Back in 2007, I was packing my suitcase to head to a conference over in Europe. Tired of trying to cram everything into a tiny bag, I decided to check in on my email, where I had received a somewhat concerned note from a member of a user group.
The group (who shall remain unnamed) had been experiencing some rather ugly conflict between two members fighting for leadership. Both individuals felt they were the better choice for leadership but were rather ironically demonstrating their clear lack of leadership experience by having a public spat in the interests of securing power. The poor soul who sent me the concerned email informed me that the situation was making the user group a really not very fun place to be. I responded, but in the interest of not missing my plane, I needed to go back to resolve my own conflict between my underpants and travel bag.
A little while later, another email arrived about the same group, sharing similar concerns and calling out one of the leaders for being unprofessional, bullish, and impolite to the members of the group. While I was reading the email, another arrived. This one (replete with flurry of uppercase, highlighted, and bolded statements) defended the actions of the leader I was originally reading about. In contrast, this writer accused the other leader of corruption and ...
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