I’m back! Apologies for the absence from your screens dear readers, it turns out that moving countries, planning a stag party, beginning to plan your own wedding, starting back at your old job, interviewing for a mortgage and applying for a nice shiny new job leaves one with little time to write irreverent meanderings on all things martial.
Happily, though, that is all behind me now and I am back in the game again. Less happily, I didn’t get the job. Dumb job. Didn’t want it anyway. The gruelling, three-stage process with assessment centre to-boot wasn’t entirely without merit though, as it has inspired – or at least given me a decent in-road to – a very overdue blog post. As you are about to discover.
One of the questions I was asked, given that it was a management job I was applying for, asked me how I have dealt with conflict in the workplace in the past. Unfortunately given how much else was bubbling about in my cortex at the time I decided, inexplicably, that this was an invitation to wax lyrical about the cultural differences between Chinese and Western culture, and the potential conflict that can arise as a result. And for all my knowledge of non-verbal communication, my understanding of cues and tells, half smiles and awkward coughs, I spectacularly failed to notice the puzzled expressions lined up in front warning me I’d ventured further off-topic than Richard Dawkins at a Bible convention.
“China can be a difficult place to live” I enthusiastically began. “The culture is so far removed, the way people interact is so different, and the concepts surrounding person boundaries & space are so alien, that it can be easy to get offended or become angry when you first arrive.”
The furrows on the brows of my unwitting audience deepen. I, blissfully unaware, stride onwards into the dark, twisting forest of figurative folly:
“But the longer you spend their, the more you come to understand the logic and rationale behind the culture. It’s not our logic or rationale, but it’s logic and rationale nonetheless. What’s intrusive to us is respectful to them; what’s rude to them is polite to us. What you come to realize is that everybody sees the world through their own, unique prism. There is no right or wrong, polite or rude; just unique interpretations of these rules. Most people in a given culture have similar interpretations, but everyone’s differs slightly.”
At this point I’d begun to cotton on to what was happening: it’s hard to ignore it when your regional manager has shaking their head in despair whilst two others are looking at you like you’ve just painted your genitals blue and decided to answer their questions through the medium of interpretive dance.
But it was too late to save myself now, and well I knew it. I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er. So Shakespeare writes in Macbeth; and so it was for me. “Screw it” I thought; “let’s see where this ends up”.
“This has taught me a lot about conflict management. Whenever you encounter conflict, it’s generally because there’s a clash between what two people deem to be reasonable, or correct. If neither party is able to accept the others’ perspective, the scale of the conflict can only increase as each party digs in and defends their own view more and more vigorously, until all reasonable avenues of argument have been ruled out or ignored. If we are able to pause, if just for a moment, and see understand that our opponent is actually operating from exactly the same perspective as we are, yet seen through their own prism of the world, it should become easier to resolve things.”
Yeah, I know. I may as well have stood on the chair and started singing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’: “You, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us, And the world will be as one.”
I looked up, expectantly, John Lennon’s mancunian melodies trailing through my mind. If this were a film, there would be a painful silence that went on for an eternity, followed by an unexpectedly positive response. Maybe even a standing ovation. The underdog went for broke, and managed to hit a home run. Sadly, in real life, one cannot have his cake and eat it to and all that was on the menu here was blank stares, and a vacuous emptiness where the applause should have been.
So, I didn’t get the job. Hey ho. I did find myself thinking about what I’d said on the long drive home though.
People see the world through prisms. In self defense, we often talk about behaviour, about responses, about communication. But we rarely ask the victim to put themselves in the shoes of their assailant. Why not? For that assailant, at that time, there is a perfectly reasonable justification for their attack. We might not agree with it, but we don’t have to. It’s on their terms. We’re in their world. And if we try to respond using the rules of our own world, which if you’re anything like me don’t usually involve violent solutions, then you’re going to find yourself running out of runway fairly quickly.
If you’re facing the same way as your assailant, then you’re not going to crash in to each other. If you’re walking home alone on a dark night, think like a mugger: ‘where would I hide? Who would I target?’. If someone’s getting angry with you, put yourself in their shoes: ‘What does he think I’ve done? What have I done, and how has he interpreted it? What can I change? What else is going on with him to make him ok with attacking me?’ and if you’re being attacked, think: ‘what are his rules?’ because if his rules allow for picking up a lump of timber and swinging it at your head, you’d better get out of your game and in to his if you’re going to walk out of there intact.
Chew on this for a while. But for the love of God, don’t bring it up in your next interview.
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Well, at least you know why you didn’t get the job. There’s few things worse than wondering “why?” and not knowing what to do differently next time.
Onwards and upwards! Already applying for two more – life’s not about how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get back up again. And thank you H M, I popped the question on the Great Wall of China and will be tying the knot on the 1st June – exciting times! Prepare for many logs on the self defense required for a peaceful marriage…
My good Nathaniel,
Your job interview misfortune notwithstanding, I see congratulations are nonetheless in order on at least two fronts, first, your not being previously engaged in crossing the street and evading on the fortunate occasion when your beloved first chanced to appear, and second, your wisely acquiring the defensive martial skills needed to abide in long and happy marriage with one spirited enough to be worth such investment.
And, as a Southerner, my tip of our common Elizabethan linguistic hat to the always delightful idiom we share, “to cotton (on) to”; the roots of the common language dividing us go deep indeed.
Better luck on the job front, and congratulations again to the mutually fortunate Master and Madame Cooke to be.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Is the use of “cotton to” really Elizabethan? I don’t recall it in Shakespeare.
My good Sisters Wired,
The verb “to cotten” with an “e”, likely derived from the Welsh “cytuno”, dates to the 16th Century or older textile, chiefly wool, trade where it referred to fibers “cottening” well together, e.g., in the production of flannels. It evolved from there into its present semblance to the term for the fiber “cotton” as well as its multiplex usage of understanding and/or liking something, not unlike the idiom “to glom onto something”.
By Elizabethan I was referring to the English language of the 16th Century which was exported directly into early colonial America and which formed the roots of Appalachian and Southern English, much of which, because it was transmitted person-to-person rather than via published readers, survives remarkably intact etymologically to the present day. I obviously cannot vouch for how much of the English lexicon of his day Shakespeare actually published, nor how much of that in turn you are capable of recalling.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
I am a little bit wiser this Friday morning