Ain't All Sunshine and Rainbows…

Ain't All Sunshine and Rainbows…


This week, my article about building working relationships with people you don't like received 1000% more engagement than one about fostering healthy team dynamics with compassion. It got me thinking: why?

Conflict. Drama. Chaos. As humans, we're wired to be more alert to problems for survival reasons. Conflict forces us to engage, even if we don't realise it. It forces us to think, take sides, find solutions, and to be outraged, and there's a guilty pleasure in it.

I know people will swear blind that this isn't them, but the numbers speak for themselves. As a society, we're progressively becoming more polarized and entrenched in our own media silos, and our likes and attention represent a microcosm of this. For years, I've written about optimism, the power of learning & purpose, but it's the articles on navigating toxic work cultures that are the most read. For many, it can be hard to resist the magnetic pull of the messy, perhaps because they have direct experience...


Pause. Take a moment.

I wondered if the same bias holds true in the workplace. There's gossip about the difficult coworker, debate over problem clients, and a focus on what's not working rather than celebrating the successes. It seems so.

But knowing this tendency, how can we stop ourselves from constantly being pulled into unhealthy conflict? The answer isn't to suppress it but to develop a counterbalance—a compulsion for kindness. Just as we have a curiosity around conflict, we need to train ourselves to be equally interested in building others up and creating positive work cultures.

This doesn't mean ignoring problems or sweeping issues under the rug. It doesn't mean you'll love all your colleagues. It doesn't even mean being agreeable—there are more important values than agreeableness. It does mean recognizing that when the instinct is towards drama, consciously choosing to focus on solutions, empathy, and collaboration is key. When we make kindness a habit, it becomes second nature, and over time, that becomes a compelling and beautiful element of our ways of working.

Enlightened Compassion

The thing with kindness is... we'll need to choose it, and choose it actively, a sort of ruthless compassion and kindness that is neither naive nor instrumental. This looks like a great culture that is clear on how we support each other and what our boundaries are.

If we're wired to hyper-focus on the difficult side of human existence, we can cultivate a culture of kindness, where working through conflict becomes an opportunity for growth. This way, we not only improve the team dynamic but also change the narrative from dysfunction to connection. And isn't that a much more satisfying guilty pleasure?






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