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Relationship Series
Declare a Breakdown
And Breakthrough!
This is the second article in my relationships series. I wrote about turning complaints into action in the first one: https://medium.com/@minoakhtar/relationships-series-ab304dc768f8.
In this one, I will share how we can use conflicts or breakdowns to achieve breakthroughs!
I remember once being called in to help a large drug development team, whose subteams stopped talking with each other and yes, doors were being slammed in each others’ faces! The first step we took was to state that something is really wrong, and “declare the breakdown”, i.e. name the elephant in the room. Our tendency is to go on pretending everything is okay, and it takes a lot of guts to point to the “dark underbelly” operating throughout the team or the relationship.
Step 1- Declare the Breakdown and stop the action
In the case of the team above, the manager said that there is a big problem and we are going to have a 2-day facilitated breakdown to breakthrough meeting. This meant that regular meetings etc were canceled, as they were suboptimal anyway. Everyone had to step back and look at the whole picture.
Step 2- Have the difficult conversation
