Aligning AGAINST versus FOR Something

If you are on a team, you may, after a while, develop a strong urge to tweak your role into something else, to slice the work you are doing in a different way, to take a different approach with your projects and tasks. Well, as you can imagine, this will most likely impact people you work with. What can you do?

The urge usually comes in a negative way, in the form of anger or frustration caused by the current situation. Most of us are social creatures, so odds are that you will start looking for supporters. But here is the big question:

Are you looking for supporters AGAINST something or FOR something?

You may not see the difference between these two, but let me show you why you need to be aware of your tactics early on.

1. Looking for supporters AGAINST something:

There are people who always go AGAINST something – the naggers who don’t want any change and love seeing themselves as victims of circumstances. If you look for people to support you AGAINST something, you’ll attract them in a heartbeat. And once you do, you may get stuck with them in a ditch of never-ending complaints.

Just because both of you DON’T want something doesn’t mean that both of you DO want the same thing.

At some point the nagging gets old and you may say something like “Well, I’m so glad that both of us want to change this situation. I was thinking we should do XYZ…” And that’s when you may realize that the people who felt so aligned with your way of thinking are now opposing to your solution with the same passion they had just a minute ago against your common enemy. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t like that at all.”

You may also attract the rebels, the anarchists, who want change for the sake of the change. You may wake up one day finding yourself in a place you didn’t want to be at all, supporting something you never wanted to support.

2. Looking for supporters FOR something:

In order to look for people who will support your new ideas, you need to explore the possibilities and test the assumptions. You must have conversations with people where both of you are willing to listen to each other and evolve your opinions as you gather more input. The focus needs to be on:

“How can we make this better?” instead of “Why is this so bad?”

Once you feel you have a solid proof that people around you may want the same thing as you do, you have a great opportunity to make it happen. Now you’ve gathered a crowd of supporters FOR something that all of you believe in. You are not alone and together you can make the change.

Nothing happens in isolation. Gathering supporters creates alignments based on true passion and beliefs. It invites diversity of perspectives, which makes your case much stronger than if you were going for it by yourself.

Check out a related article, Running Towards versus Running Away.