Bridging Perspectives: Deciphering Our Individual Perspectives

Throughout our lives, we’ve recognized that, in certain aspects, we share similarities with others while also possessing unique differences. Some of these differences are visual and obvious, such as different styles in how we dress to differences in our skin color.  Other differences are more covert and harder to pinpoint, such as differences in our personalities, our values, and even our genders.

Differences can get in the way of creating strong and lasting relationships because we don’t know how to identify them or how to manage them.  Differences can and should  be a beautiful part of our lives.  If it wasn’t for differences in peoples opinions, ideas, experiences, and approaches to problems, the world would be a bland and boring place.

Self-Awareness

The ideas presented in this chapter serve as valuable tools for encouraging personal reflection, bringing us a step closer to understanding our identity and what truly matters to us. In exploring these concepts, we identified how we:

• Process information
• Make decisions
• Plan projects and processes
• Prioritize our values
• Perceive the world and people around us
• Attribute characteristics and ideas to people and situations

All these little pieces of ourselves give us insight into what could potentially cause conflict in our lives.  Starting from a place of self knowledge, allows you to intentionally choose how to improve your personal capacity to manage conflict productively. As we will see in future chapters, understanding yourself is the foundation to being assertive and drawing boundaries in your life.

 Awareness

Just as much as these tools can be used for self reflection and understanding yourself, they can also be used for understanding other people and how they:

• Gain energy
• Process information
• Make decisions
• Plan projects and processes
• Prioritize values
• Perceive the world and people
• Attribute characteristics and ideas to people and situations

These tools and frameworks are a first step on the path to understanding. As illustrated previously, we can all fall under the false consensus error, where we overestimate our similarity with others.

 Relationships

Leveraging this knowledge allows us to look for and identify our similarities and to embrace our differences as natural. Once we understand and recognize who we are and how we may differ from others, we can work towards embracing our differences.

We now understand what conversations to have with our family, friends, and coworkers regarding management of our differences and therefore truly control conflict before it begins. If I know that I have a friend with a different personality type, then we can address that difference up front by simply starting the conversation with a question, “What do you need at this moment to become the best version of yourself?” and sharing what you need in return. So instead of differences being the cause of conflict, they become the foundation of lasting and meaningful relationships.