Never Make a Policy to Avoid a Conversation.

Organizations, families, and businesses have rules for how they operate. Some are written rules and some are unwritten rules. The rules for governing a group of people tend to develop and evolve over time. Something negative happens, so a rule is generated to prevent that event from happening again. A threat occurs, so new rules are created to mitigate the threat. Something positive happens, so rules are instituted to help ensure positive things happen again in the future.

Some rules are necessary, but too many rules can reveal deep relationship and leadership issues. Rules are easy to make. Conversations can be difficult to have. Never make a rule to avoid a conversation.

People who are unwilling or unable to have difficult conversations rely on rules to create structures they can operate within. Instead of addressing issues with individuals, they create rules that impact everyone.

Imagine an office environment with a breakroom. Inside the breakroom is a communal refrigerator for employees to store their lunches. There is one employee…we will call him Carl…who tends to bring leftover fish that he forgets about and leaves in the refrigerator for weeks at a time. The fish produces a negative odor that contaminates the other employees’ food and makes the breakroom a miserable place. Someone should speak with Carl, but often a rule is implemented in place of a conversation. It would not be abnormal to walk into the breakroom one day and find a sign on the refrigerator that reads, “Drinks only. No food storage.”

New rules often have unintended consequences.

Delores brings her lunch to work each day, but because of the new rule, she can no longer use the breakroom refrigerator, so she puts her lunch in a desk drawer. Ants discover Delores lunch and begin to march through the office causing an infestation. A new rule must be made to deal with the ant problem. A company-wide email is sent reading, “Due to our ant problem, employees are no longer permitted to store food or eat at their desks.”

Nobody can bring food to work, so everyone in the office must leave the building for lunch each day. One day at 12:15pm an important client phones the office with an issue that requires immediate attention. No one answers the phone, because they were all out to lunch. The company loses the client, so the owner institutes a new policy that requires all office personal to be at their desks between 12-1pm each day.

The rules that were supposed to create order cause the office to devolve into chaos. Employees are no longer able to have lunch, so they become irritable and disenfranchised. They treat one another and their clients with contempt. The workplace becomes miserable. The business suffers. More rules are created and everything gets worse.

All of this could be avoided if someone would just have a conversation with Carl about his stinky fish. Do not allow one person’s leftover trout to spoil an entire organization.

Be willing to have difficult conversations. Talk to your spouse, your kids, your neighbors, your coworkers, and your friends. Lovingly express the truth. Speak to them like you want to be spoken to. Challenging conversations create better long-term relationships than rules ever will.