{"id":3749,"date":"2010-02-02T10:01:07","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T17:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=3749"},"modified":"2010-02-02T14:54:07","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T21:54:07","slug":"dare-to-inspire-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=3749","title":{"rendered":"Dare to Inspire (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pig<\/strong>
Pig Wrestling - Courtesy Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0Do you\u00a0really want to wrestle a pig?\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is interesting how sometimes the signs in the universe all seem to converge and lead you down a certain path.\u00a0 Today was such a day.\u00a0 As you know, I have committed this week to sharing with you my inspirational quotes that have helped guide my career and provide some words of wisdom.\u00a0 So, here is the quote I wanted to share with you today:“I learned long ago, \u00a0never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it”.<\/strong><\/em> George Barnard Shaw.<\/p>\n

There are many times during my career that I have had to invoke this quote and use it to restrain myself from making a bad situation worse.\u00a0 Let’s face it – a lot of what we do as leaders is deal with conflicts and challenging people.\u00a0 You have to know when to fight,\u00a0how to fight, when to negotiate and when to simply walk away.\u00a0 We need\u00a0a spectrum of skills and behaviors to deal with people on a project team.<\/p>\n

Today brought some closure to a drama that started last week.\u00a0 It so happened that I had the opportunity to invoke this very quote, to help one of my friends.\u00a0 The situation was this.\u00a0 This friend, who happens to be a respected program manager (let’s call him Bob) had gotten into a ‘war’ of sorts with one of the leads on the project team (let’s call her Sue).\u00a0 Bob had been expecting Sue to provide a status update at the program meeting.\u00a0 Sue had been blowing off Bob at every opportunity – and sure enough, she was unprepared that day.\u00a0 Not only that, she started questionning the validity of the program meeting and openly implied that Bob was incompetent to run the meetings, saying something like “This meeting is a waste of time.\u00a0 We never get anything done.”\u00a0 Bot retaliated and said “Well the reason we don’t get things moving is people like you are not prepared.\u00a0 We end up going over the same group.”\u00a0 Needless to say, the meeting went downhill from there, with Bob and Sue sparring openly in front of everyone and Sue slamming the door and leaving the meeting.\u00a0 When Bob met me, he was feeling low and I had to draw the story out of him.\u00a0\u00a0 Basically, he felt he lost control over the meeting by stooping down to fight with Sue in an open forum.\u00a0 He felt he had lost his power as a leader – and in some sense he had.\u00a0 He was embarrassed.\u00a0 He knew this is exactly what Sue wanted and she won the duel by drawing him down to her level.\u00a0 Bob and I spoke about the entire drama.\u00a0 Of course, I had to bring out the quote – and he laughed and said it was quite apt in the circumstance.\u00a0 Today, Bob spoke to Sue privately about the incident and had an open discussion about what is going on and how they can work together.\u00a0 There is no magical resolution as yet – but at least they are talking.\u00a0 That is a first step in making things work.\u00a0 From my personal experience, I have become friends with many of the ‘pigs I have wrestled with’.\u00a0 I think you get more accomplished that way.<\/p>\n

So, the moral of this story is don’t wrestle with pigs – there is simply no way you will come out clean from that experience!\u00a0 If you do encounter a ‘pig’, then make it your friend.\u00a0 They are intelligent, and can be trained :-).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Do you\u00a0really want to wrestle a pig?\u00a0\u00a0 It is interesting how sometimes the signs in the universe all seem to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}