Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874. It's a good thing, too, because his 69th birthday fell during the Teheran Conference, on November 30, 1943. The conference was the first meeting of the Allied Powers' three leaders — Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt — and things did not go smoothly.
On the last evening of the conference, Churchill's birthday, the British delegation hosted a birthday party in Churchill's honor, and the event helped defuse tensions between the three men. If Churchill had been born a few days earlier or later, the outcome of the Conference — and World War II — might then have been very different.

Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill on the portico of the Soviet Embassy at the Teheran Conference in 1943. Only Roosevelt is dressed in civilian clothes. When the three sat for photographs like this one, Roosevelt nearly always sat between Churchill and Stalin. This might or might not have been intended to reflect the importance of the US to the coalition, but it is certainly a metaphor for the relationship of the three men. Photo courtesy U.S. Library of Congress.
In hostile collaborations, discomfort often arises from distrust, shame, or guilt. Distrust usually comes from preexisting information and experiences, some of which might be based on misinformation, disinformation, or misinterpretation.
Shame can come from the sense that the other collaborators are of disreputable character, and that associating with them is harmful. But our assessments of one another's characters are often erroneous, because they're vulnerable to the Fundamental Attribution Error.
Guilt sometimes results from misgivings about the goals of the collaboration. If the goals are inconsistent with our values, or if some of our collaborators might use the collaboration for purposes inconsistent with our values, guilt follows.
If our feelings of distrust, shame, or guilt are intense enough, we might undermine the collaboration, whether we know it or not. One approach to resolving this problem is to build trust, intentionally. Here are some tips for building trust.
- Avoid history
- Trying to resolve distrust by figuring out what caused it is a form of collaboration in itself, and since distrust already has a seat at the table, that collaboration isn't likely to succeed.
- Focus on right here, right now
- Create warm, If our feelings of distrust,
shame, or guilt are intense
enough, we might undermine
the collaboration, whether
we know it or notfriendly, positive experiences that provide energy for moving forward. Food sharing and socializing can be helpful. Still, if the atmosphere is toxic enough, the barbs will fly, though often cloaked in subtlety, irony, or humor, as they were at Teheran. - Create opportunities to practice joint problem solving
- A short excursion is a nice way to inject some joint problem solving that's unrelated to the content of the collaboration. Deciding routes, choosing places to eat, and deciding when to split the party and where to rejoin are all opportunities to practice consensus building.
Sometimes building trust can be just too difficult. One of the parties might have been promoted over another, or one might have abused the power of position, or one might perceive such abuse when none occurred, and so on. You can't change the past. If you can't replace the people involved, try adjusting the goals. Success with something easier might be the key to healing. Top
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Are you fed up with tense, explosive meetings? Are you or a colleague the target of a bully? Destructive conflict can ruin organizations. But if we believe that all conflict is destructive, and that we can somehow eliminate conflict, or that conflict is an enemy of productivity, then we're in conflict with Conflict itself. Read 101 Tips for Managing Conflict to learn how to make peace with conflict and make it an organizational asset. Order Now!
For more on trust, see "The High Cost of Low Trust: I," Point Lookout for April 19, 2006.
For more details of the role of social interactions at the Teheran Conference, see Why the Allies Won, by Richard Overy (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1995) Order from Amazon.com
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
Assumptions and the Johari Window: I
- The roots of both creative and destructive conflict can often be traced to differing assumptions of
the parties to the conflict. Working out these differences is a lot easier when we know what everyone's
assumptions are.
Why Scope Expands: II
- The scope of an effort underway tends to expand over time. Why do scopes not contract just as often?
One cause might be cognitive biases that make us more receptive to expansion than contraction.
On Snitching at Work: I
- Some people have difficulty determining the propriety of reporting violations to authorities at work.
Proper or not, reporting violations can be simultaneously both risky and necessary.
Career Opportunity or Career Trap: I
- When we're presented with an opportunity that seems too good to be true, as the saying goes, it probably
is. Although it's easy to decline free vacations, declining career opportunities is another matter.
Here's a look at indicators that a career opportunity might be a career trap.
The Illusion of Explanatory Depth
- The illusion of explanatory depth is the tendency of humans to believe they understand something better
than they actually do. Discovering the illusion when you're explaining something is worse than embarrassing.
It can be career ending.
See also Workplace Politics and Workplace Politics for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming February 26: Devious Political Tactics: Bad Decisions
- When workplace politics influences the exchanges that lead to important organizational decisions, we sometimes make decisions for reasons other than the best interests of the organization. Recognizing these tactics can limit the risk of bad decisions. Available here and by RSS on February 26.
And on March 5: On Begging the Question
- Some of our most expensive wrong decisions have come about because we've tricked ourselves as we debated our options. The tricks sometimes arise from rhetorical fallacies that tangle our thinking. One of the trickiest is called Begging the Question. Available here and by RSS on March 5.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group