Unprofessional

"That was so unprofessional"

I heard this sentance recently and it reminded me of an instance from a few years ago. . .

I am receiving a complaint from a member of my team about someone else following a tense exchange a few days earlier.

The difficulty here is that I'm being asked to judge who is right and who is wrong. That's not my role here. Understanding who is right and who is wrong is only useful if this is a court room.

But this is not a court room, I'm not a judge and it would not be right for me to behave as one.

The word "unprofessional" is also loaded. There is no such thing as "unprofessional", instead there are

A, normalised behaviours within a team
B, personal expectations of how people believe they should be treated or how they should feel

In this instance the person making the complaint felt hurt. Both parties have a perspective which when combined creates the reality of the situation. There are definitely a few details I can pick up on in each of the team members that might have improved the outcome (normalised behaviours) but this will not get to the heart of the issue.

Instead we have to work on finding a way of working together for the good of everyone despite our differences of opinion and style. To harness the differences and catalyse them into rocket fuel.

Any time spent deciding who is right or wrong will be a waste of energy and will take us off track to the important goal of understanding how we can all move forward together.