People who can take a purely ‘non emotive’ decision affecting them in business are sometimes described as “thick skinned” “tough” “hard” (or many other less flattering terms!) and those who can’t separate emotion from a business decision are often described in an equally negative way.
However many times we might be told not to ‘take it personally’ it’s human nature to get involved emotionally in business and the decisions we take. Dealing with dispute resolution mirrors this – so the emotions are often high in business, disputes, fuelling the “battle” approach to prove that “we are right” and “they are wrong”
I also see these emotions at their strongest with disputes involving neighbours. It’s normal to be “emotionally attached” to your home: You want it to be perfect, when we know that’s usually not possible. This was shown graphically in a High Court Neighbour dispute recently between a photographer (and a teacher living below) who applied for planning permission for a roof terrace. The teacher claimed his neighbour held noisy late-night parties and that washing from the photographer’s line blew into his garden. He objected to the Council and sent another objection ‘pretending’ to be a female neighbour. The court heard that the pair had been at each other’s throats for years The photographer sued his neighbour for defamation and malicious falsehood and won £2,500 damages in a bitter case lasting 18-months which also sadly cost the photographer his marriage and might lead to the photographer having to sell to pay his legal fees of over £20,000.
The Judge said their disagreement was ‘trivial sad and regrettable’ Urging them to make peace, he said: ‘You are neighbours – not necessarily friends – but if you could step back and cool down, and avoid coming to court again, that would be desirable” What an understatement! -and how sad that it came to this. Looking at this rationally with the benefit of hindsight it may seem too easy to conclude that the behaviour here was ‘over emotive’ and ‘if only’ they could have been less ‘emotional’ and found a way to talk to each other earlier they might have avoided so much time stress, cost and uncertainty. This is the constant challenge of the mediator – and there’s no point in pretending that it always works out when there is someone neutral to help diffuse the emotion – but in my experience if parties can sit down early enough with an independent person they can be helped to understand that it doesn’t need to come to this, so there’s a much greater chance of reaching a settlement that each can live with …….but we also have to accept that life isn’t always perfect, and that sometimes “being right” does not help. This applies in business as well as with your neighbour
Best Wishes
Roger
