Thank you for dropping by! Thursdays are Servant Hearts day. Gracious leaders around the world guest post to NorthFork’s blog, A Servant’s Heart, sharing their fabulous insights regarding the serving nature of leadership. We’re delighted you’ve joined us. Be prepared for a variety of experience!
Today, I am especially DELIGHTED to introduce you to Mark McKinney. Mark is a young emerging leader endeavoring to share what he learns on his journey to encourage other young people to develop their leadership ability and make a difference in whatever they are doing. Mark helps us better understand we can learn to serve the world around us by learning how to use our gifts. Mark blogs and he is developing an awesome leadership web site for young people called Leader: Me! You can read Mark’s original post, and comments, here. Mark’s bio reads, “Love the outdoors, reading, building things, languages, HTML, Krav Maga, learning anything, spying, codes and ciphers, leadership.” Friends, Mark inspires me. I’m sure he will inspire you, too!
How to Get Along With an Enemy
by Mark McKinney (California)
We always want to avoid making enemies, but it will certainly happen. It may be the opposite of what you would want to do, but the first step to try to turn enemies into friends is to get to know the person better. As Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” Getting to know them will enable you to learn about most of his or her strengths and weaknesses. Knowing that will help you understand them and get along. You might even figure out what you did (if you did really do something) to them. Then you can apologize to them and this will hopefully turn your enemy into your friend.
Now what if that doesn’t work because they just don’t seem to like you for whatever reason, you must now learn how to get along with them. To do this, you must first ignore their comments. Now I don’t mean that you should blow them off like “who cares about them” because that’s just what they would do to you. No, you must not react to their comments in a negative way. Don’t make their problem your problem. The next step is to not say anything about what he or she does. Don’t be critical of them. Don’t make negative comments. Otherwise, again, you are doing exactly what they are doing. You must ignore the urge to get back at them or the desire to embarrass them. Finally, you must always remember to be nice to them even if they are being a jerk to you. If you do this you will be setting an example. Hopefully they will follow your example.
The people we don’t like are usually the people we don’t know or seem to be not like us. We don’t usually like people that are different from us. The solution is to get to know others even if they are different and be nice to everyone we see. Will Rogers, speaking of Leon Trosky, said, “I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I didn’t like.” Get to know people. You’ll be surprised how much you might like them.
Brilliant, Mark! True inner leadership.
And… often when we get a negative reaction to another person we can be seeing in them something we don’t like in ourselves. As a wise old trainer once said to me, “If you get a big emotional reaction, positive or negative, that sure is a place to start working on in you!”
Look foward to more of your posts…
Thanks Mark for such a wonderful and inspiring post.
I love when you said don’t make their problems your problems. Such practical and wise advice.
Great article. I’d like to add another reason to make friends with those enemies: When we befriend a person who we find difficult outside of ourselves, we learn how to handle the same energy inside of ourselves. It turns out that all external conflicts are representations of internal conflicts so learning to create external peace helps us learn to create internal peace.
Great tips and valid reminder to be “bigger than our enemies” with specifics on just how to take the high road and maybe even turn things around. We may know to turn the other cheek, but it is always good to know why and how to reposition a negative situation into one that can be mutually beneficial.
Sharon,
That’s a good point. We need to look at our self first!
Stash,
Thank you for your support!
Randall,
Thank you. That’s true! Many of our problems are our own fault.
Debra,
Thank you for commenting. Taking the high road is hard to do sometimes.
Hello Mark, thanks for the excellent insight. Whenever I see someone I don’t like, I ask myself, “Does that person remind me of myself – a part of me that I’d rather not be?” Understanding others can help us understand ourselves.
Steve,
I like that question. It could save a lot of trouble. Thanks for your comment.
If we could take this message to heart, many problems would be solved. The important part is to remember that relationships that become contentious are full of emotion. While it makes sense to apologize and forgive, most people are not prepared to do either while they are angry.
To create positive relationships, we need to be grounded in humility, curiosity, and a sincere desire to learn about others.