I had a read of a blog and it made me think that there was a few options that could have been considered in this, for one this is a win lose situation and as Toni rightly points out the position she appeared to take is a win-lose and she lost. This has many ramifications, loss of face in some cultures, loss of respect by fellow employees, in many western companies. I think she got to here from missing some crucial part of the idea that the person proposing the idea was trying to make. She has failed to find the third way, the better idea than either had in the first place.

Some things to consider here are did she go to hard in promoting her idea without adequately understanding the colleagues idea, leaving herself no place but to either win or lose. Was she favouring a solution due to some personal bias, I have never met Toni so I can only surmise as to what she may have been doing. She likely very unconsciously placed herself in the position she found herself in, she like many others never set out to loose the battle, but maybe that was the problem in that she decided she had to battle to win it.

Active listening is a crucial part of identify places to meld the ideas and it is possible that she failed to do more active listening to work towards the win-win which is much better than compromise. With active listening and affirmation of understanding of the other persons position the situation might have been avoided and, not lead to the win-lose that occurred.

Win-win when you are successful will make you very powerful as you will gain a lot of respect in a well thinking organisation, I have seen cases of where this sort of behaviour was considered a threat by managers and, people were gotten rid of as they threatened their positions simply by the managers insecuritry and the success cerated by the well negotiated win-win.

Apologies Toni for picking on you, but your article left a great place to try and write a piece on

See ya round

Peter