Water with Earth

Water: “We feel.” Earth: “We execute.”

What you can do (Water)

• Wrap the emotion in something concrete “If we don’t resolve this conflict, we’re going to lose X time / Y quality. Can we look into it for 30 minutes?”
• Respect their time and workload “I suggest we talk about it at 4 p.m. for 20 minutes, with the goal of deciding on the next step.”
• Bring facts, not just impressions “For the past three weeks, there have been X concrete incidents: …”

What to avoid (Water)

• Drowning them in emotional details.
• Waiting for them to understand your suffering without explanation.
• Taking their apparent coldness for malice.