Face It. Recognizing and Conquering The Hidden Fear That Drives All Conflict At Work

Overview

Like forest rangers on the lookout for fires, we continually monitor ourselves for whether we have a problem. Our meta-level thought is always assessing how things are going at the object-level and motivating us to make changes based on its judgments. The judgments we make are meant to protect us.

• In the case of worriers , their meta-level judgments are detecting from the array of facts in front of them that it s time to become tightly focused on anticipating and avoiding what might happen.

• The meta-level judgments of controllers deem things to be out of control and indicate it s time to take charge.

• Fakes are motivated by their meta-level thoughts to project a certain image ”to cover up their real self-image.

• The meta-level awareness of attention-seekers tells them that things don t quite feel secure and looks for the right opportunity to fill the gap.

• The meta-level thoughts of victims stand on guard to protect them from attacks.

• Prisoners take meta-level indications of vague, hard-to-pin-down threats as a signal to check back into the ˜ ˜safety of their prisons.