We all have our own set of values and standards for our work. We have gotten those standards from our parents, education, religion, and life experiences. It is necessary for us to do some careful self-evaluation so that we can identify our values and standards. If we are not aware of our own values and standards, we will often have conflict with those whose values and standards differ from our own. You may believe that the only acceptable outcome for your efforts is total success, and you view anything other than that as failure. When you are an administrator and in charge of supervising the work of others, you need to understand that not everybody has the same standards and values that you have. If you believe that only total success is acceptable, you will be unhappy with those who do not achieve it. This will put you in conflict with someone who believes that the solutions that generally work are more than acceptable.
It is important to realize that achievement of goals does not necessarily result in total success. In most cases, solutions to problems are never totally successful. Every solution misses some aspect of the problem, and, like a drug, solutions have side effects. For example, if a staff member is continually late for appointments, you may ask her or Supervisor to deal with the issue. The Supervisor decides that the best way to handle this problem is to monitor the staff member by having others watch him and report back on his punctuality. Each time the staff member is late for an appointment, the Supervisor calls him or her into the Supervisor’s Office and reports the lateness and expresses displeasure and may even threaten to withhold some resources unless the tardiness stops. Even if this results in decreasing or eliminating the staff member’s tardiness, it will create issues of morale and distraction for the staff member. You may have a totally different approach to this issue. You may think that having a long talk with the staff member and getting her or his assurance that the tardiness will stop may be enough. The differences in your approach and the Supervisor’s approach is the way you view human behavior and how best to create change. You may believe that a reasoned approach in which you point out the issues that the tardiness creates along with a discussion about how things will change is the best solution. The Supervisor believes that only careful monitoring and confrontation will get the person to change her or his behavior. If faced with a situation like this, you need to spend time with the Supervisor discussing the different approaches s/he might take to deal with this problem. It is important that you recognize that the two of you see things very differently. It is also important that you agree to a strategy once you have explored all the issues and possible problems with each of your approaches. In this way you can come up with a plan you are both willing to try. You may need to be willing to try a solution with which you are not totally comfortable. If you dismiss outright the Supervisor’s solution, you will create an antagonistic relationship between the two of you, that has lots of negative consequences. The general point here is that people solve problems using their personal values and standards as guiding principles. When two people have different approaches to solving a problem, they need to have a discussion and try to come up with a solution that is acceptable to both parties recognizing that whatever they come up will not necessarily be totally successful and may have negative side effects.