Steven DiMaio’s latest blog post on Harvard Business Publishing caught my eye. The title is just great: “How to Train Your Pet Peeve.” And he’s tackling something that management training doesn’t traditionally cover: How to manage the little but persistent interaction reactions that can break down a team, a department, a project or process.
It’s a great read, and it got me wondering what would happen if a department had a meeting around their collective pet peeves. What would it be like to write down your top two or three pet peeves, then bring them to a departmental or team meeting? (I say write them down ahead of time so there can’t be too much “yeah, me too” along political or hierarchical lines). Might you find fault lines that you never knew were there, that you can now address because the trigger-points are out in the open?
Somebody try this — and then share what you uncover!