Thin Slicing

There's another email awaiting me on my return from Spain. This one is from Personnel - she is trying to set up a mediation session between myself and Line Manager - am I available on certain dates...?

Wow - depressing! Because mediation is something I asked for as far back as September 2010, when my relationship with Line Manager was already plummeting into the abyss. At that time (in desperation, because I was so concerned by what was happening) I researched options myself and presented them to Former Boss, Personnel and Director. But they said no.

I am fairly convinced that if they had agreed to mediation when I first requested it, the relationship might have got back on track. But the public sector view was that mediation was too expensive - and also it might involve feelings (eeeek!!!). So nothing was done, and inevitably things got worse and worse. Worse as in (from him) sarcasm, undermining, siding with others and shouting at me; and worse as in (from me) standing up for myself, asserting my right not to be bullied, and taking out a formal grievance which took six months to be heard. As you might imagine, the economic impact of all this far exceeded the paltry £1500 cost of formal mediation.

When New Boss came to see me back in March, and helpfully informed me that he felt the relationship could be mended, I picked up a sheet of paper, tore it in half, and said "that can be mended". I then tore these pieces across over and over again until hundreds of scraps of paper fluttered down on the table and added "but that can't".

I tend towards explicit Blue Peter-type demonstrations at moments of extreme stress.

There's a brilliant book by Malcolm Gladwell called "Blink". The concept of thin-slicing - the incredibly rapid and unconscious processing of information - helped me to understand why we so often experience strong reactions, both negatively and positively, towards certain situations and people; and why we should always trust our own instincts.

The book delves deeply into many areas of life, and unsurprisingly there is much focus upon relationships. Gladwell particularly cites a scientist called John Gottman who has made a life study of married couples, and can predict with 95% accuracy whether a couple will still be together in 15 years time. He analyses every conceivable emotion which a couple express during the course of a conversation, and creates complex equations which act as predictors.

But this analysis reduces down further to a single classic "thin-slice" interpretation. Gottman figures that there is one single emotion which is indicative of the deteriorating state of a marriage, and that is contempt.

It is not a nice emotion to experience or to feel. I hate feeling this emotion in relation to any human being because it is so negative. It is judgemental, rejecting, but above all things it is irrevocable.

When I muse on everything Line Manager has done over the past year - lie about me, discredit me, range others against me, spread gossip, take sides, exclude me, and deliberately drag other members of my team into our dispute - I feel many things. I feel sad; I feel angry: I feel disappointed; and I feel frustrated. But underlying all these feelings, I am conscious of a deep-rooted contempt for Line Manager which nothing is ever going to be able to alter.

Against this painful reality, mediation is starting to seem like a terrible waste of everyone's time.