Travel Season

You know when people really start to lose their cool? During travel.

I speak from experience.

In early July, I was at the airport to catch a flight, but it was really, really foggy. So foggy our planes couldn’t land to scoop us up.

How quickly we forget that neither we, nor airlines, can control the weather. There’s no solution available other than to Wait. It. Out.

By some miracle, I kept my cool that day. I managed to maintain my excitement, even though that same excitement kept me up the night before. Usually, a combined lack of sleep and impatience would lead to some sort of emotional meltdown for me. But on that particular day, I managed to not become my travelling companion’s (translation: my husband’s) worst nightmare.

Others didn’t fare so well that day.

In one instance, an airline gate agent and two passengers were really getting into it. The passengers had just landed in Halifax from elsewhere, only to learn they missed their connecting flight. They were adamant they had to be in Montreal later that evening and stated this repeatedly. In response (or non-response, really) the gate agent repeatedly advised that all flights were sold out.

Their exchange was neither an argument or a conversation, but simply a parroting of two standalone facts. I was gawking the whole time. Even when Jared and I physically moved on to the airport restaurant for brunch, I darted back a few times to see if they were still going. And they were. For nearly two hours.

At one point, I overheard the passengers proclaim they would never fly with this particular airline again.

Yeah, right.

Assuming these passengers were Canadian, they’ll fly with that airline again simply because they will have to.

Thankfully, flying with one crappy airline or another doesn’t usually impact us in the long-term.

But what about our other business relationships?

Travel days can be unpleasant. But ongoing, unresolved conflict can be miserable.

Business partners, suppliers and clients become a drag when that relationship drains time, energy or money. Eye rolls become muttered unpleasantries become changing moods. You may lose sleep, motivation or even your confidence. Anxiety creeps in, avoidance becomes your coping mechanism, and eventually you want to quit, cancel or confront.

When we let conflict linger in our business relationships, that, too, is a choice we have made.

So let’s think about our choices.

We engage in some conflict with relative ease, like a weather related flight delay. And we direct it at a front-line worker who is surely not the decision-maker to get clear a passenger backlog.

Yet, we shy away from telling our business partner that we feel they contribute unequally. And we try to find a new supplier instead of telling the current one where they’ve fallen short. Or we don’t set boundaries with a client who has unrealistic expectations.

We speak up when we can’t change anything. Yet we stay quiet when it could bring about actual change at work and in our lives. Go figure!

Is the hardest part starting a conversation? I’d say no, based on the above examples. The hardest part is being vulnerable with people we actually know.

Why? That’s another conversation for a different day.

It’s the start of a long weekend for most of us here in Canada.

If you’re travelling, I hope it goes smoothly. If disruptions happen, take note of your reactions.

If you find yourself ready to speak up about something that’s not working, I challenge you to do the same about some other issue that actually affects your life well beyond this long weekend.

If you want some advice on how to start and have that other, more important conversation, you know where to find me.