One sunny Saturday in April, I was sitting on my favorite San Diego beach reading a book when my husband Daniel walked up, sputtering water and adrenaline and indig- nation. He had been surfing and almost collided with a swimmer.       

When he caught the wave, she was far away. The wave carried him straight to her, and as the split-seconds passed, she made herself almost impossible to avoid by making noncommittal little dodging movements in the last crucial seconds.           

Dripping and trying to calm down, Daniel said, “She shouldn’t be in the water.” In his mind, the swimmer lacked the most basic situational awareness, like a pedestrian who doesn’t understand traffic lights. “It’s easy. You either stay still so the surfer can steer around you, or you duck under the water.”           

I’m sure the swimmer was just as annoyed and freaked out as Daniel was. Her fun in the waves turned startling and scary, too. I imagine her going back to her towel on the beach and saying to her companion something like “What a maniac. Didn’t he see me right there swimming?”                   

Me being me, I turned it all into a nice metaphor for interpersonal conflict at work. 

Here we go:           

Every person with a job navigates the dynamic, complex, and sometimes danger- ous ocean called work.         

You are the swimmer in the waves when you are plugging along with the regular ups and downs of the days and the weeks. Steady-moving, pulling through the ups and downs as the waves wash over you, kicking your legs, lifting your head for breath when you need to. Getting your regular work done, keeping the cogs of the business or services going. Swimming is the daily work of ... work. Everybody swims.   

In a team facing new challenges, or in a team of any size that is organized well for learning and growth, everybody also has times in a day or in a week then they are the surfer. Surfer mode is a project or priority that is new or unusual. Anything labeled “in- novation” or “transformation” that puts you in the role of managing change is surfing work. Making progress toward a new role in the organization could look like barreling through on a big board, too. Managing a big compliance audit or a big fundraising event. In a learning organization, everybody gets the chance to surf, not just the boss- es or the cool kids. Everybody gets to go in a new direction, with individual freedom and that surfing joy. You are in the zone, gliding along, on top of the water.              

The conflict comes when a swimmer and a surfer surprise one another. Your solo time in the water can go from bitchin’ to bogus or even aggro in a moment. (Yes, my surfing slang is old and kookish. I myself am old and kookish.)   

The opportunity is to avoid these rude surprises between surfers and swimmers. When they do happen, and they will, you want to be ready to respond in a way that is generous and promotes trust. Here in mid-2021 is a great time to stop and take stock of your individual growth and change priorities, your surfer work, and to clarify with your team you regular swimmer work, too.Everybody could use reminders right now about what’s important to the boss and to each other.   

Pause to answer these questions, then take the chance to communicate with your team to increase trust and avoid crashes in the waves.       

For your surfing and others’ swimming: Do people know where I want to move fast like a surfer on a good wave? What is my list of big projects, learning goals, and areas of excitement? What do people need to hear from me about this work relative to our regular in-the-waves work? What can people do to help me? How will I communicate this?       

For your swimming and others’ surfing:                  

What are other people doing that is moving fast and changing things? (Think about work from home and if that’s changing, Zoom fatigue and how to prevent that.) How might that disrupt my regular work, my daily swimming? What questions do I have about those big waves people are surfing, to help me stay safe and confident, so they don’t blow me up with big fast-moving ideas and priorities? What is the best fo- rum for talking about these things?                   

Let me know how it goes.       

So far, this is about individuals taking responsibility for their interactions with each other, awareness and peer support in the work waves.       

You may wonder, what about the boss? What’s a boss’s role in keeping everybody organized and not crashing in the waves? Stay tuned! My next blog will talk about team-level leadership and organizing work well. Working title: “The Leader as Life- guard”       

Final note: If you know about my Six Culture Builders course, this idea fits into Culture Builder 2: Create Trust and Safety. Want to know more about the course? Re- ply and I will send you more.