By now you will know I like metaphors and idioms as ways of providing a creative context to consider conflicts and their impact. There is something fun and interesting about doing so. What else I find is that looking at conflict with a different lens also helps my coaching clients (and me when I am in conflict) to gain distance from the emotions and the event.

The topic today – about the metaphor to ruffle someone’s feathers – conjures up an image I smile about. I find I can easily visualize a big or even a little bird looking miffed at something. Her or his eyes are wide – looking perturbed. The bird’s feathers are not falling softly but rather they are all over the place. Clearly, things are amiss.

The apparent etymology of the expression “to ruffle feathers”, as may be expected, is based on the idea of a bird whose feathers are not smooth because of fear or excitement. The phrase has come to refer to being and looking irritated or annoyed (or by ruffling someone’s feathers we are doing something that irritates or annoys her or him). That common happenstance – annoying or irritating someone or someone annoying or irritating us – does not always lead to external conflict. In any case, whether it is an internal conflict or external dispute, we undoubtedly show our negative reactions through our facial expressions and body language. As a consequence, we may show up like a bird with ruffled feathers.

If you relate to the phrase discussed in today’s blog, see if the following questions resonate for you.

• Thinking of a specific dispute in which you experienced the phenomenon of having ruffled feathers, what led to that experience?
• What did it feel like to have ruffled feathers?
• What do you suppose you looked like at that time that gave the appearance of your feathers being ruffled?
• What do your feathers represent in that conflict scenario?
• What do you do that helps to smooth your ruffling?
• What have others said or done that seems to help you? What doesn’t help?
• When the other person in a conflict situation gets ruffled feathers from something you said or did, how would you describe their appearance?
• What is the impact on you?
• What helpful things do you usually say to persons (friends, family) who have ruffled feathers? What have you learned that does not help?
• Having answered these questions, what do you think or feel about the expression to ruffle someone’s feathers that you didn’t before?

What other ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) may you add here?

Getting off on the wrong foot refers to those situations that sometimes happen during first encounters with others. This may be at the beginning of a relationship, project, discussion, or any other interaction, when we find ourselves off to an unproductive or uncomfortable start. Something may have happened in our interactions to create these experiences or we pick up something that is off-putting. Someone else may have gossiped to us about the person and their negative views stuck with us. Often though, there is not a clear reason for what seems to have led to disconnection and, at times, even animosity.

The origin of this phrase – getting off on the wrong foot – is not clear from the resources I consulted. One reference suggested this phrase may come from the long-standing preference people have for the right. For instance, we have right and left and right and wrong, which tends to associate left with wrong. Also, there is a suggestion in the same source that in ancient Greece it was considered unlucky to put the left foot on the floor, or into one’s shoe, before the right foot. Yet another idea is that the concept of a right foot and a wrong foot comes from the military, where in order to march in step soldiers all have to start with the same foot.

Whatever the origin, the notion of getting off on the wrong foot is an experience we have or sense that has the potential for building the sorts of dynamics that perpetuate interpersonal conflict. At these times, redeeming ourselves or the other person doing so is often fraught with challenges. The quote by Will Rogers (also attributed to Oscar Wilde) “you never get a second chance to make a good first impression” may prevail at these times. As short-sighted and not conflict masterful as that may be, somehow, the negativity, ill feelings, poor impressions, and so on seem to take over.

This week’s ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) blog is aimed at readers who feel they got off on the wrong foot with someone and possibly, discord developed between you. Thinking of a specific situation in which this occurred will be helpful when answering the following questions:

• Generally-speaking, what does the expression to get off on the wrong foot with someone mean to you?
• In a particular situation when this occurred, at what point did you feel you got off on the wrong foot with another person?
• What specifically did the other person say or do that contributed to that experience? What did you say or do that may have also contributed? Or, what may someone else have said or done that resulted in this sort of impact?
• How may the other person’s version of what occurred between you be the same or similar to yours? What may she or he perceive differently?
• What evolved as a consequence of getting off on the wrong foot?
• What did that feel like?
• How may you describe what you hoped or expected about how you and the other person would connect?
• How may you still make that happen, if you want to?
• What may be the biggest challenge?
• How will you overcome that challenge to do your part of getting on the ‘right’ foot?

What other ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) may you add here?