Please interfere

Two of your colleagues have a disagreement and blame each other. Each is confident in being right. And now they are avoiding communicating. You can see that the path they’re on will not go well for them, but you’re not their boss.

Do you leave them alone to sort it out? Or do you interfere?

Interfering means getting involved without being asked. And for most of us, “interfere” will have a silent “don’t” before it in our minds. You can hear it in pejorative phrases, such as “mind your own business”, “leave well enough alone”, “nobody asked your opinion!”.

But interfering can also be a wholehearted way for you to express your compassion and your responsibility for other people’s wellbeing.

Think about any situation in which someone is going down a dangerous path—they’re about to step into a road without seeing the truck coming, or they’re ignoring some danger signs in their health, or they’re playing the blame game at work. In any of these situations, if you slow down to notice, you likely want to stop them from hurting themselves (which includes stopping them from harming others). But since they’re not asking for your help, you will need to “interfere” and make their wellbeing your business. That’s when you may stop yourself for fear of being a busybody.

Part of the challenge is that we make “mind your own business” some kind of universal principle of Being a Good Person—and we limit our business to what someone else says it is. But there is another way to look at this that is liberating and attuned to what you already know about life: Your business is what you say it is. If it’s your business to help someone, then it is. And you can help your colleagues and family from a place of making it your business to do so. Think of it like true friendship: Friends stop their friends from driving drunk, or firing off an email they’ll regret.

As a coach, I make it my business to interfere compassionately in your life—I will interrupt any thinking you’re using to limit yourself or even sabotage your success, and offer perspectives that you can use to be more effective and passionately engaged. But you don’t have to be a professional coach to interfere for benefit. Whatever your current job, I will make the case—especially if you’re a reader of this newsletter—that you love to help your fellow human beings. So how about giving yourself some license to interfere in people’s lives to help them, so you can express that love? Obviously, use your judgment and communicate your intent.

To not limiting your compassion,

Tom