There is a difference between defending a value and defending your ego

My partner reads Reddit threads. One forum he told me about is called Am I The Asshole?, where people post their situational dramas and invite the internet to sit in judgement.

Questions range from: “Am I the asshole for banning children from my wedding?” to: “Am I the asshole for refusing to swap my plane seat so a couple can sit together?”

But the one that really caught his attention was: “Am I the asshole for refusing to put a towel on the bathmat when I step out of the shower, even though my wife wants me to?”

The Redditors, apparently, largely sided with him. The bathmat exists to absorb water. That is literally its job. No need for a towel. End of.

My partner disagreed. He thought the chap was absolutely the asshole. Because, as he said, if putting a towel on top of the bathmat matters to your wife, and costs you precisely nothing, why dig in?

And that, inevitably, made me think about our sector.

Because while we may not argue about bathmats (although I wouldn’t entirely put it past us!) we do argue about who has priority over the meeting room; whether the logo should be two millimetres to the left; whether the correct term is service user, client, beneficiary or participant.

We argue about who left the dirty mug in the sink. About who ‘owns’ the project. About whose budget something belongs in.

And if we’re honest, we often refuse to budge even over small matters, because: “It’s the principle of the thing!”

Now, don’t get me wrong. Principles matter. They matter enormously. Our values are the reason we exist. Safeguarding matters. Integrity matters. Purpose matters.

But there is a difference between defending a value and defending your ego. Between protecting the mission and protecting your position.

I’ve seen charities spend weeks in passionate debate about where people should sit after an office reorganisation, while in the corner some poor, beleaguered volunteer struggles alone with a difficult service user.

I’ve seen trustees and the executive locked in polite, exquisitely “principled” stalemates about strategy and mission while staff are quietly burning out around them because everything is on fire!

I’ve watched teams fritter away hours arguing about who “owns” a project rather than asking the only question that really matters: is it actually helping?

I’ve seen charities, ostensibly working in partnership, spend precious time arguing about who gets invited to what meeting rather than focusing on what they are actually trying to achieve.

I often say to people trapped in conflict: “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?”

My sister often wittily replies, “I’m only happy if I’m right!”, which is funny… but in our world, the stakes are higher than domestic harmony. The question isn’t really about whether we’re right. It’s about whether our insistence on being right is damaging our ability to be effective.

Sometimes we can be gloriously, impeccably, constitutionally right – and still not have helped a single human being.

If putting a metaphorical towel on the bathmat calms the room, builds trust or keeps a fragile partnership intact, why wouldn’t you?

We can’t achieve anything powerful if we are at loggerheads. We need to try to work in harmony with each other. Harmony requires co-operation and compromise. Not on the big stuff, of course. Not on safeguarding, integrity or purpose. But on the small stuff. The wording tweaks. The procedural preferences. The two millimetres. The bathmats.

Because while we’re arguing about absorbency, someone out there is cold. Or lonely. Or hungry. Or frightened.

So the next time you feel your temperature rising over something that, in the grand scheme of things, is basically a towel on a bathmat, have a word with yourself.

Ask yourself: what problem are we actually trying to solve? And is this argument helping?

And then be brave enough to admit if you’re the one being the asshole about a bathmat.

This article was originally published on the Third Sector website, take a look here.