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Burning Bridges from Both Sides (Part 1)
Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.
Change is inevitable in work environments. Companies shrink, grow and adapt, and so do their personnel needs. Alternately, the needs of employees also evolve and prompt them to look for other opportunities.
With both perspectives to take into account, invariably there are situations where emotions may run "hot" and people may feel hurt, betrayed and ultimately upset and angry when a parting of ways occurs. In these circumstances, the idiom "don't burn your bridges" invariably pops into our heads, although it may not happen at the appropriate moment.
The relationships that we have with those around us are links to other people, other places and other business, and are truly akin to physical bridges that provide us a way to travel between places we otherwise may not be able to reach. Travel on a bridge also means we have two positions to move between as the need arises, not to mention the access to other pathways that branch off from these locations.
The act of burning a bridge means literally that you cannot return to a place from which you've come. It also infers that in order to reach that destination again, a bridge must be rebuilt or a new one constructed--even if it is to a place you would just assume not ever see again. Take these concepts and apply them on an interpersonal relationship scale, and you quickly see the consequences of such a practice.
On …
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"More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly." - Woody Allen |