Wednesday, February 01, 2006

UPDATED: Confrontational?

[UPDATE: Read my comment added in the comment section for my update...it is the 4th comment listed]

This isn't going to be my opinion on confrontation, but I can give that another time...HA! I need to do a little self-awareness exercise real quick and I need your help...

1.) Do you view me as a very confrontational kind of person?

2.) If so, how intimidating (i know that might sound funny, but it is the best word I can think of right now) would you say me confronting you, as a friend, about something is? [on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being VERY intimidating]

Don't worry about what you put...I'm not doing this because someone told me I was or wasn't confrontational and I want to prove them wrong. No, I just need to know, because I honestly don't know.

Just be honest, please.

8 comments:

Holly said...

1) Do I view you as a very confrontational kind of person?

Well, first of all, I definately don't view you as a "very" confrontational kind of person. That sounds extreme. Overall, it is really hard for me to say. I have seen you confront people about things that you felt genuinely concerned with yet I have also seen you not confront certain people on certain things. It of course depends on what the issue is. From my perspective, I think it has a bit to do with how well you feel you know the person or are at least how much you feel to be "on their level" (i.e., maybe it would be more intimidating to confront a professor at school because they are in a position of authority).

2) Just from my perspective, I would say maybe a 4.5 or 5 (I'm comparing you to extremes like uuum, well, the guy at FACTS). For me, when you do confront people, you seem to be very tactful in the way in which you go about it, more than intimidating. Besides, I am not sure it's great to be intimidating nor just horrible either. I often wonder what needs drive a person's desire to be "intimidating" -- and I never hear someone wanting to be "less" that way. I don't know why that is. Anyway, it is definately not easy to be confronted by you about something but I am not sure intimidation is the right word for me.

Maybe intimidation isn't a quality that lies within the "person." Maybe it's all up to the eye of the perciever. Who knows.

Holly said...

P.S. The thing about in a position of authority -- that is not to say that I think you wouldn't confront someone in a position of authority -- I think you would. But that's just to say that, in that specific case, it wouldn't be as easy to be "confrontational". It's not always as easy confronting bosses and professors, etc.

Anonymous said...

In light of my personal experience with you (granted it was a while ago!), I don't think you're a very confrontational person at all. At the moment, I can't ever think of you having a problem with someone and just confronting that person about the problem. Don't get me wrong, that's not to say that you don't deal with problems. I just mean that in my experience, it seems like you deal in other ways, like laughing about things. Again, I haven't had a lot of face-to-face contact with you in a while, especially with people around who you might want to confront, so I'm basing this purely on way past experience. As for the intimidation thing (even though I said I didn't think you were confrontational), if you were to confront me, I'd be only slightly intimidated. So maybe I see you as 4-5 intimidating. And for the last time, that's based on past experience, just knowing that you're usually very light-hearted about things and, in my experience, not very confrontational. Gee, that probably doesn't help you at all! Haha, sorry. :)

FeedingYourMind said...

Okay...I'm come to realize, not only from the comments I've already received, but through my own thinking, that "intimidating" definitly was not a good word to use. It really isn't what I'm looking for to be answered.

Let me try this again...

For the second part...basically what I'm wanting to know is would you be worried if I was coming to confront you about something. Am I the type of person that you would not want to be confront by (a 1) or me confronting you wouldn't bother you one bit (a 10).

Basically if you knew I was going to come and confront you about something, would you worry about that, or do I confront in a gentle way?

Does that make anymore sense?

Holly said...

I'd say a 7. I think you confront in a gentle way, but I'd still worry about the confrontation. Anytime a neurotic person like me is aware of impending confrontation, they worry. heh. I think it would be based more on not how you are but on what I thought the situation was that you were confronting me about, if that makes sense.

Anonymous said...

Well, if that's what you really wanted to know . . . I totally would not be worried about you confronting me about something, so I'd maybe put you at like an 8. That gives me room for people like my parents or Matt with whom I'm extremely confortable and would not at all be worried about being confronted by. Like we just talked about the other day, I think you have a lot of tact about the way you approach situations. And if things started to get iffy and you could sense I or the person being confronted was uncomfortable, I can see you backing off rather than escalating things. But then that kind of goes hand-in-hand with the original comment about intimidation. I don't consider you to have an intimidating aura, so I wouldn't be worried about you being horribly mean to me were you to confront me about something.

Ellison said...

I don't think you're a very confrontational person. I've seen you in circumstances where you are confrontational, but overall, I'd say not really.

How afraid would I be if you were coming to confront me? I'd give that about a 3. I'd have a little bit of conern just because confrontations are rarely about positive topics. But I wouldn't be scared or nervous. I've been in a confrontation with you...you present your side well, but you're not scary.

Hope that helps and doesn't come off sounding condescening.

Ellison said...

Uh, correction on my numerical scale...I didn't read that carefully. I'd say my "fear factor" would actually be a 7, not a 3. My bad!