Stop the you-and-me tug-of-war; focus on the shared outcome.
principle — attributed to Dr. Wayne Pernell
Pernell's core diagnostic is operational. As long as the conversation is about you and me, it will always be a tug-of-war. I am right. No, I am right. The coach's role is to keep the common end goal in front of the parties so the conversation stops being about who is right. The desired outcome is more important than any individual ego. The technique extends from couples therapy directly into executive teams. The pattern is the same: two parties locked into proving each other wrong, neither moving toward what they both said they wanted. The coach's intervention is to redirect attention from the relational fight to the shared destination. The fight does not resolve through fighting; it dissolves when the parties remember why they were working together.
For executive coaches, mediators, and leaders running team-conflict interventions. The principle is most useful as a diagnostic when team meetings have collapsed into who-is-right exchanges.
tug-of-war, shared-outcome, right-fighting, reframe