By Jean Hollands

When you are trying to repair with a colleague or a customer or a vendor, everyone has to give up blame and begin to be more patient.

I usually tell employees in the new recovery period that they are lucky to make it from my office to the parking lot without getting into a disastrous upset again. It’s frightening to be trying to connect again. At least one of you has been disillusioned and it’s hard to make it up easily.

We recover in different forms.

One person wants to forget everything and start fresh. The other partner wants to obsess over every disagreement; stretch out the pain, and process every detail of what went wrong. The only way the poison will leave this person’ s body is to talk about it. If you have an obsessive colleague who seems to need to stretch out the repair discussion, try suggesting this:

Three 30-minute talks about the initial problem or misunderstanding with an objective person.

One session of problem-solving about options.

A final debriefing.

Identify warning signs and create signals.

“All that time!” you say. “It’ s not worth it. I would rather leave the organization than do all that prolonged, gut-wrenching crap.”

Well, guess what? That gut wrenching is only about six hours stretched out over as long a period as you want it.

I have used this formula with lots of organizations. Without a repair structure, the pain goes on for years. I had one happy pair of colleagues who tried it after seven years of bickering and misunderstandings over a bad experience. They were free at last.

What’ s the difference? The difference is structure. You also must consider the underlying values of the disparate colleagues. Sometimes it is working style differences; others, a misunderstanding between two misinformed human beings.

Five motives work simultaneously in this period.

These motives overlap, cancel each other, confabulate and confuse.

“I want to prove I am good at what I do and worth the effort.”

“I want to set limits this time and not put up with the same old garbage as before.”

“I am still angry and want to get back at you.”

“I want to forgive and be forgiven.

“I want to have a good experience with this person.”

You want this repaired relationship to be different. You feel you may have been too passive, took too much, allowed for this hostility, and you want to cut off all problems at the pass! You want to call him or her on every infraction. If you also want to appear gracious, it may be hard to set limits at the same time. You are so frightened of enabling, of slipping back, that you might be super-vigilant in your testing period.

You may still be angry. You want to be tolerant, but you still don’t understand his ways. You may unconsciously want to see your colleague bleed a little too. “Oh, yes, he apologized, but did he go through what I went through?” No, your colleague did not go through this in the way you did.

You want to forgive and be forgiven. You are hurt that it happened, that you are no longer safe with this guy. Each of you was wounded.

4. You want to have a good experience with this person. You have mixed feelings about having it as good as it was in the beginning, or better than you two have ever been together. Just when you want to keep everything calm, your challenge person will decide that this is the time to start afresh, not to let you get by with anything.

5. Trust each other. Don’t expect miracles; don’t even expect bliss. Don’ t jump ship. Give yourselves time. You’ve been through a lot. Your egos were tested, your nervous systems tortured, and now you are trying to recapture peace.

The two of you will not be perfect business associates. Be patient with this fragile and confusing beginning. You are two war victims, damaged, stressed, frightened, wounded by distrust and disloyalty, and fearful of being stepped on or over again. These scars are the price for starting over.

The price is worth the reward.

The reward is a mature relationship composed of productive human beings who may begin to communicate again.

Jean A. Hollands is the CEO of the Growth & Leadership Center.