How to Treat Your Enemies

If you can examine the means your enemy has employed to frighten you, you may find clues to what he fears, too. This might lead to a solution that will neutralize the enmity or at least, allow you to use other resources to meet whatever goals are now threatened.

For example, if unpredictability of schedule is the problem with your employee, being consistent with them in terms of expectations may allow you to shore up your boundaries. If sudden changes in attitude signal trouble, consistent collegiality on your part can allay the awkwardness. If you recognize that one colleague is not helpful, engineer a work-around until the bad weather clears.

Once we have enemies, Miss Conduct suggests the time-tested advice of killing them with kindness, mostly because she's noticed that it's hard for her to hold a grudge against someone who's always nice to her.

Indeed, this isn't a new concept. Dealing with enemies is something even the early Christians dealt with thousands of years ago -- and they were wilier than we give them credit for being. St. Paul's letter to the Romans tells us to love our enemies, perhaps in part because it throws them so off-guard.

John Brincko comes in on the side of the saints, too. "Sometimes, all of the conscientious strategies in the world just won't work," he notes. In that case, pull out the kindness cure.

"It can be viewed as a weakness," Brincko says, but admits, "I could've used more of it when I was starting out -- I felt strongly then that 'the heck with what they think.' But there's no reason to be that confrontational. Even in significant disputes -- in large lawsuits -- today I go out of my way to be civil and respectful." You end up being the one in control, and not just subject to a defensive reaction.

And you never know who you'll have to square off against again someday.

Plus, being kind to adversaries breeds good karma. No less an authority on religious and political world conflict than Mahatma Gandhi wrote, "It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business."