Sometimes we are wearing rose-tinted glasses; sometimes they are anger-tinted. Our views and interactions are coloured by what has gone before, how we are feeling, our past experience. Sometimes the glasses we see through are far beyond being tinted, they have become solid.

After a hugely frustrating phone call, I am immediately drawn into a new conversation with new people. I am irritated and prickly eventually leading to me lashing out at one of them. An overreaction, inappropriate, and nothing to do with them.

Within change and managing change, difficult conversations are a regular feature. We need to know when our irritation is triggering us to behave negatively. We also need to figure out how we can create buffers between the triggers and our behaviours; otherwise we giving too much power and control to irritant.