I have been thinking recently about this old adage, which seems apropos to so many situations. It really speaks to the issue of trying to keep the lines of communication open with a rival, so as not to be surprised later.
I recently finished a week-long run of seminars through Wisconsin and Illinois, starting in Green Bay and Madison and ending up in midtown Chicago. I was the facilitator and trainer for groups of people who had been recently promoted to supervisory positions in their workplaces. One of the topics of conversation surrounded the question of how to deal with a rival in the workplace – that is, someone who competed with you for the job you now hold.
Openness is the key: Acknowledge that he or she wanted the role you now have, and may be disappointed. Communicate very openly that you’d like to have a good working relationship with the person. Ask for his or her vision of what the future holds, listen non-judgmentally, see where the commonalities lie, and ask for his or her support. It might well take more than one try, but be patient.
If you really think about it, “drawing your enemy closer” in this way is a lot more effective than fanning the flames of discontent by ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room!
Interestingly enough, the phrase popped up in my investigation into Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance. It came in the midst of a fascinating conversation with a psychic on one occasion a few years ago. We met in the course of my research for Dead Air – The Disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit, and she used the phrase as an example of what Jodi might have been attempting at the time she disappeared.
When I asked the psychic (rhetorically, of course) why she thought Jodi was spending so much time with a man she may have been trying to discourage, the psychic answered the question with a question. She asked, “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’?” In the context of our conversation that day, she opined that perhaps Jodi was attempting to pull a potential enemy closer, for any number of reasons.
In Jodi’s case, we’ll never know the answer – it’s an example of the speculation and conjecture that goes on between people when they’re having a private conversation. But it sent my mind into a thousand different “what if…” kind of scenarios. Think about it from your own perspective and experience. How might Jodi have been working to keep an enemy close?
3 Comments
Honestly, I don’t think Jodi was keeping her enemy closer. I have teenage daughters and they have an “uncomplicated” view of life. They prefer to think the best of people and I feel like Jodi was the same way. Maybe that’s why her case resonates with me — because I can see how a sunny young woman would have hard time recognizing danger, particularly from someone who was so generous with and complimentary toward her. Jodi came from a happy, supportive home, she seemed to have a knack for picking good friends, except in one notable and ultimately fatal case. This person may have been her first encounter with someone so narcissistic, someone so violent, someone truly evil because, after leading a charmed life, she may not have had the experience to recognize the potential threat. Just my humble opinion…
Normally I don’t think psychics work, I think they cloud up the facts more than help. One thing the use of a psychic does is showing your going the extra mile to help find the person.
Getting back to your comment on keeping her enemy closer, There could have been a very good reason why she wanted out of that relations other than the obvious, age. She could have been in it looking for a father figure OR if she originally was involved in it as a “relationship” she may have seen the darker side of his personality that made her fearful and thinking it would be easier to ween him off the relationship vs. a flat out ending of it would be better than risking his rage.
Way to many things seem to be going on in her life at that time that would raise an eyebrow, the person pounding on her door, new people entering her life from church. The ultimate outcome of her disappearance had to be planned. She just doesn’t disappear from the face of the Earth over a spontaneous encounter.
I agree, Vinny48, that the ultimate outcome of Jodi’s disappearance had to be planned. I do not believe that the crime was a random act of violence. Thanks for
your comment!