This takes the CAKE!

A recent conflict I dealt with was between someone in my personal life. We were figuring out things for my son’s third birthday party. The big deal was who would drive the birthday cake over to the venue. The cake was one of those two layer cakes made with fondue, jungle themed. Now I asked this person to drop me off with my mom, and they could take the cake and pick up balloons and I would meet them at the venue. Well, apparently this caused a disagreement that I COULD NOT comprehend at the time. The other person was very reluctant to take the cake and I couldn’t understand why it was such a big deal. Needless to say, we ended up going in the same car and we BOTH transported the cake and balloons. I think a strategy that could have helped us would be actually explaining why we either did or did not want to transport the cake. I think even showing empathy would have supported our conflict in a positive manner, as NVC suggest. The bottom line was that the other person just did not feel comfortable transporting the cake because anything could have happened during the car ride and that person would have felt responsible for any damage done to the cake. Had I shown more empathy and even asked” Why do you feel so opposed to taking the cake?” we could have resolved the issue sooner and more positively. Colleagues feel free to add any additional advice.