When I got around to reading the New York Times bestseller “Getting the love you want”, my motivation was to strengthen my personal relationship. As I read the first few chapters, I realized that the tidbits of information could also enlighten my relationships with my coworkers. Had I read this book thirty years from now, everything the author had to share might have seemed common sense, but I most likely would have made the same mistakes that could have been avoided. I want to share with you some food for thought on how Harville’s “Getting the love you want” can help you become the teammate you want.
Freud was probably right — we carry childhood wounds
The terrible things that haunted us as a child still haunts us today, even if we’re not aware of it. If your parents didn’t give you enough love and attention, you may find yourself constantly feeling the need to impress your manager. If you were frequently shoved into a dark closet in timeout, you may find yourself overly stressed when you miss deadlines and fear your manager’s reaction. It’s clear that we’re all unique individuals who are a result of our environment and we continue to live our lives corresponding to the rules and correlations we make throughout it. When we find ourselves in a stressful or uncomfortable situation at work, we can take a step back and separate our preconceived notions from the facts. Is Bob (fictional) being passive aggressive because he doesn’t like me or is he just under a lot of pressure and simply frustrated? Consider that your coworker might experience the situation quite differently from the way you do.
Emotional criticisms are mirror reflections
Although many of us are too timid to admit openly, we often find ourselves criticizing others. Bob is always bossing me around, Bob is so helpless, and the list is endless. Some of us have even transferred teams or switched workplaces to unburden ourselves with the nuisances of others, but we soon find ourselves yearning for greener grass. Could it not be because the problem isn’t with everyone else but with ourselves? Does Bob seem bossy because he believes in us and expects a lot from us? How can we meet those standards, and if not, how can we level his expectation to be more realistic? Does Bob seem helpless because we aren’t being helpful? “Help” isn’t a cookie cutter technique; how can we better understand what Joe needs? When we assume that everyone else is the problem, all we are doing is waiting for a perfect world to fall into our laps. In reality, many people behave this way and the result is an endless cycle of yearning. Leaders need to break the cycle and empathize with others.
We project our feelings onto others
For those that don’t vocalize our emotional criticisms, we bottle them up. We subconsciously collect a laundry list of all the supporting evidence that Bob is bossy: he made me write the unit tests for someone else’s module, he made me feel bad that I’m not writing enough code, he talks to me like I’m a child. Soon enough, we start to add to the list things that normally wouldn’t have even caught our attention: he looked at his phone while he was talking to me, I saw him talking to our manager after talking with me, and so on. These things don’t even have anything to do with being “bossy”, but our emotions file these away in our brain as “bad things Bob did to me” and we use that list to justify the way we act towards Bob. We find ourselves being curt when speaking to Bob, we might dread going to work because of him, or we might even start complaining about him to our coworkers. We project our feelings onto Bob and our coworkers because we feel we have a justified mental list of why Bob has wronged us, but in reality, the list exists simply to help solidify our opinion. We should be talking to Bob and letting him know not why you think he’s at fault, but simply by saying how you feel. Assuming Bob truly is overbearing, how would he even know if no one communicated this to him? If we tell him he’s bossy, it’s natural for Bob to defend himself and retort that he’s not. Who wants to be viewed as being bossy? Counter-intuitively, the laundry list of “bad things” Bob has done is not objective, but your feelings are. To Bob, your laundry list doesn’t mean anything, it may even be a little ridiculous. When you communicate how you feel, it brings to light the real consequences of Bob’s overbearing actions.
It is our nature to connect
Even at work, we want to connect. The memories that you cherish the most will be the times you laughed at a joke together, accomplished a major project as a team, or even when you were reprimanded as a team for missing a deadline. On the surface, encouraging connection within a team could be eating lunch together or a teamwork oriented offsite. More specifically, connecting with others is more than just “hanging out”; it’s about psychological interaction. When we meet strangers, we construct mental barriers to protect ourselves from embarrassment or emotional vulnerability, all the while reading into every interaction with them. Over time, we create a complex character map of this stranger and they soon become a friend. For most, it takes a reasonable amount of time to create a character mapping complex enough that they feel they have connected with a person. For others, they may never even reach that point with their colleagues. When we don’t connect with our teammates, it’s infinitely more difficult to be empathetic because they are emotionally distant. When we feel connected with our teammates, we can truly feel the way they feel and make better decisions not just for the team but for each individual within it. Aside from regular team oriented events and interaction, a surefire way to connect is to tear down your mental barriers and let them wade in your personalities through and through. Even if you’re not the nicest, funniest, smartest person, a genuine personality is all others need to explore who you are, trust you, and connect with you.
Be curious of others’ realities
To further connect with your teammates, be curious about their realities. It’s easy to formulate your own opinions, but how about knowing exactly what others are thinking? Most likely quite impossible, but if we don’t try, how can we empathize? When we shift our focus from opening up to others to probing others’ characters, it’s a slippery slope of judgement and interpretation. Bob always eats sugary food but complains about his health. Bob spends half the day socializing instead of getting work done. Bob always asks questions he already knows the answers to. These facts, are all too easy to add to our laundry list of “why I don’t like Bob”. Instead, when we stay focused on being curious, we can rephrase them to questions. Why does Bob eat sugary food? Perhaps that is how he best deals with anxiety. Why does he socialize so much? Perhaps he feels the need to connect with his team in order to find motivation to work. Why does he ask me questions he knows the answer to? Perhaps he trusts me more than he trusts himself. How can we help him feel safe making mistakes so that he can be more confident? By keeping your focus on curiosity of others instead of judgement, we prevent ourselves from falling into a sink of toxicity, and instead improving the team. In other words, consider every person as a source of knowledge, not conflict.
You’re still human — it’s okay to get worked up
When you think of the leader you want to be, you don’t see someone who loses his composure or is unable to handle awkward situations. We hold ourselves to standards that are usually seen in movies and even when you think your superiors portray exactly that, you are most likely disillusioned. No matter how calm and collected they may appear, they too stress and become anxious. Stress is not just a psychological effect but also a physiological reaction. It’s absurd to expect someone not to be stressed when their cortisol levels are off the charts. After all, we’re humans not robots. When we bottle up our anxiety under an iron face, we prevent ourselves from connecting because we’re afraid of showing emotional weakness. This may work for some time, but it will only build up and cause greater emotional pressure that is destined to implode. Instead, we should vocalize our stress and concerns and further connecting with the team. Work stress is not your burden, but you and your team’s.
Turtles and hailstorms
When we’re presented with stressful situations, our minds immediately concoct a fight or flight initiative. Do we assert more pressure or give in and hope that it all blows over? Do you get into a heated argument about who should be using the staging environment or give in and risk delaying your own project? Do you cause havoc like a storm or do you recede under a protective shell and wait for the storm to blow over? Most people will behave in one such way, but that’s irrelevant. What’s important is understanding when there is a hailstorm, brewing an even more furious storm is doomed to wreak more havoc. When you come across a receding turtle, mirroring their defensive behavior will get you nowhere. In a situation where someone tries to avoid conflict especially at their inconvenience, don’t assume a win for yourself but tone down your aggression and work together to find a favorable outcome for both. Instead of avoiding an angry teammate, empathize and talk to them about why they feel that way and how they feel it could be fixed.
Stop your wishful thinking
From the first minute of our lives, all we needed to do was cry to get what we wanted. Unfortunately, we subconsciously continue this pattern of thinking into the adult world. Many of us are quick to judge and form opinions, but rarely take action to get what we want. As long as we are willing to accept it, we think that the perfect, hardworking teammate or worthwhile opportunity will fall into our laps. When so many of us think this way, we simply continue our daily work routine conceptually staring at each other in expectation. It’s understandable why it’s easy to think that the grass is always greener on the other side when we aren’t taking care of the lawn ourselves. The first step is to connect with your team and when you feel you have a good grasp of your team’s realities, vocalize what you want. Don’t get choked up on the semantics and simply verbalize how you feel and how you would expect it to change. Don’t feel pressured that you have to find a solution because you brought it up. It’s everybody’s responsibility to help you address your concerns, but only if you are willing to tell them.
Don’t make deals
Office politics is all too real. When leaders fail to connect with other leaders, politics takes over. We pick and choose what we say in order to pick and choose our allies. Opening ourselves up to connect can make you vulnerable to manipulation and deceit and can be dangerous because every battle you lose is a loss for every member of your team. The result is that we construct impenetrable emotional barriers, imagine ourselves to be diplomats, and start making compromises: we’ll support your releases if you put your team on our on-call schedule, give us merge access if your team violates the 24 hour SLA, we’ll build the module if you agree to maintain it. Deals keep the cogs turning at work, but they are immutable cogs. When we can’t find a cog to fit the deal, there is no solution.
Alternatively, when we shift our focus on doing what makes sense instead of keeping tally of IOU's, individual teams can connect as a whole. When we connect on an individual level as well as at a team level, we notice less processes, more agility, and overall more satisfaction with the work we do because it’s not part of some made up deal.
Help others to help yourself
For me, the best moments at work are not when I finish a project early or when I receive a word of recognition. The best moments are when I help our team push through the last milestone of a project or help a struggling team member become a top contributor to our project. When we connect with others, we naturally consider our team to be part of us, and thus when we help the team, we help ourselves. Helping others can compel them to help you, but more importantly, your team will be more inclined to see you as a leader, putting you in an even more advantageous position to elevate the team.
These were the bits of wisdom I found useful in both my personal relationships as well as in the workplace. I hope that they will improve your work life and help you become the teammate you want.
