We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection. — Abraham Lincoln
One of my favorite work challenges is when a client asks me to help them with something complicated about human nature. A business leader told me her people and teams were fighting a lot, and it was interfering with their performance and success. She asked me to consult with them about how to have better work relationships.
I find it helpful to boil down a complex subject to a few big ideas and best practices so people will remember and hopefully apply them. Here is what I came up with for my client.
Do unto others …
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives. — C. S. Lewis
We are all pursuing our own interests. When our interests come into inevitable conflict with others’, we tend to fall back on the winning strategies that have been selected over millennia of evolution and adaptation. These reflexes tend to fall largely in the zone of anger, aggression and domination (though many of us tilt toward the avoid/submit side of the fight/flight spectrum). No wonder things can get messy fast. Fortunately, there are better strategies for managing relationships and their inevitable conflicts that can preserve the peace and progress that most of us want.
A large volume of research on successful relationships (friendships, work and sports teams, marriages, parents/children) reveals a set of 4 best practices that can be mastered and implemented in a relatively short time by diligent and mindful effort:
Don’t act like an enemy
Speak so people will understand you
Listen so you will understand people
Dilute the differences
STEP 1: Don’t act like an enemy
Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. — Plato
People who can quickly and accurately differentiate between friend and foe survive more than those who couldn’t, and so this skill has been refined and transmitted throughout the human population. People will “read you” in less than 10 seconds on the friend/foe axis and will treat you according to their assessment, so a lot is riding on what your behavior signals to your audience. If you get a “Foe” rating, you will trigger lots of fight and flight from others; signaling “Friend” enables people to put down their weapons and sets the stage for productive speaking, listening and dealing.
ACTIVITY: Imagine someone (it can be a person you know or a fictional or historical figure) you view as an “enemy”. List all the things they are DOING that lead you to put them in the enemy column.
We are very good at defining key enemy behaviors such as emotional coldness, anger, dishonesty, disrespect, selfishness, cruelty etc. Once we do that, all we have to do is frame the opposite/inverse to come up with the right behaviors for Don’t act like an enemy. The most important relationship facilitating behaviors were outlined by Carl Rogers in his study of the most effective helpers, such as
warmth
respect
clarity
honesty
understanding
When you exhibit these behaviors, other people will be more likely to trust you, feel good about you, and engage with you.
STEP 2: Speak so people will understand you
When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking about what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say. — Abraham Lincoln
Broadcasting words out of your mouth does not guarantee understanding by others. Many people default to a telling/directing speaking style (Do this! Give me that!) backed up by attacking and blaming when the other person fails to comply. Cycles of aggressive directing/attacking speech are a core driver of relationship failure because they trigger fight/flight reactions in others rather than listening/understanding, let alone buy-in.
To avoid an aggressive speaking style (and it’s equally ineffective opposite of passivity/silence), we can learn to use the so-called “assertive communication” model to pursue our wants and preferences. Assertiveness combines clarity of expression with mutual respect for self and others. Rather than demanding what we want, we can clarify how the current situation is not serving either party well, and what specific changes can better serve their interests. There are 4 steps to the assertive communication template that can be used to speak about any high-stakes issue. The acronym 2F2W helps chunk this for easy memory storage/retrieval:
FACTS: Describe the current situation (including what you and other person are doing) without blaming
FAILURE: Define how the status-quo fails to satisfy BOTH parties
WANT: State clearly (but do not demand) what you want the other person to do in very specific behavioral terms
WIN: Define how satisfying your request will make things better for you AND the other party
By appealing to mutual self-interest (rather than demanding and blaming), you will increase the likelihood that the other person will listen/hear and understand what you are saying and asking for, which is a key building block for a successful relationship.
STEP 3: Listen so you will understand people
I increasingly believe that the essence of leadership … is the ability to be an eloquent listener, to hear and understand what your colleagues have to say. — Sen. Howard Baker
If you follow Step 1 (acting in a way that doesn’t trigger fight/flight reactions in your audience) and Step 2 (speaking in a way that others can hear/understand), you are half way (2/4) to an ideal relationship outcome. Relationships are like a bank account with deposits and withdrawals and debts and bankruptcies. The reckonings happen when people determine that you are making a lot of withdrawals from their account by seeking what you want, but making inadequate deposits by giving them what they want in return.
The main way we fail to meet others’ wants is by not listening/hearing and understanding what their wants are. Turns out that this listening-hearing-understanding business is harder than it appears because it requires the investment of significant mental energy in the brain functions of attention and receptive language processing. People vary in their basic skill level of these functions as well as in their motivation to understand and care about what others say and want.
There are many mental processes that dramatically interfere with our ability to attend to and understand what others are saying, such as:
Winning: you are trying to dominate and get what you want (win/lose mindset)
Rehearsing: while the other person is talking, you are planning your next statement
Mind-reading: rather than listening to the other person, you are trying to figure out what they “really” mean
Judging: you make negative assumptions about the other person that interfere with listening to and understanding them
Daydreaming: your mind wanders and you lose focus on what the other person is saying
Advising: rather than simply listening, you jump ahead to thinking about a solution
Sparring: you react to the other person’s words with arguing and disagreement
Being right: if the other person sees things differently than you do, you discount what they say in order to prove them wrong
A good way to practice and develop good listening skills is to use the Speaker-Listener paradigm in which each person takes one of those roles for a while. The Speaker’s job is to use the assertive communication approach described above (Step 2) to clearly articulate what they want. The Listener’s job is to listen to what the Speaker is saying, and to communicate their understanding by repeating back what they have heard. The Speaker can (respectfully) correct any misunderstanding by the Listener until they get it right.
The challenge for the Listener is to avoid all of their habitual listening obstacles in the service of accurate understanding. People who tend to be either distractible or self-absorbed will find the Listening mode quite challenging, but practice makes for better skill. After a round of speaking-listening, the parties switch roles and practice them to mastery.
STEP 4: Dilute the differences
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. — Abraham Lincoln
You might think that if you avoid acting like an enemy, speak so people will understand you, and listen so you will understand them, then everything will work out fine in your relationships. Not so fast! What you will unfortunately discover after all that work is that you understand what each party wants, but sometimes those wants are DIFFERENT. You both want to go get some ice cream on a hot summer day, but you want vanilla and the other person wants chocolate, and you only have enough money for one order. What to do?
The success of our relationships is determined largely by how we manage our inevitable differences with others. The good news is that after successfully completing Steps 1–3, you and the other party have all the data needed to build a mutually agreeable plan. This is the stage of negotiation, and calls for some creativity (and continued high levels of Steps 1–3) while working toward an agreement.
There are several ready-made and easy to use strategies for balancing conflicting wants/preferences. Using our ice cream case example, these agreement strategies include:
First yours, then mine (this time we get chocolate, next time vanilla)
Split the difference (half chocolate, half vanilla)
Bigger view (we both like coffee ice cream … coffee it is!)
These strategies can be used to bridge most (though not all) differences. Once you forge your agreement plan, you both need to follow it to the letter or you will start to view each other as enemies and the whole thing will crumble. Such a waste of time and energy and promise for a better relationship. If a workable agreement eludes you both, you can seek out a third party to mediate the dispute and help forge a workable plan.
Plays well with friends
If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. — African proverb
The company I consulted with on this issue provided everyone (including the C-suite!) with several training sessions on these relationship skills. They also added the question “Does X consistently use the 4 best relationship practices in their dealings with you?” to their performance management/behavior survey to reinforce that learning. It made a positive difference. I have offered these guidelines to a number of people and couples who wanted to improve their relationship with each other and with their children and friends. Those who practiced these skills diligently reported good results.
Relationship success is as simple and as difficult as understanding, practicing and mastering these four relationship skills and then using them consistently with every person who matters. Now that we have a good way to do this, the remaining question is:
Do we have the will?
TIP SHEET: BEST RELATIONSHIP PRACTICES
I. Don’t Act Like An Enemy
Rx: display warmth, honesty, understanding, respect
II. Speak So People Understand You
Rx: utilize the 2F2W (Facts, Failure, Want, Win) assertive script
III. Listen So You Understand People
Rx: overcome any obstacles to listening/understanding
IV. Dilute the Differences
Rx: use one of the 3 negotiation strategies (first yours/then mine, split the difference, bigger view) to finesse inevitable differences; enact skills 1–3 continuously throughout
Amazing how common and unhelpful 'advising' is. It feels like a slap in the face.
Perhaps genuinely liking ones opposite number helps.