Over the 11 years my wife and I have been married, I have gotten into many, many, “discussions” with her. Many of them were frustrating, confusing, infuriating and yet illuminating, all at the same time! I realized that I often approached those situations in our relationship in ways that I felt was respectful and thoughtful; however she revealed (many times) that my actions were not received by her as being respectful and thoughtful at all! In fact, she has often thought that I was being the opposite of respectful and thoughtful! This is what is so frustrating. I thought I was doing right, she thought I was doing wrong and we both found ourselves stuck many times.
Can you relate?
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The illuminating part was seeing time and time again, just how different we really are. In my attempts to do the right thing, I ended up doing the wrong thing in her eyes. In her attempts to do the right thing, she ended up doing the wrong thing in my eyes.
Sound familiar?
In other words, one of the the biggest causes of conflict in the workplace is tied into how we relate to one another!
Let Me Breathe!
I once worked with someone who would immediately want to tell me every every detail of her weekend when I walked into work on Monday morning. Unfortunately for her, I wanted to spend Monday morning focusing on getting caught up over what happened over the weekend and prepare myself for the week ahead. So, I guess you could say we both had very different agendas!
I would often walk in to the office with my head down (trying to avoid eye contact) and head straight into my office. When grabbing my morning coffee, I would keep my head down, walk straight to the coffee machine, avoid eye contact while waiting for my coffee, and then grab my coffee and head straight to my office, without encouraging any type of conversation on her part.
How do you think my actions were perceived?
I’m sure that my avoiding her didn’t do our relationship any good and in looking back, while I do wish she was more self-aware to know that Monday morning wasn’t a good time to unload about her weekend to me, I know I could have handled those situations much more effectively, so she still felt valued and cared for, while still setting healthy boundaries about what I needed from her.
Both of us entered into this situation thinking that we were both right! I’m sure she couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just listen for for 15 minutes about what was going on in her life, and I couldn’t understand why she didn’t understand my need to get started on my work.
We all do speak different languages, don’t we? And this makes creating positive and effective relationships at work not very easy! But it can be done! Pay attention to your effect on other people and when you find yourself at an impasse, instead of blaming it on the other person and trying to get him/her to change, find ways that you can do something different to effect the change you desire!
What have you done to cultivate positive relationships at work?
