Employing Differences, Episode 137: Are you coming with me?

Paul: 0:08

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: 0:14

I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:16

And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:17

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Are you coming with me?"

Paul: 0:27

One of the things – that for any group of people larger than one – that can be very challenging is change. Something that is some way becoming some different way. This can be we are going to have a different routine for how we make meals. This could be we're transitioning to using a new payroll system at work, and so we need to enter our timesheets differently. This can be we are physically moving from one location to another and need to pack up everything and carry it along. We've talked a little bit about change here on the show before but one of the things about changes like this is that we each experience them differently. We experience the same change in different ways. Predictably, we experience the same change in different ways, but exactly how we experience it is often unpredictable. Karen and I have both been dealing with some changes recently and have been reminded of how much stress that can actually put on the space between. It can be difficult to to work collaboratively when we're experiencing this change in very, very different ways. And experiencing the people we normally are very collaborative with in very, very different ways than we're used to in a more steady state, in a constant environment. So we wanted to explore here today this feeling of, "Hey, we may be going somewhere. Are we actually going to the same place? Are we are in on this journey together?" Because it can very often feel like we're not.

Karen: 2:01

Yeah, yeah. And I think often we do a reasonably good job of naming the destination. So we've agreed we're both going to the same place. And as Paul said, we're both in some sorts of transitions. Mine is a move getting ready to happen. Moving a house, and this is the first for my husband and I in quite this way. We're both very clear that we're going to move from this house to the other house. We've picked out the other house, and we have a vision of how we'll live together and the other house that I think is pretty aligned. So the issue isn't as much are we going to the same place? But really, are you coming with me? Because it feels a lot of the time like I'm on a highway over here and he's taking a train that way. And in the between I feel alone and unsupported and I'm not getting what I need. And he's of course having exactly the same experience on his side. And I think it comes to this thing of what we have always in common in transition –what you can absolutely rely on as part of the experience for everybody – is stress. When we're in transition, when things aren't in the familiar patterns, when they're not habitual, when we don't know what's coming next, we can't absolutely expect things to be the way that they've been, transitions are stressful. Absolutely reliably. What isn't reliable is that the stress is the same. And so, for me, there's a stress around being in between things. So I don't want to start packing everything up and increase the time that we're in this in between space. That's probably a stress point for me. For my husband, the stress is there's so much to pack. There's so much to do, we should get started. And I think it's pretty reliable that whether it's in a work relationship, or a community relationship, or a household sharing relationship, that the space between can start to feel really big. When I'm over here dealing with the thing that really stresses me out and I don't feel like you're with me, because you're over there dealing with the thing that stresses you out. And you don't feel like I'm with you and what's more, we're each coping in our own ways with our own stresses, doing things that exacerbate the stress of the other.

Paul: 4:29

And that is reliably what happens when we when we don't pay attention to it. When we don't handle it well, it's not the problem that is the problem. It's the way that we're dealing with the problem that creates more of a problem. There is the stress of the actual thing we need to do. The tangible thing of "Getting all of these things from point A to point B," in your case. Or, "Hey, we're gonna remodel this thing" or "Hey, we're reorganizing how these teams work, and so you're gonna be in a different team." There's the logistics of all of that. That is in and of itself often stressful. But then the fact that we're experiencing different stress points along that continuum, along that process, from the other people we're doing it with, and they don't seem to notice it. Or, even worse, we tell ourselves the story that they don't care, when in fact, it's probably that they don't notice. The thing that that can happen is that in those moments, we have whatever the the challenge is – the change that we're trying to make– and the stresses that are coming along with that. Then we each have our own experiences of what that is, and it's very easy for us to think that the other person is the cause of the stresses that we're having. And that's one of those things that shows up in the space between that puts the strain on the relationship. And so one of the things that I try to do as much as possible – in my own life, when I'm working with groups, when I'm working with other folks – is figuring out how do we actually de-personalize this? How do we take whatever the thing is that we're experiencing, and put it out here so that we can all look at it? And often that involves sharing our separate experiences of it. So what I like in one of the things that you're saying, is can we talk about what is it that is stressful for each of us around that thing? Talking about it coming from that, not from what the other person is doing.

Karen: 6:46

The other thing that gets helped there is what I will call a sense of belonging. Humans have this incredible need for a sense of belonging. This is the old tribal safety thing. For most of the history of our species, if you got kicked out of your tribe, you died. And so this existential need to feel like we belong, we're accepted, we're not alone in the world. When we head off on our different roads – even when we're headed to the same destination – that sense that we belong, that we're accepted, that we're not alone goes down, just at the moment when the stressfulness of our situation means we need it the most. And so this piece that you're talking about, of getting together and sharing and talking

through and being authentic: 7:33

I want to say we're not going to do it well. We're all having a bad day, so it's likely to come out with some sharp words. It's likely to come out in a less generous frame than we would like it to. We can certainly try to be aware that that's the tendency and do a better job sending. Also it's wise to have some capacity around receiving that feedback. That things that are coming across more sharply or blamey or judgy probably aren't actually the real relationship here. It's probably the situation. But even with substandard communication, having communication, having a touch point, having a moment to be heard and have someone say,"Okay, I get that" and to adjust and offer whatever support they can will help us also with that sense of belonging. So the belonging-meter either makes it all worse, or can help mitigate it a little bit. But it can go one way or the other and having the conversation really works in our favor.

Paul: 8:39

Well, there's there's really two things that can that can come out of that. One is maybe it is that we don't actually end up doing anything different but we at least feel more connected to the people who are around us. We're better resourced, because we recognize,"Okay, we're not alone." Other people understand what's happening here. "Oh, okay. This person isn't being a jerk. It's that they're under stress from this thing that I didn't realize." That doesn't bother me at all, and so I don't even think about the fact that that bothers you. "Oh, that explains this weird behavior that that is triggering me. Oh, okay." It can help us put us back into relationship and that can resource us a little bit better. Because otherwise, what we're doing is we're trying to manage two sources of stress at the same time. As you point out, we're trying to manage the stress of the transition itself, but we're also trying to manage the stress on the relationship. The feeling like, "Wait, I thought I understood. I thought we knew how to work together." If we can at least decrease that stress, and go. "Oh, it's understandable. Okay, I see what's going on. I don't like it, but I at least understand that." That brings that stress level down. And then the other thing as your point out is that can actually help us to find better ways of addressing the actual work that we need to do to make the transition happen. We can go, "Oh, well, actually, I didn't realize that me trying to deal with my anxiety around this particular thing, the strategy that I was choosing to do that is causing a lot of stress for you. I actually have another thing that I could do instead that wouldn't be as stressful." Great, let's do that. Or, "Wait a minute, why are we even doing this thing? Do we really need to?" We may discover things about performing the change – helping the transition to happen – that we can do in a better way that actually just decreases the stress of that and makes it easier to go. But absolutely, as you say, this is one of those moments where we're not at our best to do this kind of thing. And so finding ways – finding small ways – to do it even just a little bit can be hard.

Karen: 10:56

Yeah. I think another way to say that is that normally, in cooperative spaces, we do things that support each other. We expect that and we want to do that. It feels good to be in support, and it feels good to be supported. We have this sort of mutual support arrangement – hopefully – that works really well. And in moments of stress and moments of transition, one of the things that happens is everybody is beyond their capacity. Just the things that I actually have to do are beyond my capacity, managing the stress of the transition is beyond my capacity, which also means that my need for support increases and my availability to give support decreases. And that's happening to the other person or other people on the team at exactly the same time. So there's this disconnect between the kind of support and amount of support that we like to give each other, that we're in the habit of giving each other, that we feel good about giving each other and what actually can happen. And so it can be useful to name out loud that while our intentions around support haven't changed, the reality is we are going to disappoint each other. We are going to fall short because our capacity is not up to the full usual functionality. And that can again leave us feeling uncared for and alone. And it's very different than the experience we have when one person is in a stressful time. If one person has a death in the family, or one person needs to move their office, or one person takes on a big piece of a project, or whatever, the rest of the team ups their support and care. And so we often experience in collaborative spaces that when I need extra support, you all give it to me. This was wonderful! And then when that doesn't happen, it can be quite jarring. And transitions that are whole team transitions are really predictable places for that to occur.

Paul: 13:03

The way that that happens is nonlinear. Everything actually seems like it's fine, and then we drive off a cliff. Because it it very quickly goes from, okay, this is ramping up, it's getting a little more stressful, I'm a little able to give a little less support, and then all of a sudden, everything is on fire. That is often how we experience these things, and I think that's where the surprise comes from. The surprise is not that this is going to be stressful and that this is going to be difficult. It's that we we move very quickly from"Everything seems okay" to"Nothing is good." I think one of the things that we can do – as you pointed to – as soon as we start to notice that that is starting to happen, we need to acknowledge it. And I love the way that you described it. Normally we would see this pattern of being able to give and receive help. And we need more and can give less. So when we become aware of that – like we've talked about before, when we normalize that discomfort – we recognize that it's not dysfunctional. It's not sustainable in the long term. But it reduces our anxiety about the fact that it's happening. And again, that can sometimes create enough for us to have a practice to be able to say, "So given that we're noticing we're in this space, what can we do so that we can have the conversation about how we're each experiencing this?" We recognize now we're going to need to strategize more, and we're going to need to build more of a sense of belonging, and a sense of connection to help us deal with that. What can we do around that? And so I think as soon as we start to notice that we're getting into that situation, we need to jump on that. Because that means we are as smart as we could possibly be, because it's only going to get worse the deeper into it we get. And then I think the other piece around it is – as we've talked about before – whenever we work in a situation where our needs exceed our capacity, we're going to need to do some repair afterwards. We know that things are going to happen in that space that we're going to need to come back around and clean up. And so being ready to do that. To not just have the thing happen, and then let's just never talk about that again, might seem really nice in the moment. But when we actually do get enough through the transition, we've gotten to enough space, such that our capacity now is greater than our need that we're actually able to go back and clean some of that stuff up. That means we won't have things that we're going to carry forward. And resentments and fears around what happens if we go through this again. We don't have to carry that stuff forward quite as much, which is another thing we've talked about on the show before.

Karen: 16:00

Absolutely, yeah. And the one other thing I want to say about the cliff is that your cliff may be at different time than my cliff. So I may be okay,"This is stressful, I'm hanging on, and it's all okay, and it's just stressful," and you're falling off a cliff. And I just don't see it. And then on a different day, you will be going along okay, and I will be falling off a cliff and you're not seeing it. And so just being prepared for people to hit that wall at different points. And again – I just want to reiterate what you're saying about repair– small repairs as we go. If somebody falls off a cliff, and you're sort of like, "Oh, where'd you go?" If we can lend a hand up even in a small way that's really useful. And be prepared that as capacity increases – where there is capacity for support, for repair, for even normalizing – use what capacity you have in those ways. Because what we really don't want is to leave our co-workers or cohabitants or whoever we're in this with in that state of "Are you coming with me?" That's such an uncomfortable place to be that getting little bits of realignment is usually helpful.

Paul: 17:19

And we want to make sure that we do actually all end up in the same spot together when we're done. So to track where we've been today, we're talking about when we have a group that's going through some sort of change – some sort of transition – that is creating some amount of stress for each of them, it's important to remember that we each experience the same change in different ways. For some people, it's very stressful. For some people, it's less stressful. There are different pieces of those changes that are going to be stressful for different people in the group. And we often don't recognize what those are. What happens normally when we work together effectively in a collaborative space or group is that as our needs increase, the support that we get from the rest of the group also increases to counter that. And when the whole group is going through something that is creating stress or anxiety – like change– that means the group's capacity to help each other starts to go down. So we should not be surprised when we get into these situations where the opposite of what we are used to have happening happens. So instead of us needing more support and getting more support, we need more and we get less, and everybody starts to have that experience. And we can all drive off a cliff very, very quickly. So what we're saying is that when we start to notice that that is happening, it can be very useful to find ways to not identify the other people in the group as the problem, to be able to take the problem and put that change – that transition – out front and get curious about what other people's experience of it are. What is stressful to them and not? What are they curious or are they anxious about? What's going on? Ao that we can start to reestablish the sense of connection with the other people and that sense of belonging, which can reduce our stresses around that. But then also we start to see what are better strategies for actually dealing with this transition that are going to help all of us through. The earlier we can do that, the better off we're going to be, but we should also recognize that we're going to have some cleanup work that we're going to need to do when we're done. So doing a little bits of cleanup as we can along the way. When we are perhaps a little snippy with someone, when we do not appreciate the help that someone has given to us, when those things happen and we respond in away that we would like to, as soon as we can to repair that. But also having time after we have arrived at our destination to do some cleanup and some repair to make sure that we've actually all made it through this trip and this transition together and that we don't feel alone when we've gotten to the other side.

Karen: 20:11

I think that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 20:15

And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.