Paul: [00:00:06] Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: [00:00:12] I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: [00:00:13] And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: [00:00:16] Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, Is this really an invitation?

Paul: [00:00:25] Today's episode is inspired by a conversation that I was having with a client recently around something that was happening in their organization, and the situation of an invitation being offered. And in this case, it was an invitation to receive some help. Like, there's an initiative occurring in this organization. They're really trying to level up a bunch of their managers and directors to help them develop new skills.

Paul: [00:00:48] And so the person I was talking to had offered an invitation to a group of people. That when they had a challenge to come and to get some help. To come to the person that I was talking to around this.

Paul: [00:01:01] And the problem was that no one had taken them up on this invitation. No one had accepted this invitation. And that was itself wasn't the problem. The problem was how the person I was talking to was feeling about this. They were very frustrated. They were very angry. They were just like, "Why? Why is nobody doing this thing?" And I said, "You know, if you're not okay with them saying 'no', is it really an invitation?"

Paul: [00:01:27] And as Karen and I were kind of exploring this situation, we recognized that there are things that often sound like invitations that often aren't. So we want to explore a little bit here today, things that might sound like invitations. Things that might sound like requests, things that show up in that space between where one person is asking something from another person, or a group of people. And the varieties of different things that might be packed into that. And how that can cause confusion, frustration and an impact on the collaborative space between people.

Karen: [00:02:01] Yeah, I think we're really looking at the situation where one person is aware of a thing another person could do. And whether that's interactive, or a task that could be done or, you know, whatever the thing is. There is a tendency that we want to be nice. We like each other. We want to be friendly. And invitations are so friendly. They're soft, they're welcoming, they're optional. They're- it's a great frame, and they are all of that.

Karen: [00:02:32] And that is all great unless what we really want is for them to do the thing. An invitation is an offer. If you want it, it's available. I'm offering it to you. Very often, we frame it as an invitation, but it's actually a request. 'I would like you to do this thing.' 'It would help me if you would do this thing.' 'It would serve me well if you would do this thing.' So we'll call that a request.

Karen: [00:03:03] And occasionally, it's not even really a request. Occasionally, there's enough hierarchy in there that we might call it a demand, an instruction and expectation. This is a thing that "I say it and you're going to do it and it is necessary that you do it."

Karen: [00:03:21] And I want to just say those three are all perfectly fine things to do. But when one of them gets dressed up as something else, particularly when a demand or a request gets dressed up like an invitation. That can get really messy really fast.

Karen: [00:03:41] Certainly, the example that Paul was giving where someone had made an invitation. But it actually was important to them that people did the thing, that was being invited. That, that's a very different situation now in the moment. The problem was that because it was framed as an invitation. Nobody did it. So that's one layer of what happens. And that can be corrected. You can now frame it as a request or a demand, if need be.

Karen: [00:04:10] What I think is more dangerous is when the person on the receiving end of this request, or demand, or invitation, or whatever it is, is at some level aware. "Okay. This sounds like an invitation. But is it really an invitation?" And, "I think it might be a request" or "I think it might be a demand".

Karen: [00:04:34] And either they realize that it's a demand and they do it, but it feels icky because it wasn't clean. Right. Because now, I have to pretend that I want to do it because I'm responding to an invitation and that just feels yuck.

Karen: [00:04:52] Or they get it wrong that it really was an invitation, but they thought it was a demand and nobody needed it to be done. But they're doing it anyway and feeling resentful about it because it was a demand that it wasn't right. Like, it just goes sideways all kinds of ways. And so that psychological safety that we talk about and trust and all of those things can really get knocked around a lot on this one.

Paul: [00:05:16] And what I want to really point to there that you said I think is, that's important, is that it's really about the cleanliness, or lack thereof, that has the impact on the working relationship. Because I think, going back to what you were saying about people wanting to be nice, and so I want to make this sound like an invitation.

Paul: [00:05:36] I think it's because if if I'm a manager in an organization, and I need somebody to do a thing, or I have an expectation. Like, "This is their job, this is what we're paying the money to do". You know, we've agreed on that. Like, there's an expectation there, or there's a, there may be a demand that I need to make. 

Paul: [00:05:54] But I've been told that I need to be approachable. I need to be friendly. I need to not be a 'command and control' manager. And so I feel pressure not to be clean about it. Not to say "I need you to do this thing. And if you don't, there are going to be consequences." And so I feel the pressure not to say that.

Paul: [00:06:14] And as a result, I make it sound like an invitation. Or I try to convince them like it's their idea. "Wouldn't it be great if...", that kind of thing? And I think you're right. Like, people absolutely pick up on that and they feel the messiness of it.

Paul: [00:06:29] And so it's that lack of cleanliness that has that negative impact because we think that there are certain type of things that if we are clean about, will have a negative impact. Or will make us appear as we do not wish to appear. And so I think that's often why we get into that space, not realizing that we have other alternatives.

Karen: [00:06:50] Yeah, one of the takeaways that I hope that particularly managers, or people within hierarchy, will get from this episode is 'It's okay to make demands'. It's okay to say "I'm the boss and it needs to be this way." If in fact you're the boss and it does need to be that way. You know, we could give some language or some ideas around how to make sure that's okay.

Karen: [00:07:11] I mean, I think you want to be approachable. If there's something you might not know about it, you want it to be possible for somebody to talk to you about it. I mean, it doesn't have to be a 'no questions asked' or, you know, you don't have to do it harshly. But you can do it and say "This isn't optional. It is a requirement. It needs to get done."

Karen: [00:07:29] And if you're clean about that, there is usually not relational damage. And again, the hierarchy is correct. And if you're within your actual authority and all those kinds of things. And I'm deliberately using that strong demand language. We could call it an expectation, we could soften it up in lots of ways. That doesn't work in the relationship space. If it's a demand, it's a demand.

Karen: [00:07:51] And if you own that, and it's part of the defined relationship, there isn't a problem. I was not, not long after high school, I was in a supervising role with one of my best friends. I had worked for a company doing a summer thing for one summer and she joined the second summer. And most of the time if she said, "Hey, why are we doing this?" or "What's that for?" or whatever, I would explain it to her. And that was the relationship that we had.

Karen: [00:08:16] But occasionally, because we were in the middle of things and we just needed to get out the door or whatever, she would say, "Why are we doing this?" Or, "Could we do it this other way?" And I would say, "I don't have time to talk about it. I just need you to do it."

Karen: [00:08:28] And I might later revisit that with her or check in with her. But it didn't damage the friendship because it was within the roles that we had agreed to. And I was clear. And there wasn't any heat in it. And it wasn't a power struggle. It was just me being clear about language.

Paul: [00:08:45] I've had very similar experiences being on the receiving end of that, actually. And so that, it makes sense to me and I and I see that. So I think one of the reasons why things get messy is that we may be uncomfortable living more at that demand end of the spectrum. And we've been messaged that we're not supposed to.

Paul: [00:09:04] I do think another reason why it gets messy goes back to sort of the distinction you made between an invitation and a request. That an invitation is a thing that I'm offering to you, whereas a request is something I need.

Paul: [00:09:17] And we've talked before on the show about how there is "Absolutely!" Their cultural values and expectations are around offering help, versus asking for it. And it requires vulnerability to be able to say 'this is a thing that I need'.

Paul: [00:09:33] And so just going back to the example that I was framing up at the beginning, the way that this was presented was this is an invitation. "I'm offering this to you as a resource. You can take it or leave it, but it's really up to you." "This is a gift that I'm giving" as the way that it was kind of framed. 

Paul: [00:09:50] When the reality was more, "It's going to make my job a lot easier if you come to me and I can help you with this." That's the request. The request is "Please don't do this on your own, because I'm going to have to clean up the mess later if you do. Come to me before you do that." But framing it that way is way more vulnerable, even though that's really the reality of the situation.

Karen: [00:10:18] And I want to take that even a step further, and particularly for the example you gave. But I think it shows up a lot. It's not just that the asker is more vulnerable if they make a request. It's actually a vulnerability flip. Meaning, if you say "If you need help, come tell me you need help and I'll be glad to help."

Karen: [00:10:39] The person needing help. You're asking them to do the vulnerable thing of saying, "I can't do my job without help", or I'm, you know, like, that acknowledging fallibility in whatever way. Or lack of competence in some way or something like that.

Karen: [00:10:52] And again, I'm using strong words, but that is how it lands emotionally. And so the quote "invitation" is actually saying, "You do the vulnerable thing of being the person who needs help and come ask for it."

Karen: [00:11:07] And if we do the request thing, it flips that and says, "I'll do the vulnerable thing of saying what I need and need help." And also added benefit, "It's the truth". But that vulnerability flip is really important because- I see this in all kinds of relationships, by the way, of "If I'm offering, I'm in the control position", "I'm in the one up position, I'm in a very safe space." And then I'm surprised that when I'm trying to be so generous and helpful, people don't come and ask for the help.

Karen: [00:11:39] And the reason they don't- Well, there might be a lot of reasons. Maybe they don't think they need it, or a lot of other things. But one reason that they might not is that it takes a lot of vulnerability to ask for help. Even if you have reason to think you'll get it.

Karen: [00:11:53] And if you add into that, the dynamic of "It looked like an invitation, but I think it might not be." And you know, any of that, is in the history at all. If the communication isn't clear, then the trust level is lower. And I don't mean that you're in a train wreck of a corporate relationship necessarily. I'm just saying you're not at maximum trust. Which means you won't be at maximum willingness to go vulnerable either, and as a corporate culture. And so this all feeds on itself to where you really can go sideways in a lot of ways.

Paul: [00:12:24] Yeah. Well, to sort of track where we've been here today, we've been talking about this messiness that often exists between invitations, requests, demands, expectations. And about how that messiness is really the thing that has an impact on, on the space between, on their ability to collaborate, on our working relationships. 

Paul: [00:12:46] That when we're actually able to be clear about which of those things we're doing, are we offering something to someone and we're okay with them saying yes or no to it? Are we making a request because we have some need and we need someone else to do something? And also they're still free to say no.

Paul: [00:13:03] But we are going to ask if they are willing to do it, if they're able to do it. Or are we in that space of a demand, where this is something that we absolutely need them to do. And if they don't do it, there's going to be consequences. 

Paul: [00:13:15] When we're able to be clear about which of those we're in, it actually lands much more effectively in that space between. We often don't make it clear because of several different pressures that we often feel, right. The idea that, that living in that demand space can be, can be really problematic. That we're not supposed to do that, that we're supposed to be nice, we're supposed to be approachable.

Paul: [00:13:38] And so we disguise our expectations and our demands as requests or as invitations. And the problem there is that then it becomes unclear. And the person who we're offering this thing, offering this thing to, or really asking from, has to navigate. "Is this really a request?" "Is this is really a demand?" And that has a negative impact on the relational space.

Paul: [00:14:00] And on the other end, there's that idea of the reason why we might not make a request, why we might sort of dress it up as an invitation, is because of the question of vulnerability. When we make a request, we have to be vulnerable. Whereas, when we make an invitation, particularly an invitation to help, we may be asking the other person to be vulnerable. And so there's that idea of the vulnerability flip that happens there.

Paul: [00:14:22] And so I'm sure there are other things that if we talked for longer, we'd uncover more about. But those are two of the big reasons why we often see things dressed up as invitations that aren't really, and the negative effect that can have when we do that.

Karen: [00:14:38] That's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: [00:14:42] And I'm Paul Tevis, and this has been Employing Differences.