Employing Differences, Episode 201: One of us is mad, now what?

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

[00:00:11] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:13] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:15] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, one of us is mad, now what? 

[00:00:22] Karen: So as we prepped to hit record on this episode, Paul and I discovered that we've each recently had a situation where someone else on our team is absolutely furious with some outside entity. And rightfully so, right? There was a contract.

[00:00:41] Karen: There was an agreement. There were things that were supposed to be done by that other entity. They haven't done them. That has hurt our efforts in some way. So Paul and I have both been sitting in this situation where somebody that we're working with is really, really angry. And we totally get why. It's not that we think they're wrong to be angry. We get why they're angry. And for whatever the reason, we aren't as impacted personally, Paul and I, in this story, as our partner is.

[00:01:11] Karen: And therefore, we're unhappy about it. We're a little grumpy about it, maybe. But we're not so angry. And what that means is that we're in a different place about accessing our cognitive best functions, accessing other, you know, like, as we think about now what to do about this. This thing has happened. It's a bad thing that was caused by somebody outside, not outside our relationship, not doing what they said they would do.
 
[00:01:41] Karen: And what are we going to do about that? And how to have a conversation about what to do about that when one of our team is sufficiently angry that they're not actually in a good place to strategize relationship work. 

[00:01:56] Paul: Yes, that is very true. We've talked before about how the impact of strong relationships, strong emotions can show up in relationships. Back in episode 153, we talked about, hey, when I'm working with, say, with Karen, right? And Karen gets mad about a thing. It's like, how do I regulate in such a way that I can stay connected with Karen? I can stay in relationship with her, but I don't also need to get mad, right? How do I not catch that anxiety or fear or whatever it is? And so if you're interested in learning how to do that, we recommend going back and listening to episode 153. That's the sort of in the moment. How do I avoid getting caught up in the whirlwind? What we're really trying to talk about today is the now what? So, you know, there is actually something that needs to happen. And so in, you know, it may be that, you know, you're mad, too, just not as mad. You absolutely see that something needs to change.

[00:20:50] Paul: So how do you usefully move forward? That's what we really want to explore here today. And, you know, spoilers, there's no one answer to this. It depends on the situation. What we really want to dig into is the sort of understanding what options are, being able to see what's what's going on in these situations so that we can make good choices about it. And I think one of the things you pointed out, Karen, that's an important thing to assess is, you know, the other person who we're working with in this situation, what the two things, one of them is what is the nature of our relationship with them? So in the situation that I was in, it happened to be someone who I actually have a very good working relationship with, work with regularly. We're able to work through a lot of tough issues together.

[00:03:33] Paul: And so so it was a strong relationship that I could sort of tap into. And then, two, like what is their level of skill generally, not necessarily in the moment of being able to work relationally. Right. So to be able to see like if I just go and lash out at this, this third party that's caused this problem, do they think that's a bad idea or do they not? Do they normally think it's a bad idea? Because in the moment they might really want to punch that person in the nose. And so those are two things that in terms of thinking about it in of of what are options that I have to help the pair of us or the group of us to move forward? The first things I wanted to be doing is looking at what is the current strength of relationship I have with this, with this person or group, and what is their level of skill? Because that's going to completely change what I what's at play.

[00:04:23] Karen: Yeah. And I think the ideal situation is the one that you were in with your partner in this this little experiment, which is the case where, the we talk a lot about the space between individuals where there is a strong, robust, interactive space between with a lot of trust, a lot of sense of safety. There's a solid relationship there to depend upon, which makes it possible for them to still feel safe when you say not sure that, you know, that that thing that you want to do of go and yell at them. Could we stop and think about that for a minute? Like when there's that strong space between they feel safe with you enough, and so you can have that conversation.

[00:05:09] Karen: And, and at the same time, and that I will say is a separate thing. You listed two things that I do want to name. They may go together, but they're not always the case. You can't have a strong space between even with someone who is less skilled in some of this stuff. It takes a pretty high relationship skill level to be able to say, I'm furious. And that may not be the thing that should drive what I do next, like to be able to say, boy, I really want to go yell at that person and oh, and I'll be sorry later if I do that.

[00:05:39] Karen: And so in your case, you were working with someone who had that capacity, who had done enough of their own work and done enough emotional management and studied enough of this stuff and practiced it and probably grew up in a house where there was more of it. I don't know somebody who for whatever reason in your relationship, you know, to be somebody who can do that, who can say maybe in this moment, the thing that all of my brain is telling me to do, I should stop and rethink that because I might not be my best self in this moment. Yeah.

[00:06:08] Paul: The thing that is interesting there is like, you know, as we talked about before, when we get in when we get emotionally activated and we get reactive, right, we lose access to some of those skills. Right. And that's why I was kind of pointing to the like they may not have those skills in that moment, you know, that they generally are pretty good at. And the thing about being, you know, being the the reasonable version of yourself in that moment is you can kind of kind of bring them back. But at the same time, you also need to leverage that strong relationship, that space between usefully. One of my patterns that I could absolutely do in that situation is to say, well, you know, maybe we just we should just let it go. Right.

[00:06:52] Paul: We don't really need to deal with it because I'm worried that if I push this person to try to do something constructive, right, you know, and that that's going to damage the relationship between us. The more useful thing for me to do is to leverage that and to say, look, we have a strong relationship so I can actually trust that by saying, I get that you're super mad about this and I don't think going and yelling at them right now is a good idea. And I want to find a way that we can actually address this. There needs to be a now what here. I don't just want to sit with that. Like that's a that's a risky space to to potentially step into.

[00:07:37] Paul: But recognizing when the relationship is strong enough that you can do that, that's where some of the real magic can happen, because what you're doing there is you're kind of like what I was doing in this particular moment was recognizing I need to honor the sort of anger that was in my partner in that moment of like, that's real. There's real there's real hurt here. I feel it, but not quite as deeply. And I need to channel that usefully. This is a sign that something needs to change. Like resentment is just going to build if we do nothing.

[00:08:08] Paul: And I'm going to be complicit in creating more of that resentment if I just, you know, kind of try to hold it rather than trying to move things forward. So it's an interesting risk for me to sort of think about. But recognizing I had the option of we have a strong relationship. And I know that because our relationship is good and the other person has these relational skills, they might not be able to use them effectively towards this third party that's caused this harm, but they can at least use them towards me.

[00:08:37] Karen:  Yeah. And this is one of the reasons that we have talked for probably every episode we've done in some way about building that space between building that relationship and building our own internal strength and skills around that. Because all of us get mad. All of us have that moment that we're not making good choices. We're not doing things that are going to support the relationship. If that's not happening to you, you're probably not very invested in anything. It is a thing that happens. And so in that moment, the very best thing that can be is that the person that you're with can help you re-regulate so that when you're in that situation, you just have so much more room for it.

[00:03:21] Karen: So that's the ideal. That's the way we would like this situation to play out. And we want to acknowledge that that may not be the situation that you're in. And that was the case with me. I'm sitting on a board with a board chair that is really, really mad, justifiably, really, mad at somebody that this organization has a relationship with and and just really wants to meet with him and express all the reasons that he's mad. And and this is not someone that I have a long term relationship with. We don't have a history of trust. There is not a lot of space between space, kind of the opposite in some ways. But so I can't leverage that relationship.

[00:10:10] Karen:  I mean, I can try to point to what are our shared goals. I can try to validate, you know, I get why you're mad. You have every reason to be mad. These are all those things that you're saying absolutely did happen. And that other person was wrong in all of those ways. And, you know, and our job is to figure out how to make it better. And point out, you know, I don't think yelling at them is actually going to do the trick, but I don't have the likelihood of success because the relationship isn't there. And secondarily, this is someone who, as far as I can tell, has never made any effort to learn how to do relationships well. If he has, it has not shown up in his communications with me.

[00:10:55] Karen: But, you know, he's a nice guy. He's, you know, volunteering time and energy and effort and resources towards a public good as he sees it. And I agree with him. And I think he's done a lot of great things. But the relational space is not his world. And so his ability to say, I'm furious and fury might not be the thing that's going to guide me to making good decisions about that. He doesn't know that that's true on his best day. He doesn't know that that's true. So I can't leverage that either. And, and so this is a case where, oddly for us, I'm going to say I'm going to advise myself and I'm happy for Paul to give me advice on this, too. This might not be my moment to do the vulnerability thing. But the curiosity has to be in play.

[00:11:40] Karen: I have to keep being interested in what's going on over there and what's happening for him and what does he really want and what what room might I have? But I can't use the tools that we talk about on this podcast so much because there's no place for them to engage with me. I can hammer forever, but there is no nail to hit.

[00:12:01] Paul: I think that's a really interesting observation, because what I was thinking as you were talking is, you know, that there's kind of the things the things that are at play are two of the things we've identified already, which is this idea of what is the nature of the relationship? You have the other person. The other one is, you know, what's their level of relational skill? Right. The other thing that's at play is sort of your skill. Right. What, what can you what, what are you capable of? Like, where can you go? And, you know, kind of not just your skill, but also like your emotional reserves and things like that, your energy and things like that. And recognizing that when those first two things are, are missing or low, your skill is less useful, that there's, as you say, less place for it to land. You know, you're like, I have these skills, but, but if I haven't built the strong relationship, I have invested in it already and it's already developed.

[00:12:52] Paul: It's not there to leverage. And if the other person isn't receptive to it, if they don't if they don't understand what I'm even trying to do or and don't have the skills to respond usefully, then your skill isn't it isn't as skillful, isn't as useful in in that situation. And so I like the idea of, as you were saying, engaging curiosity because that's always useful. But using some of the skills that we've talked about on the show does require a degree of vulnerability. And if it's not feeling usefully safe to do that, then I think it makes sense to, to not because it's not going to work. Right. You're like, if I can't be vulnerable in those ways, that also cuts out a set of things that I could do. Like I've got a really limited set of things that I can do at that point. You know, things like I can validate their, you know, their emotional state.

[00:13:44] Paul: Right. You know, makes sense that you'd be mad. Like that's a, that's a thing that doesn't require a lot of vulnerability to do. Right. You know, you, you can get curious, you can do those sorts of things. But those are only going to go so far. All right. You might ask things like. I mean, I don't know that I would, but you can get into that, like when you go to yell at this guy, how do you think he's going to respond? Right. Sort of curiosity by proxy sort of thing to maybe get some wheels turning. You, you may know that if I do that to this person there, that's not a useful course of action to go down. Right.

[00:14:20] Paul: That they're that, that's not going to make a difference to what they do. So it is like you're in that situation when you don't have either of those two kind of really important things that we talked about at play. You have to really assess what skills do I have that are even going to be useful in this situation? 

[00:14:39] Karen: Yeah, so I think what we're saying is that it happens occasionally, it happens to everybody now and again that they get so mad that they're not their best selves about how they would handle something. And that happens in teams. So you may be on a team with someone who is really emotionally engaged, probably angry about something going on. And when you figure out, OK, what do I do now? What we've got, one of us is really mad. The other one is just, you know, somewhat unhappy. But, you know, we have a thing that happened. We don't like we'd like to fix it. And one of us is so mad that they don't have their whole capacities available. And what do we do? And what we're proposing is that what you can do in that space depends a lot on what the relationship is with that other person and what that other person's skill level is about this kind of thing. So in the perfect case, there is a strong relationship and it's with someone who has a lot of emotional self-awareness and that kind of thing.

[00:15:42] Karen: And in that case, you can really leverage the strength of the relationship and the skill set that they have, maybe not in the moment, but the underlying skill set. You can really use the relationship to draw those better skills back up. And so by being present with them, validating and and just a gentle reminder of, you know, it makes sense that you want to do what you want to do, but maybe that's not going to get you what you want or get us what we want. Like that that kind of thing can be incredibly powerful. It's one of the reasons to have teammates is because when you're as we said in so many other cases, when I'm at my worst day, if somebody else can be at their better day, then then you can pull me up to what I can do. And, and so that's the one side.

[00:16:27] Karen: And then the other side is when those are not the case, when there's not enough relationship. So there's not enough trust for while they're feeling really angry and and frankly, vulnerable underneath the anger. Almost always they aren't they don't trust that criticism from me is acceptable or is safe. So there's no relationship to leverage and there's not an underlying skill set there for them to draw on to re-regulate themselves and get to a better place. But if you don't have those things, some of these strategies, more relational strategies won't work and you'd have to look toward other strategies. And I think we're going to touch on that in our next episode.
 
[00:17:09] Paul: Well, given that, that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:17:14] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig.

And this has been Employing Differences.