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

[00:00:09] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:09] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:11] Karen: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, does this relationship matter? 

[00:00:19] Paul: So Karen and I often end up working with groups and individuals who have some sort of explicit value around relationship, be that collaboration or equity or things that really tap into that relational space that where there is an explicit acknowledgement of this collaborative space, right?

[00:00:39] Paul: This space between is something that is explicitly important and value. So it's unsurprising that we end up working with groups like this. However, we also sometimes end up with working with and being part of groups that may not have an explicit value about that and may not explicitly want to foster relationships and build things forward and things like that.

[00:01:00] Paul: And our viewpoint on this is often that even if it is not something that you have an explicit value around from a purely pragmatic standpoint, it can be worth investing in energy and time in building the relational space. 

[00:01:17] Karen: Yeah, it's one of those things that so much of the time you and I live in the space of of course relationships matter and of course connection matters, but I think all of us have moments in life where that's not the relationship I want to maintain or I don't need a great relationship with the person who checks out my groceries.

[00:01:34] Karen: It's nice if I can smile at them, but you know what, if I'm like, just barely making it through my day or whatever, and I don't want to say hello. The relationship may not be the priority. It may be getting through the line with my groceries is the priority. And I think that's all really good to know.

[00:01:49] Karen: And there are absolutely moments where I'm just not gonna pay attention to the relationship. I'm not gonna be a jerk. I'm gonna try and probably be polite, but I'm just not going out of my way. Because of life, because of whatever happens, right? And certainly there are, as you say, organizations or spaces where people are even working together every day and people say, well, but those are not my friends.

[00:02:12] Karen: I have my friends at their places. It's not the relationships that matter. I go, I get my work done. I get my paycheck. And we want to sort of question whether you can be in a space where you're going to have ongoing interaction with someone or some group and the relationship really doesn't matter, even if it's not your priority.

[00:02:31] Karen: I didn't go there to make friends. I went there to get my job done and get my paycheck and accomplish the goal and make profit for the company or whatever. You'd say your priorities are. What we want to talk about today is that we're not going to argue that you're wrong about your priorities. You get to decide your priorities.

[00:02:45] Karen: We're totally with you on that. And even if your priority is profit, or your priority is paycheck, or your priority is get through the day so I can be home with my kids, that likely all of those goals take a hit if you ignore the relationships. 

[00:03:02] Paul: Yeah. And that's really the pragmatic thing for me, because there are very, very few things that we can actually accomplish and do that don't involve interacting with other people. And for me, if you interact with a person more than once, you have a relationship with them. And that's, that's really it. There are some things where it really is purely transactional and I never run into you again, and that's okay.

[00:03:23] Paul: Even then, I don't like to burn my bridges because, because it's like, who knows where that's going to need to come up again. I shouldn't assume that I can just be a jerk to people and that it's not going to come back to bite me, but what we're really pointing to is that absolutely there are times when we're working with individuals or groups that have a value around this, that where the work that we end up doing with them is about helping them to see where their behavior doesn't line up with what they value, right? They value collaboration, but what they're doing is incredibly non collaborative, right?

[00:03:53] Paul: Is shutting each other down. And in there, we have an explicit sort of invitation to say and to work with, how do you bring that into alignment? What we're talking about here and that oftentimes I end up doing, for example, with some of my coaching clients is they have a value around efficiency, right?

[00:04:10] Paul: Or they have a value around getting things done. Sort of what I sometimes think of as a work oriented value or a task oriented value. But the thing is, we get work done with and through other people. There's always relationships involved. And so my standpoint is generally that you are going to achieve the work more effectively if you're better at building positive working relationships with other people.

[00:04:35] Karen: Yeah, I think we probably it's an American ideal of, you know, I pulled my own self up by my bootstraps. It's the individualism. It's the, I don't need anybody else. And I think this is a lie. I really believe in it and it's not even what I value. It's just what I noticed to be true around me that we are hugely interdependent.

[00:04:52] Karen: And what that means is that what's going on in the space between me and those other people is gonna impact whatever caused us to be in the room together, right? If I'm in a room with somebody else, there's a reason there's a thing that's trying to happen there. And whatever that reason is.

[00:05:10] Karen: Isn't going to go well if I ignore the needs, wants, whatever, communication style, all that stuff about the other person. So that space between that we talk about a lot on the show is it's important. Even if in the end, I don't care whether I see that other person again, ever. 

[00:05:32] Paul: There's also a piece there for me around going by the superhero to the purely transactional thing.

[00:05:37] Paul: I view that as an opportunity to practice relational skills. That's extremely low stakes, right? It's like if I screw up, I never see this person again. That's fine because for me, if we're good at doing all the things we talk about here on the show, right? About being curious about what's going on with the other person, right?

[00:05:56] Paul: About expressing our needs, about creating dialogue, about all these different relational skills. If we're good at that, then we can use them when we really need them. The thing is, for me, there's no real value in not using them. If I, you know, when I don't need them most of the time, because it means that if I'm just doing that all the time, it becomes natural and easy and fluid and part of just how I show up in the world.

[00:06:24] Paul: So if I'm doing that with people where it's low stakes and like we're maybe not going to work together or things like that means I'm getting the practice in. So that when I need to have the challenging conversation with the client, when I need to have this difficult conversation with my boss. When I need to start reapproaching this person who I've had a conflict with in this organization because fate has thrown us together and now we have to work together on this project, even though neither of us want to be there. If I've had the opportunity to practice that elsewhere, now, like, I really can do it when it really matters, whereas if I'm just going to be well, this is a random person on the Internet.

[00:07:02] Paul: I can just be a jerk to them that builds bad habits. And again, going back to the pragmatist in me, this isn't a moral value around this that like, well, you need to be kind to everybody because that's just what a good person does. For me, it's kindness is an incredibly practical skill, practice it as much as you can so that you're good at it when you really need it.

[00:07:25] Karen: Yeah, I think it's super easy to get sort of caught in the trap of, well, that person has treated me badly. And so why do I care if I treat them badly? Or that's I just don't like them. Why would I put effort into having a relationship with them? And I'm not saying you're going to be everybody's best friend.

[00:07:43] Karen: That's not the point. 

[00:07:44] Paul: No. 

[00:07:45] Karen: But that using good relational skills and keeping open a generally friendly like I may not like you, but it'd be handy if you still like me. Because as you say it's useful for me. And when I catch myself going, I don't care what that person thinks. I don't care if they're upset with me.

[00:08:03] Karen: I don't care how I impact them because this is not a relationship that matters. I want to pull back a little bit and go, yeah, maybe it does not because the relationship matters, but because the relationship is going to be a vehicle for the thing that does matter to me. 

[00:08:22] Paul: And one of the relational skills is also boundaries, right?

[00:08:26] Paul: And this is one of those things where sometimes we will simply, and I do this all the time, where it's like, I'm just going to avoid this person because I've had this bad experience with them. But it can also be really useful for me to practice, to the degree that I want to, being able to interact with them in a way where I'm still holding up the boundary, right? If the reason why I've had a bad experience with them in the past is they've said a number of things that are problematic, right? I'm still going to point that out when they do that around me, right? I'm going to enforce whatever boundary I have around that.

[00:08:57] Paul: I'm going to disrupt that behavior. Or if I'm going to end the conversation, like, I'm still going to do that. I'm not just going to let them, you know, walk all over me. I'm not going to say, well, I need to salvage this relationship no matter what. That's not what I'm suggesting here. And I think people who we have problems with are actually can be some of the best teachers of relational skills because they're the hard ones, right?

[00:09:19] Paul: And it's going, okay, and can I do that in a way that's less anxiety producing? The answer may be no, right? It could just be like, this relationship with this person is too hot right now. I can't do it. I don't want to go there. But I think that even those problematic ones can have things to teach us.

[00:09:36] Paul: That we can then employ elsewhere in ways that are incredibly useful for us. I'm thinking about, there was the whole saga of needing to negotiate with my neighbor about how the fence that was going to go in between our properties And so I was actually able to leverage that.

[00:09:50] Paul: It was not a thing I wanted to lean into, but I was going, okay, let me practice this. And if I screw it up, it's okay because he's moving to Costa Rica anyway. Right. And now I have that practice that I've actually been able to apply in a couple of other situations where it really did matter more where I couldn't avoid the conversation as much.

[00:10:07] Paul: Even if the relationship isn't as meaningful or doesn't matter as much to me. I think there's still a value in developing relational skills in those relationships again, from a purely practical standpoint, that that's going to be helpful to me in other situations, even if I don't value relation and connection in that particular situation.

[00:10:30] Karen: I think what we're saying is sometimes in life, we're in spaces where we know the relationship is super important and it is a primary priority. And then, you know, everything that we talk about on the show applies. But what about those times when we know this is the last time we're ever going to see this person, or we've already decided we don't want a relationship with this person, and so the relationship actually isn't a priority?

[00:10:53] Karen: Or maybe I'm just not in a space where I want relationships, but if I'm really clear that the relationship isn't at all the most important thing, does it still matter? And what we're saying is almost always it still does. And partly that's because we may not, as it turns out, be at the end of the time we're going to spend with that person, or it may be a matter of practicing being who we want to be when the relationships do matter so that we have the habits and skills to do it when it matters, or also we're not very good at predicting when it matters or when it won't, or when it will come back to us or when it won't, and so erring on the side of caring for the relationships even if we're very clear that that's not the primary value, recognizing that relationships so often are necessary to accomplish other priorities.

[00:11:47] Karen: And so making that a practice, not because it's some moral wood, but because pragmatically it's super useful, we're really advocating that almost always that is the approach to take. 

[00:12:00] Paul: Well, that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:12:04] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.