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

[00:00:09] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:10] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:12] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, when do we talk details? 

[00:00:20] Karen: So this is a conversation that we think happens a lot and maybe should happen more.

[00:00:25] Karen: But it shows up pretty often around transitional spaces and those can be big transitions, like onboarding a new employee or bringing in new members, that kind of thing. And it can also be in more minor transitions are at, like, you're doing an annual review with an employee and that marks that, like, we're going to try to make some changes and shift some things about how the relationship is working or what the duties are or things like that.

[00:00:48] Karen: But anytime you're in that space of transition, there tends to be at least two elements of what needs to be talked about. So one of those elements is the sort of vision, the dream, the, how do we want to feel? And this is where you hear words like it's collaborative and, you know, we get the work done very efficiently.

[00:01:09] Karen: There's a lot of like adverbs in this mix. Like we're in that space a lot. And also it's easy to find agreement there because who doesn't want to be collaborative and supported by their team? So we have that space. And we think that's important to actually name those things and to say what our values are and where we want to stand on that.

[00:01:28] Karen: And also there's the other piece, which is the details. When do we talk details? When do we talk about the logistics, the actual concrete steps? Who's going to do what? When is it going to be done? How do we know when it's done? Are there metrics that we're going to measure by? How much am I going to get paid for this new job that you're asking me to do?

[00:01:49] Karen: Like, there's all kinds of stuff. That in transition of relationship, especially when there's hierarchy, although this applies when there's not, but it's even more so when there's hierarchy involved, that we find it comfortable, I think, to hang out in that vision and shared goals. And, you know, I'm always going to be here to support you and if we stay there too long, we don't get to the details. 

[00:02:17] Karen: And in fact, staying in what feels like the cozy, yummy relational space ends up damaging the relationship because we don't end up with a shared understanding of what we're actually going to experience in a concrete world. 

[00:02:32] Paul: Yes. I think that often comes as a surprise to people, right?

[00:02:35] Paul: Cause we're, cause we're really talking about designing. The relational space, right? The space that's between us. When we work on this thing together, when we live in this community together, when we're part of this group together, like that vision is how do we want it to be? What are the ways we would describe it?

[00:02:53] Paul: What's the atmosphere? What's the culture that we want to have, which is oftentimes the level of abstraction that people think relationship lives at. And absolutely it does like there is a reality to that and at the same time relationship also lives at the concrete level of who does what and how at the concrete level of when we interact, how are we going to do these things like what are we specifically going to do?

[00:03:21] Paul: I love how you point out that vision is often at that level of adverbs and adjectives because I think the details are often at the level of just straight up verbs. Right? So it's not about we're going to do this thing skillfully or we're going to do this thing efficiently. It's like we're going to do this.

[00:03:38] Paul: I'm going to make sure that I'm providing this information to you at this cadence. You're going to do this thing, right? It's getting into those and then who's going to handle this specific thing that comes up. Relationship lives at that level too. And in fact, if we don't attend to those details, as you point out, it damages the relationship, right?

[00:03:58] Paul: Because we're gonna do things at that level of detail. Like no one lives at that level of vision, right? We live at the level of specific interactions on the day to day. That's our actual experience. And if those things that we're doing don't align with our vision of what we want the relationship to be like, that's where that damage can come in.

[00:04:21] Paul: We've said we wanted it to be collaborative, and instead, you take all of the air time in the meetings and we always end up implementing your ideas because, because, because, because whatever it is and suddenly it doesn't feel collaborative anymore. And so to your point, I think that talking about those details sooner is really useful because it starts to flesh out.

[00:04:43] Paul: Where we might accidentally go wrong, where we might start doing things without thinking about it, where we don't realize that that's not going to lead to our shared vision of what we want this working relationship to be like. 

[00:04:56] Karen: And I think a lot of the time we can start with a conversation about things that aren't actually in the control of the people having the conversation.

[00:05:05] Karen: Right? Like my contract requires me to write an employee evaluation of you once a year, I'm going to have to do that. And that's not a matter of whether I want to or not. It is just required. We have this deadline that we have to meet and it's in your job description to do this, or it's in my job description to do this or whatever.

[00:05:27] Karen: Or we have a contract with some other entity that requires that this particular thing happened in this particular way, almost always in relationships, there are things about the container that relationship is in that are actually documented somewhere. They're written down, they're incredibly clear.

[00:05:46] Karen: Nobody gets to pick them. And a remarkable amount of the time, particularly the more junior people in the relationship, don't know what they are or what they say. So it's not even we have to discuss and agree to them. We need to discuss them so that we know that they are. So we have this idea that we're going to be in a pretty equal relationship. 

[00:06:08] Karen: I don't want you to think of me as the boss. Maybe I say, or like, I want to be really collaborative with you. I want you to feel like you can say what you want to, to me. And the rules of the company are I make the decisions, right? So I can't ignore that there's a rule that says I have to make the decision if that's the case.

[00:06:27] Karen: And, you know, pretend that that doesn't exist when I say, Hey, let's be really collaborative here. I need to say both. My intention is to be really collaborative and warm. And I want us to be clear from the beginning that the rules of the game we're playing are in the end, I'm going to have to make the decision.

[00:06:45] Karen: And so I don't want that to diminish what you contribute. Like we can talk about the mechanisms of what that are, but if I leave out that part, even if it seems incredibly obvious, if I leave that part out of the conversation. Then you walk away thinking, we're going to be collaborative. I'm going to have an equal vote.

[00:07:02] Karen: And when it turns out you don't, things come crashing down fast. 

[00:07:07] Paul: I actually loved your example of the manager has to do that performance evaluation thing, because when we talk about the details, right, of the fact that that needs to happen, we can then also through the lens of the vision that we have for how we want to work together, come up with cunning ways to live by the letter of the law.

[00:07:27] Paul: But actually also live by how we want to work together. I have a colleague who was in that position, right? HR mandated that managers file these performance evaluations every year. But she was a big believer in the fact that we need to have our culture of continuous feedback where it's like, I'm always telling you like where you stand.

[00:07:46] Paul: We're always talking about how you can improve and things like that. So I'm not going to wait until the annual review to do that. We're going to be talking weekly, biweekly, whatever. And then the agreement that she actually came to with a number of her employees is was I'm going to ask you to write the review.

[00:08:01] Paul: Based on the things that we have talked about, and then I'll go over it with you. And if it feels like I can put my name to it, I will. Right. And also, you know, there'll be things where actually this thing is missing. This needs to be in there, but we will do this together. So you're going to know what's in there.

[00:08:19] Paul: Cause you're going to have had a voice in that. But only by talking about the details of the fact that this needed to happen, but we could decide how we wanted it to do together. Were they able to get to the point where they had a concrete agreement around how they were going to do a thing in a way that was required by the organization, but also in a way that preserved the work, this type of working relationship they wanted to have.

[00:08:46] Karen: So I think we've talked a good bit about hanging out in the vision too long and missing the detail part because that's what we see happen the most often. It's more comfy, it's more fun. It's more like we like that better. So we tend to do that. But I want to just name for a minute that you can also go too far the other way.

[00:09:04] Karen: I think it's very possible that if you said, okay, I need to do all the nuts and bolts. We need to like make sure that we have absolute clear agreements about who's doing what, and that's what we're going to focus on is getting down all the logistics. That you actually end up stripping a lot of the like relational connectiony stuff out.

[00:09:25] Karen: And then that also damages the relationship. So it's not about one or the other. We're saying make sure you do the nuts and bolts because that's the thing we see missed the most. But I also want to say make sure you do some vision work too. And really you want the two to interact with each other. So while you're doing the vision work, you want to be saying, okay, so what does that actually look like concretely?

[00:09:49] Karen: You and I, as we set up the podcast said, we want this to be an equal balanced conversation. So what does that actually look like? Well, one of the things that looks like is we alternate who starts each episode and we occasionally vary that when there's a reason to, but by practice, we alternate who starts because that's a tangible concrete thing that we do that supports the idea that we are equal partners in this podcast, even though we have some different jobs in the back end.

[00:10:15] Karen: And so that piece of while you're doing the visioning of how do we want this relationship? How do we want this work between us to be? We keep touching to, okay, what concretely does that look like? And when we're in the concrete, who's going to make the coffee every morning? How are we going to like all that concrete stuff?

[00:10:36] Karen: It's also important to touch back to what is our value. So I started a homeschool co op a number of years ago and was bringing this cooperative value to it. And one of the things that I did was we would get into the logistics, we spent a lot of time actually in that group, in the logistics of, okay, so how are we going to set up our classes?

[00:10:55] Karen: How often are we going to have them? Who's going to teach them? Like all those very concrete details. And I came back over and over again to, in this group, the relationships are primary. Like, the goal of the group is to create space for relationships to get built between families. So, as we're now talking about how often do we do classes, well, what is the cadence that will best support relationships?

[00:11:15] Karen: If we do weekly as opposed to monthly or something else, how does that shift inform or predict what will happen to relationships in our group? So holding the value as we have the logistics conversation. So as you're talking about vision, give concrete examples. As you're talking about the logistics.

[00:11:35] Karen: Connect it back to your vision and see how it lays out. 

[00:11:38] Paul: The iteration between those two, the interplay, the jumping back and forth is the thing that makes sure that those are aligned with each other. That we're actually doing the things that reinforce the things that we want. And particularly as changes happen over time, like it's really important to revisit that.

[00:11:55] Paul: One of the challenges in groups and in any relationship is that in general, people have a preferred level of abstraction to work at, like in any group, there'll be a group of folks who are perfectly happy hanging out in that vision place. And like, they love that. That's the way they think about it.

[00:12:14] Paul: Like the sort of where they live. And there'll be a group of people who want to get brown to brass tacks. The key there is both perspectives are important. Because if you neglect either of them, as we've talked about, that can lead to damage in the relationship, but it also means that in order to get there, and that's also one of the reasons to not hang out in one for too long because half your group is going to get exhausted and really want to go to the other place, but it means you have to build up an understanding and an appreciation for that difference, right?

[00:12:46] Paul: That part of the group needs to be able to go. Okay. Right. I see why it's valuable that we talk about this value stuff right now, even though that's not my preferred mode or my strength or where I tend to hang out. I need to be able to sit with that and to regulate while we're there and to contribute, right?

[00:13:03] Paul: Not just to be quiet and wait for people to be done talking about values or vision, right? But to be able to contribute and to say what it is they think, even though that's not my natural mode, right? And then leverage my strength and my propensities when we get into the other one. But because the group needs to be able to move fluidly back and forth between those.

[00:13:20] Paul: It's very interesting when you get, for example, in a two person partnership, if you have two people who both just live at that nuts and bolts level and like never talk about vision, you see how that can become really draining and hollow and they may or may not even notice it.

[00:13:34] Paul: Right. And then also if they both live in that level of abstraction, of vagueness, of vision and then go, Oh, how are we going to make that happen? Right. They can spin in that place. So it's one of those places where having those multiple perspectives is incredibly valuable and it's a great resource, but it's also a potential source for conflict.

[00:13:52] Karen: Absolutely. And like most conflict, much to be learned through the process of doing it well, as we say so often. So I think where we really want to land in this question about when do we talk details. Early and often, it may not be the very first thing. You probably need some alignment of vision if you're at the very beginning stages of an organization, but we want to make sure that we're not isolating just a big vision, values, dreamy conversation. 

[00:14:20] Karen: And that we're not isolating a big nuts and bolts operating manual, this is the logistics of how we're doing everything conversation. Because if either of those tries to live without the other, we're going to miss the relational space.

[00:14:34] Karen: The relationship depends upon the feeling and emotional connection that we get when we say, Oh yeah, that vision of how that's going to be and how it's going to feel like, that feeds a part of our being, I think. But that part doesn't feel safe, doesn't feel grounded, and in fact isn't safe if we're not talking about what those words actually mean in a concrete way.

[00:14:55] Karen: So what are we really going to do? What's it going to look like in terms of real life in the concrete world? What does it mean to be collaborative? What does it mean to be productive? What does it mean to be supportive? All those things. And what are the real limits on those things? Like, where are we going to be able to do those?

[00:15:14] Karen: I think it's useful as you start out to begin with the framework of the things that neither person in the conversation has any control over. They're in the environment. And So they're not negotiable, they're just, but name them and talk about what those mean and then how you're going to, as a pair, work with those.

[00:15:32] Karen: And then there'll be things that do live, really, between the two people in the conversation about nuts and bolts. And those also may need to get decided. And this is always going to be somewhat fluid and somewhat messy, because we're talking about people in relationships. So it's that balance between the kind of fluidity that you need in the relationship space.

[00:15:51] Karen: With the tangible security that you get from having some things. Oh, we've talked about this. I know this is how this is going to go. I know what to expect, and I can count on that. And you need both of those. You need both of them and you need both of them to work together to support the relationships that we want to have.

[00:16:06] Paul: Well, that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:16:10] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.