Post No.: 0701
Furrywisepuppy says:
What often makes our time at work or school a good or bad one is the quality and personal fit of the company we find there. Strongly arguably the greatest predictor of one’s well-being in general is the quality of the social connections in one’s life. And to promote better quality social connections – showing respect and kindness or pro-sociality are key to working well together.
This sounds obvious, yet workplaces are often set up to be environments of competition, conflict and self-defensiveness. Really, the competition should primarily be between businesses rather than within them; like it should be between football clubs rather than having teammates trying to sabotage each other even though they’re supposedly on the same side. Teams that infight inevitably perform sub-optimally and will get beaten by more cohesive teams. (In ‘business-styled’ reality TV game shows where two teams battle each other out each week – the internal conflicts within each team don’t so often lead to a superb team winning but the less hopeless of the two teams scraping through! In the real world, both teams would’ve lost money. But the squabbles between the candidates (who’ve in part been selected for their dramatic value and who’ll spark social media reactions from viewers) is for the business of show business!) Knowledge, resources and ideas should be shared amongst colleagues, not guarded closely to protect the advantage or credit of whoever acquired it.
So we need more friendly, cooperative and supportive dynamics – to convey respect and appreciation, a willingness to work together, to bring the best out from each other and to constructively work through any differences. Share light-hearted moments too. When bad things happen, take care of each other. We need to promote civility and trust, empathy and compassion, gratitude and effective ways to reconcile conflicts at work.
More important than table tennis tables or corporate retreats – having great friends at work strongly predicts happiness at work, employee satisfaction, work attraction and retention. True friends are people we, by definition, trust too, and trust at work brings many productivity benefits. We feel safe to express our authentic selves when around those we trust – see Post No.: 0687.
However, it can be tricky to dance around the boundary between market norms and social norms i.e. what’s business and what’s personal, hence many workers find it easier and safer to keep these two sets of relationships separated. Respect can end up meaning keeping work relationships strictly professional. What are your peers’ motives when they’re also potentially your competition for promotions? Howl your friendship fare after you become their, or they become your, manager? If you are their boss, do they genuinely desire to be a true friend or are they just bootlicking you or brown-nosing because of their own career progression interests? (Note that if a dog licks your shoes or feet, it might be because of various reasons like the smell and taste. But if a dog has a brown nose then what they’ve just been sniffing should be self-explanatory(!) Woof!)
If you become or remain friends, you might be accused of cronyism if you help them out. The hierarchy still needs to be respected. Performance reviews still need to be honest and fair. Work responsibilities need to take priority over socialising. Workers need to look and act professional and maintain ‘professional distance’. More negative emotions also arise during conflicts amongst colleagues who are friends compared to aren’t too. You can talk about your most vulnerable feelings with your true friends, but work friends might view you as weak for it, and might even throw you under the bus for it. So friendships at work can be precarious and fragile. But despite all that – workplaces can still feel friendly, even if absent of genuine friendships.
Positive emotions make people more friendly, creative and resilient to workplace challenges – so allow moments of levity and fun, such as conversational humour with colleagues. Ideally, the fun will naturally come out from the work itself (although this is understandably harder with some kinds of work than others). Shared laughter calms the body, dissolves tensions and signals safety, fosters cooperation and strengthens social bonds. Leaders who express a dash of self-deprecating humour make themselves more approachable.
Counterproductive forms of humour though include aggressive, condescending, derogatory teasing that belittles people’s worth or status. Avoid ‘obligatory scheduled fun’ (e.g. mandatory after-work games). And humour shouldn’t be used when it’ll be distracting or when it’s used to disguise or dismiss real problems in the organisation. Not everything should be laughed off.
Affective empathy is a fairly automatic process but we can increase it by deliberately paying more attention to others rather than our own self-focused concerns – we won’t empathise with what we didn’t even notice in the first place. We can also stop dehumanising others by not judging others as less worthy. Cognitive empathy can be trained by being interested in others, asking questions and carefully listening more to other people’s experiences and feelings. It’s beneficial to slow down our judgements and to interpret ambiguous information more kindly.
For instance, instead of labelling a colleague or customer as stupid or lazy, we should enquire if they have an underlying reason for their behaviour? Ask what else may be going on? After all, we allow ourselves underlying reasons whenever we make mistakes or lack the energy to do something. Perhaps they’re trying their best, just like you, but are overloaded with hidden, private concerns too? (Well when we’re quick to snap and judge others harshly, it could be because we’re under time pressure and overloaded too?) Ask if they’re aware of their pattern of mistakes, if there’s something else going on in their life that’s contributing to it; and see if you can help them out? Make generous interpretations of their errors or suffering – behaviour is communication, and they may be communicating some private, silent or underlying problems that nobody else is aware of?
So we need to investigate these possibilities with compassion instead of trigger blame. Practise a positive default assumption that others are good, capable, and worthy of compassion. Offer the benefit of the doubt. Steer conversations about failure towards learning. Imbue others with respect, dignity and worth regardless of their status or differences to you and they will likely reciprocate in return. So notice, interpret generously, empathise, and then take supportive action.
Leaders need empathy because how can you lead others effectively if you cannot understand them? Fortunately, empathy is a skill that can be improved. Showing empathy and compassion for others (stepping in to take action such as helping someone who appears to need it) may appear to contradict the notion of self-reliance at work but the fact is that working in an organisation is a team sport and no one ever makes it alone. A CEO can achieve nothing on his/her own so needs to care about every single employee in the organisation. A leader isn’t a leader without a team!
‘Design for Six Sigma’ and similar methodologies are about creating products that meet customer expectations and needs – and to do that, we need compassion when designing products because we want user-friendly products, which requires knowing when users are experiencing pain or frustration when using our products, and caring to prevent or alleviate that. Good designers don’t blame users but their own designs. Customers who are kept in the loop, treated well and aren’t lied to will stick around, and customers who feel that their needs and wants are being served will return. Looking solely after your own interests can lead to short-term or small-picture gains but can harm the long-term and big-picture gains.
So treat everyone with respect, dignity and civility. People can be civil and get stuff done. Be open to others, ask questions, and use verbal and non-verbal cues that express interest, like relaxed eye contact and nodding.
Truly erudite people aren’t afraid to ask questions when they don’t understand something. They don’t feel insecure about revealing what they don’t comprehend because they know there is plenty of stuff they do. (People generally love answering questions they can answer too because it makes them feel clever.) And by asking questions, they continue to learn more and thus know more. So leaders should recognise that those who ask plenty of genuine questions are the information-gatherers and learners and thus are more knowledgeable than those who don’t ask questions but are always already ready to give their own answers, opinions or advice prematurely (often with the arrogant belief that complex problems that many other experts haven’t solved yet are ‘easy’ and the solutions are ‘obvious’ if only everyone just did what they said!)
Avoid blaming others, taking the credit for other people’s work, talking down to others, phubbing (snubbing someone you’re talking with in person in favour of your phone), visibly turning away when someone is near, silent treatments, excluding someone from group activities (especially if they’re right there) or withholding important information. Let people talk i.e. listen, which means active listening rather than mentally planning what you’re going to say next or interrupting. Active listening is appropriate when listening to positive as well as negative stories.
Really, anyone who likes to interrupt when someone else is speaking, especially in conversations between other people, to sound clever when not asked is at best tolerated, not respected! A condescending tone has never convinced anyone to change their minds either. We need to muster up the social intelligence to realise it doesn’t work. But I suppose those who routinely interrupt, patronise, brag and want to sound clever don’t realise this because all they want to do is puff up their brittle egos. I guess it’s an insecurity borne from somewhere, perhaps youth, as to why some feel compelled to cut in or heckle to tell everyone what they know when everyone already knows or doesn’t need or care to know a particular point. I guess everyone has a causal reason(s) for being exactly the way they are. Some might genuinely wish to help but are impatient to wait until others stop talking. Those who tolerate this behaviour therefore nevertheless need polite and respectful ways to tell these people to please stop interrupting them.
Ultimately, if you show respect then you will more likely receive respect and the benefits of this, including being trusted and others working harder for and with you. You will more likely be helped than betrayed. Treat ‘lower level’ staff with utmost respect too, including the cleaners and canteen staff because every single rivet and weld keeps a ship afloat.
Respect and the admiration we receive from our peers (our sociometric status) are more critical to our happiness than our salary or hierarchical position (our socio-economic status). For example, top students usually feel great the moment they graduate from university, but once they enter a workplace where other equally-top graduates are, they experience a drop in esteem even though their income rises.
Because ill social behaviour in particular is contagious (it takes a lot to trust someone compared to a relatively small thing to distrust them) – one ‘bad apple’ can end up rotting the entire barrel. So organisations need to swiftly deal with those who belittle, humiliate or bully others. When we think we must disparage others or seize personal credit for everything because we believe that others are doing the same then it’s a vicious cycle that perpetuates a toxic culture. We’ll blame others for this culture – claiming that we’re just acting in ‘self-defence’ – when we’re essentially a contributor of the problem ourselves. The financial cost of employee turnover, disruptions and unreasonable last-minute demands means it matters for the bottom line too.
Woof. You can share your sentiments regarding whether genuine friendships at work are possible or it’s best to respect boundaries and keep work relationships strictly professional, based on your own experiences in their particular contexts, by hitting the Twitter comment button below.
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