My friend once interviewed for a job where he was assured that the working environment would be wonderful.
“We’re like family” his workmates boasted.
They were right. It was like family, and that made it hell to work there.
He wasn’t alone. Brian Desroches, author of “Your Boss is Not Your Mother” performed a study in which he estimated re-enacting family dramas at work can waste 20% or more of a workers time.
In her book “Don’t Bring it to Work“, Sylvia Lafair writes “Family was the place where we learned to exist in relation to others. It would make sense that we repeat what we learned there in our new work systems.” Does that include teenage tantrums?
Ben Dattner, PhD who lectures at NYU on Organizational Development, wrote a series of blog posts for Psychology Today on family dynamics in the workplace. “Psychologists use a term called “transference” to help explain why sometimes it seems like we are re-enacting a psychodrama from the past, rather than seeing the current situation for what it is in the present.” he writes.
I’ve worked alongside people who might say “The problem with John is he is just working out his anger at his father.” Whether true or not, a statement like that tends to lead to deadlock. It defines the problem in a way that makes it almost impossible to fix, and takes no account of the fact that I may actually be behaving like John’s father.
A more powerful question would be to just make note quietly to myself . “John seems to be working out some anger that seems inappropriate to the working relationship? And what can I do to fix it?”
Some of these answers come from the field of Family Systems Theory, pioneered by Dr Murray Bowen who said “That which is created in a relationship can be fixed in a relationships.” Bowen and his followers address psychological problems in an individual family member by looking at the entire system of relationships in the family environment. He applied the same thinking to the workplace, writing that “the basic patterns in social and work relationships are identical to relationship patterns in the family, except in intensity’.
Dr Roberta Gilbert who trained with Bowen wrote Extraordinary Leadership, a practical guide to applying Family Systems Theory in the workplace. She observed that “what affects one, affects all…anxiety originating in one circulates throughout the family unit.” People react to anxiety in fairly predictable ways, most of which generate even more anxiety. People get into conflict (fight), or they distances themselves from others (flee). That’s just our instinctive survival pattern at work. As a group there’s also a tendency for people to herd around someone who is particularly vulnerable, as a way to protect them, leading to factions and silos. Sound familiar?
In the workplace the goal is to maximise professional achievement. The value I take from the Family Systems insights is to be aware that when I am in the working world, I am enmeshed in a system of emotional dynamics whether I like it or not, and that has an impact on achievement.
Writing in Business Week, Michelle Conlin gives a clue to a solution when she says “brain research over the past decade has shown that during stress — when people’s need to feel included, competent, and liked is thwarted — their minds are hardwired to default to defensive family scripts.” Brain research is also producing answers, one example being David Rock’s book “Your Brain at Work“. There is a lot of understanding about the changes that stress and anxiety create in our brain functioning, and how to use this knowledge positively to navigate difficult conversations.
The book “Difficult Conversations” (Stone, Patton, Heen and Fisher) creates a practical approach out of research at the Harvard Negotiation Project. The theme of the book is that in challenging situations there are three separate conversations going on:
- The facts
- What people feel about the situation
- How it impacts their personal sense of meaning and identify
Many conversations about the facts are unproductive, because they ignore the significance of the other two conversations. People usually do have different experiences of shared events, and they have deep personal commitment to their particular viewpoint. Denying the validity of someone’s version of events may not be simply about whether you agree on a fact or not. It may be that for the other person a huge amount of their self-esteem is at stake. The resulting anxiety triggers old scripts learned from the family, where maybe a parent delivered punishment unjustly. Others will become engaged, silos will form, time will be lost, bad decisions will be made.
All of this can be avoided by a more structured approach to workplace conversations that addresses the underlying conversations professionally. Relationships stay authentic when there is understanding and trust between people, and they see each other clearly. They understand and respect their different points of view, and share a process for navigating differences of opinion. Some of the key tools needed for this are:
- A process for remaining extraordinarily self-aware in a relational context
- A process for leading discussions which involves ensuring the other person feels heard and respected
- A process for bringing together conflicting points of view, systematically and transparently so that all involved can support the conclusions
In this blog I will explore these aspects of authentic relationships from a broad variety of sources. By keeping the conversations around you authentic, you create a node in the system which minimizes anxiety and conflict, and that will be your personal contribution to creating a working environment where everybody can enjoy doing great things together.
Authentic Relationships Matter 
Dawn Lipthrott
May 30, 2012
Nice post, Tim — and so true! Both in work environments and in associations/organizations, the issues get triggered for people that are more about the past than the present. As you said, it is still important to look at the triggering behaviors that I might be doing even if inadvertently. I look forward to reading more of your insights and ideas. I’ve always loved your thinking! (I really liked David Rock’s book on Your Brain at Work — good lessons for all of life and relationships!)