How to Become Better In Any Relationship

I was typing up a summary of the philosophies of the Arbinger Institute, and thought I'd also share it here.
The thing to remember in our relationships is this:

We think other people's bad behavior gives us an excuse for when we are less than our best. I had to get angry, or impatient, or bitter, we say, because of the way they were acting.

But we forget that our actions give them an excuse, too. "I had to act the way I was acting," they say, "because that person was so angry, or impatient, or bitter."

Even if they "went first," we gave them an excuse to keep being bad. "I knew I was right to act that way," they say. "I knew that person would be angry, impatient, or bitter."

And then we use their behavior as our excuse, and the cycle goes on and on, in a hopeless downward spiral that no one can ever win.

And it is not enough to try to break out of it by simply "taking the higher road." Because they will just see our attempts to "be the better person" as being condescending, as talking down to them, as passive-aggressive. They'll just use that as their excuse to keep acting the way they're acting.

So then, where is our hope? If we can't make it better by the low road, or the high road, what is our hope of making it better?

It lies in seeing them as a person again. A person equal in importance to us. No more special, and certainly no less. Walking next to them.

And then recognize that our anger, our impatience, our bitterness made them feel exactly the way we feel. And then in our feeling bad for making another person feel that way.

If it was so bad when they did it to us, it must have been just as bad when we did it to them.

Our ability to empathize with them gives us the hope of reconnecting with them. Our ability to understand them gives us the hope that things can become better.

Even if they were the ones who "started" it.

Because then we stop seeing them as a monster, but as a person. A person like us, who has been hurt, like us. A person who sometimes doesn't quite know how to deal with their hurt, and lashes out at a world before it can have the chance to lash out at them. It doesn't make their actions right, any more than their bad behavior made ours right. But it can make their actions more understandable, and make them people to us again instead of monsters.

And that will change our behavior--because we only felt it was okay to act as we acted toward another human being because we weren't really seeing them as a human being at all.

The Arbinger Institute

A while ago, someone recommended a book to me called Leadership and Self Deceptionby a group called The Arbinger Institute. I sort of started to read it, was bothered a little bit by the way it was written, so I never finished it. (It's written in that way that's so popular among business books right now, where you tell it like a story, and the main character is learning everything you want the reader to learn.)

About a year ago, I did read it, along with a good chunk of the other stuff published by the Arbinger institute.

What I found was a philosophy that had become one of the most impactful of any that I have ever read. It's changed my life, and it's changed the way I manage.

I've always despaired at being able to write succinct summaries of their philosophies that would inspire those who ought to read the books to read them. Like the phrase "Self-Deception" in the title of the book would indicate, the people who most need to read the book would probably be the least likely to read it, were I to give an explanation.

Arbinger has published their own summary of their philosophies in an online paper titled, "What We Are." written by philosopher C. Terry Warner.I realize that not everyone is going to be willing to click over and read a 26 page scholarly paper (although I'd strongly encourage everyone to--Warner explains all of this better than I ever could), so I'll do my best to sum up what's being explained.

Often times, the conflicts we have in our lives--whether they're with the people in our families or the people in our work or the people we deal with on the internet--these conflicts arise out of mutual mishandling of a situation.

Generally, it is really, really obvious to us the way the other person is mishandling the situation. We can see their lack of tact, their meanness, their rudeness, their inconsideration--these are so obvious to us, it's like a mack truck parked behind them.

However, the problem comes because of an innate ability people have to be blind to their own mishandling of situations. This happens because as soon as anyone does something--in fact, it is probably more accurate to say that as someone is doing something, they'll give themselves reasons for doing it.They'll give themselves intellectual reasons for doing it--it's smart, it makes sense, etc--but they'll also give themselves emotional reasons for doing it. They're angry, or they're frustrated, or they're deeply, deeply hurt.

And these are trickier, because in our society, we've become accustomed to thinking about emotions as being something that other people create in us--you make me mad. You make me sad.

And this gives me an even stronger justification for whatever I'm about to do than the intellectual reasons do. Because the emotions give me an excuse for blaming you for my actions.

Here's the classic example, that's in almost all the Arbinger books.

A new father hears his baby start fussing a little in the other room. It occurs to him that if he got up and rubbed the baby's back a little, the baby would probably fall right back asleep and neither he nor his wife would have to get up with the baby.

But he doesn't get up. And so he starts talking to himself about why he's not getting up. Maybe he has a meeting the next day, early. Maybe his wife had a nap when he got home, and it's "her turn."

But he doesn't stop there. He gets a little annoyed with his wife. Why doesn't she hear the baby? Why isn't she thinking about letting him get some sleep?

He starts getting angry with her, and thinking about what a bad mom she is, and what a bad wife she is.

See what's happening here?

He starts off feeling some sense of what he should do. I don't mean this in a religious sense, or under any specific moral or ethical code. There was just something he felt he should do.

But then he didn't do it. And since he, like all of us, wasn't inclined to start telling himself a story about what a bad person he was, he started telling himself a story about why what he did was the right thing to do.

But it didn't stop there. Because there was still a little bit of doubt in his mind, his mind needed to shift blame elsewhere, and his wife was the natural target. Not only did it create intellectual means to blame her, but emotional ones as well.

Had he simply got up before he'd started feeling the need to justify his actions, the emotions would never have arisen. They weren't caused by any real action of the wife--they were created to justify his own failure to be who he thought he should be.

Even worse, he starts feeling the need to see her as a bad person, as if by raising or lowering her degree of "badness," his own virtue can be raised or lowered accordingly.

Now if you've followed me that far, then come this last step with me, because this was the part that was the biggest eye-opener for me:

At this point in the game, it wouldn't matter if he did get up and help with the baby.

That didn't make sense to me, at first. It seemed to me like the problem was that he didn't do the right thing. If he did do the right thing, how can he possibly be wrong?

Well, like this:

We all know how it would play out if this guy made his wife get up. He'd say something like, "Honey, you know you got that nap when I came home. And I have my big meeting tomorrow. Can't you just go get her?"

His phrasing, which he thinks will clearly show her how much sense it makes for her to get up, while just hinting at how thoughtless he thinks she's being (in other words, which he thinks is defensive) comes across to her as an accusation that she's lazy or uncaring (in other words, it comes across as an attack).

This prompts her to go into a similar self-justifying cycle of why his attack is unjustified as he went into when he didn't think he wanted to get up.

But now, imagine that instead, he decided that, despite all his reasons for thinking she should do it instead of him, that he was the good dad and she was the bad mom, despite all of that he was going to do the "noble" thing and get up with the baby anyway.

He's still got all these feelings. So he's still going to say something like, "No, honey, you just keep sleeping. I'm sure my meeting tomorrow won't be a problem." Something designed to seem thoughtful, but still hint at what she's putting him through so she'll appreciate his sacrifice. Of course, rather than seeing his comments as being about him, she'll see what he's saying about her, and still take it as an accusation.

It still invites her to go into her own self-justifying cycle. And it still adds to the conflict.

Even if he doesn't make a comment, he's going to sigh a certain way, so she'll notice. And even if he doesn't sigh, he'll still just remember, let it fester somewhere in the back of his mind, to add fuel to the next fire that flares up between them.

Does it make sense now? The problem isn't which thing he did. It isn't about whether he did right or wrong. The problem was his attitude towards her. The problem was his need to find blame.

Had his attitude towards her been different, there are ways he could have asked her to get up and help with the baby as well as gotten up himself that would have done nothing to add to the conflict, but could even have made their relationship stronger.

Had he not had the bad feelings towards her, he could have gently said, "Honey, could you please get up with the baby? I have my meeting tomorrow, and I'm really worried about getting enough sleep. I know you're tired, too. I promise to make it up to you tomorrow night." More important than the words, would just be the absence of the animosity. The lack of need to show her how her getting up was somehow the right thing.

In other words, in many, many cases, seeing other people as the problem is the problem.

Often, in making ourselves a victim, we're also victimizing someone else.

Now the obvious rebuttal a person might have is that there are some cases of clear-cut victimhood. Cases of abuse, for instance.

This is talked about at some length in the book Bonds That Make Us Free. And what it explains is how even in those cases, it is often self-deception that traps us into those problems. It is self-deception that either obligates us to stay in the abusive relationship or that keeps us from being able to let go of it once the relationship is over. To "release its power over us," as a pop psychologist might say.

It gives the example of a woman who kept going back to an abusive husband. Despite his cruelty, she knew his self-destructive lifestyle would destroy him, and felt guilt whenever she'd leave him because she was afraid of what might happen to him. She justified leaving him because of what he was doing--his "bad" actions justified the act she sort of felt was "wrong"--leaving him, even though she knew he was in trouble.

The problem was, whenever he'd come back to her apologetic, she'd feel obligated to go back to him.

It wasn't until she was finally able to separate the morality of her own actions from the immorality of his that she felt free to leave him for good without feeling like a bad person.

They're a wonderful set of books. If you're only going to read one, I suggest The Anatomy of Peace. You can read the first few pages of it online here. It's the one geared towards families and individuals.

Leadership and Self Deceptionis more of a business book, so I'd recommend it if you're a manager or work with a lot of other people, although it's a great book for everyone. The Anatomy of Peace is actually a "prequel" to this book in terms of storyline, and a "sequel" in terms of content, but they can be read completely individually.

There's also an 8 page article on parenting that can be read here.

Better Sooner Than Late - Relationships Before Correction

How employees react to you in the moment when you're offering correction is usually far more about what's happened in the minutes, hours, days, weeks and even years before the moment the correction gets made.

So talking about techniques for offering effective criticism or constructive criticism is a little behind the eight ball.

Those two days you spent festering, hemming and hawing about the right way to talk to the employee about the problem, because you wanted to get it just right? Yeah, that's when the employee thought you were snubbing them. Showing them how mad you were. Or, at the very least, they at least knew you were displeased with them, so they've been stewing themselves.

That reaction that seemingly came out of nowhere, that you felt was completely unjustified, and proved how irrational they were being about their response, since it didn't match up with the calm, measured, and dare-you-say caring tones you used while you talked? Chances are, it's more about who they've come to see you as than it is about anything you did.

Actually, to take it a bit more realistically, it's more about who they've come to believe you see them as.

Because let's face it--no matter how petty and vindictive that employee might seem, they're not really out to get you. It can sometimes seem like they're doing things deliberately, just to provoke you, but they're really not as interested in you as all of that.

What they are interested in is themselves. And since you don't seem to be as interested in them as they are, they're always going to feel the need to defend themselves, justify themselves, or explain themselves to you.

The biggest key to leading people is to have them believe, truly believe, that you are leading them to a place that's good for them. And of course, for them to believe that, it has to be true.

You genuinely have to be operating in the best interests of everyone in your organization. Your customers, your managers, your staff, your superiors. To truly lead all of these people, you have to know them, know their interests, and work at bringing them about.

Old school managers don't believe this. They think that leadership is about getting what you want. If you start giving in to demands, or making concessions to people, then they start walking all over you. They start thinking they can make more demands. Before you know it, the inmates are running the asylum.

Employees must be made to understand the needs of the organization, say the old-schoolers. They need to be Team Players, which to the old-schoolers means doing whatever the coach wants.

Loyalty, to these old-schoolers, is something that should spring forth spontaneously from within employees.

Never mind that in actual practice, the organization-focused mindset of these guys is actually more likely to drive loyalty out of good employees than it is to cause any loyalty to spring forth in employees who aren't as naturally inclined to it.

I'm not saying to swing the pendulum too far to the other side either, though--by becoming completely employee focused, you really can get walked all over, and the organization really can suffer. You'll be liked, but won't see progress. It's a matter of balancing employee interests with company interests with customer interests with your own interests . . . .

Yeah. Easier said than done. But knowing there's a balance to achieve can get you further than trying to balance the rest on the backs of employees.

That said, it's still easy to hurt relationships by giving employees what they want.

Yes, you read that right. Giving employees what they want can hurt relationships.

No, I'm not giving the old-schoolers a chance to twirl their mustaches and go back to neglecting their employees. I'm actually trying to prevent the next incarnation of the mustache-twirler: The boss who tries to meet employee needs, but does it in such a way as to remind the employee of exactly how benevolent he is being, of how put out this is going to make him, or as if he is mentally keeping a score of exactly where they stand.

I exaggerate in these examples, but even little bits of this creeping in to our attitude comes across to the employee, then little bits of resentment will start to build up in the employee.

Because when it's about how benevolent I am, or about how put out I am, or about what they now owe me, they're going to see that it's still all me, me, me, and they're never going to be able to relax into accepting that I'm looking out for them. And if they don't believe you're leading them to a place that's good for them . . . well, there goes leadership.

So how do you do it? What's the technique that will make them buy it when you give them what they want?

Well, first you take off your right shoe and put it in a plain brown paper bag. Then you roll up the bag at the top like a kid's lunch sack. Then you stand up on your desk, wave the bag over your head, and cluck like a chicken.

I'm kidding, by the way.

The truth is much less interesting. The truth is, there is no technique that can make an employee "buy" something. If you go in trying to show the employee how much you're caring about them, it's just going to come across as being about how caring you're being.

No, unfortunately, the only way to do it is to really care. The only way to do it is to really fix the relationships you have with your employees. To really and truly want good things for them, not just because it will bring you money, but because they're people and they're working for you every day and because looking out for each other has to start with somebody, and it might as well be you.

So the next time you're tempted to practice "Management By Wandering Around," looking for things to correct and talk about, instead practice "Management By Settling Down." Spend time with people. Build relationships with them. Spend more time listening to them than talking to them. Worry more about discovering what and interesting, diverse group of people you have working for you and you'll find your employees worrying more about coming through for the person who seems so interested in them.