Series Explanation
This is part of a series originally created on LinkedIn, where we attempt to understand others whom we might think of as “Difficult Colleagues” and dismiss or try to fix them (or just fire them if you’re in leadership of the company), but who we might need to think differently about and the situations we are in.
Understanding that WE might be thinking in error is something that our brains try to ignore, since we are usually the heroes in every story we tell.
But let’s rethink these situations – and rethink ourselves inside these situations…
For the previous posts in the series, click here:
- Difficult Colleagues? Introduction to the Series
- Difficult Colleagues? Possibility 1 – Paradigm Shifters
- Difficult Colleagues? Possibility 2 – Gender Behavioral Differences
- Difficult Colleagues? Possibility 3 – Fundamental Attribution Error
- Difficult Colleagues? Possibility 4 – Conversational ‘Un’Intelligence
- Difficult Colleagues? Possibility 5 – Company Culture Unfit
Diving into This Possibility
Those who’ve taken my Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Lencioni) workshops know that how we react to our teammates has a lot to do with our personal history and/or our family of origin, even if we’ve never discussed this before in our teams. We break into groups that work closely with each other to start seeing ourselves from a perspective foreign to business: our growing-up years.
So much of who we are as adults is a product of our families’ spoken or unspoken rules. I let my clients’ staff pick either of these two sets of discussions, while also helping us understand where they grew up, how many siblings they had, and their birth order:
- The most difficult, important or unique challenge of their childhood
- Describe a mistake they made that impacted other people, how they responded to the mistake, how they apologized for it, and how they recovered from it
I do this because of my own orientation in life and my work history. And of being called a “Difficult Colleague” myself.
Many people have had similar experiences to mine that shaped them, but if we’re never given the opportunity to unpack our younger years in front of our coworkers, we can never find the richness of our lessons learned, despite the problems we faced. Giving this opportunity to my clients’ employees means that they can now be freer to be transparent with their teammates – one of the critical components to building Trust.
My Story:
My brother, sister and I were adopted from different families. We always knew we were adopted, and were introduced as “This is my adopted daughter, Margaret.” We felt alien and constantly “on trial.” My parents considered bringing us back to our orphanages.
The most difficult challenge of my childhood was that we had a deeply depressed mother. We never knew when our mother would erupt in rage and throw things at us, so we spent our young lives living in fear. Masking emotions was a rule for us in our home. As soon as a rage event started, I would freeze and shut down my emotions and my brain, trying to weather the storm. My shutdown was my safe place, my modus operandi. The screaming could go in one ear and out the other (or so I thought), not stopping inside my brain, while I stood stock-still.
Years later, I had two managers who did the same thing to me – they had rages at me (in two different companies). And me? I retreated into my safe place by default to withstand the barrage. I had what psychologists call “learned helplessness” – when a triggering event leads you right back into a helpless state, even though your circumstances have changed and stopping the trigger is now possible. I now had PTSD in my workplaces from something that happened 40 years ago in my family of origin. My MO was still intact, but at what price?
I not only had a family of origin that never equipped me to advocate for myself, but I also had a personal history within my companies that continued my CPTSD. Grasping my family situation was the first step in trying to grow in my ability to accept myself as I am. Had I been able to share my past with my fellow coworkers or managers, it may have changed many things for me and my companies over the years.
Others come from families who loved them and wanted them to succeed. Children from these homes were healthy, happy, and extroverted or introverted – it didn’t matter; they were loved. The world was a safe place for them to explore relationships. And still others came from families where they were expected to compete or fight.
How Teammates Respond to Each Other’s Childhood Experiences
When we share our growing-up years with our coworkers, we instantly become gentler with each other.
We become advocates for one another and learn how to work with them more effectively.
This is the beginning of Psychological Safety in our teams. Psychological Safety + Trust is a potent blend that helps us become better teammates and accelerates our performance together.
But without a probe into our younger years, we’re more likely to label someone else with a different life experience from ours, a “Difficult Colleague.”
This exercise sets the tone for the workshops; each group instantly becomes more caring toward each other. I’ve seen workshop teams become highly empathetic groups of people, and all it takes is about 10 minutes for this to happen, with lasting results.
Watching while each team discusses this exercise is one of the most endearing experiences for me, every time. Walking in and among the teams doing the exercise, I pause to take in their emotions and realize that each team may be experiencing something quite profound. People hug, tear up, and ask each other how they’re doing today – all hallmarks of a maturing team. I watch as the toughness with which they were working together previously melts away the hard edifices they’ve grown into and opens up a softer path with which to navigate team problems in the future.
Compassion for each other spurs growth in synergy. We finally “see” each other and develop our capacity for high caring as well as high performance. We start to “walk life” with each other.
There are no Difficult Colleagues.
We are human beings who share an extraordinary journey together, but we cannot do our best work if a large part of our formative years, which are crucial to our growth, are not explained to our teammates.
Once we can start becoming psychologically safe with each other, this opening up can continue. But, it also opens the door for better discussions later on when problems arise in our teams, ones where the knowledge of what our teammates have overcome becomes a strengthening bond among all team members.
The base of psychological safety then becomes our MO, instead of our triggering events.