Making Relationships Work
By Gi Sicat
This article is based on the HBR article by the same title by Diane Coutu

“People don’t leave corporations, they leave managers.”
Much has been said and written about the value of human relationships in the workplace, and more specifically, about the need for managers to form deep connections with their employees.  The Self-Help and Management shelves at any bookstore are crowded with books and material devoted to the topic of Emotional Intelligence and how it can help foster strong relationships between management and employees and provide bonding experiences for all. Human Resource Managers are constantly searching for ways they can help executives manage relationships through difficult times.  It may come as a surprise then, that there is a paucity of hard evidence behind the soft skills training. At the end of the day, we don’t really know what makes or breaks work relationships or creates the chemistry between a mentor and his protégé that sparks a successful relationship. What we do know, is that the way a person manages his work relationships is closely tied to how he manages his personal ones. Someone who is abusive at home will likely be abusive at the work place. If you believe this, as most psychologists do, then empirical evidence on personal relationships and the conclusions to be drawn from it take on relevance for the workplace.

John M. Gottman, the Executive Director of the Relationship Research Institute, has studied marriage and divorce for the last 35 years. He has screened and interviewed thousands of couple and tracked their relationships as he has studied their interactions through the years. His methods employ the use of recording equipment and biofeedback equipment in order to understand what goes on when couples undergo moments of closeness or conflict. His work has generated mathematical data on some of the elements of good relationships. HBR Senior Editor Diane Coutu explored the implications of Gottman’s research for the workplace.

Just Say Yes
According to Gottman, successful couples try to identify and emphasize the positive.

     “Yes, that’s a good idea.”
     “Yes, that’s a good point, I missed that.”
     “Yes, let’s do it if you feel it’s important.”

Gottman says it less about clear communication 100 percent of the time but more about moments of attachment and intimacy. Couples who are able to say “Yes” to each other and accept influence from one another are in a better position to work out their differences and live with them.  Now saying “Yes” goes beyond simple compliance, it refers to reaching agreement. A relationship where one party is constantly complying without ever reaching agreement will eventually run aground. Couples cannot and do not agree all the time, in fact, certain conflicts are necessary because giving in would be tantamount to surrendering one’s personality. Some people think that a relationship free of any conflicts and disagreements is a harmonious one. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Small Moments
Good relationships are not just about knowing when to fight and make up. They are also about the many positive emotional moments which establish a profound connection with each other—moments of humor, affection, silliness, adventure. Splashing each other at the pool or beach, tickling and laughing together at a movie may all seem trivial and foolish but Gottman reports, that in couples who separate, these little moments are frequently absent. These little moments build trust and connection between mates and their offspring.

Similarly, at work, trust and connection can be achieved in many small gestures. Inquiring about family members by name and asking about their welfare send a strong message that the manager perceives the employee beyond his official capacity. It lays the foundation for a relationship of caring and compassion. This goes both ways: often the boss may actually be lonely, having a direct report ask him about his weekend tells him that he is perceived beyond his official hierarchy.  

Moments to Avoid: Intimate Relationships at Work
While it is important for connection to be established between Manager and Employee, it is also important to warn against intimate relationships at work. These will be problematic at best—and should be avoided. Most affairs are more about friendship than they are about sex. They can be physical or emotional, but they all boil down to the same thing—betrayal. Betrayal not just of the trust between couples but inevitably of corporate policies and standards as exceptions are made to rules in an effort to maximize opportunities for closeness and intimacy.

Successful Relationships: Key Factors
A 20-year longitudinal study of couples brought out the importance of intimacy and friendship between couples some couples may prefer maintaining a degree of emotional distance while others are very passionate and fight a lot; still others have somehow calibrated their relationship to their optimum level of friendship, intimacy and conflict. The critical issue is that the couple agrees about how together they want to be, more important than the absolute degree of closeness involved, is the fact they are matched.

In all successful relationships between two people regardless of age, two critical elements stand out: Respect and Affection. There are so many ways to show this to one’s partner: paying attention to what he or she is saying, asking for one’s opinion and seriously considering it once it is given, complimenting one on a task well done. There is no end to the possibilities.

In the workplace, Respect is also a critical element of a harmonious and productive relationship. An interviewer of applicants to the call center industry once recalled how interviewees often brought up “the absence of any respect” as a reason for their departure from their previous jobs. It wasn’t necessarily the denial of a request for that extra day of medical emergency leave, but in some cases, the failure of the manager to even listen to the request, and provide a decision in a firm but courteous manner. The same gestures that communicate respect between partners in a relationship will often communicate respect in the workplace as well. So what’s the point?  The point is—if companies were effective in fostering a sense of respect and harmony in the workplace and helped people manage their work relationships, then work would be a better place, productivity would rise, employee departures due to mismanagement would drop and everyone could get on with work.