by John Gottman
Since the whole point of a family reunion is to connect, it makes sense to plan a variety of activities that help people of various ages and interests to interact in enjoyable and stimulating ways. Experts at planning successful reunions give this advice: Keep activities lighthearted and optional. Nobody wants to play volleyball or charades with unwilling participants. Board games like “Family Stories” and “Cranium” are great for getting people to talk with one another. And be sure to spread the work around. Involve lots of people in the planning, cooking, and cleanup.
Some families plan their reunions on “neutral turf”—a hotel or country resort, for example. That way, no single household feels overburdened by hosting the whole family. It also helps to make everybody feel welcome, regardless of tensions that may exist between particular family members. If cost is a concern, you may want to consider a family camp-out, possibly renting just one cabin for cooking and to house Grandma.
Sibling getaways. You may also want to consider hosting getaways or mini-reunions for you and your siblings. I know one group of three sisters who gather for a weekend retreat at a cabin on the Washington coast each winter. There are no husbands or kids allowed—just plenty of time to talk and to walk on the beach. Of course, lots of men have been getting away with this sort of thing for generations—they call it “hunting season” or “a fishing trip.” But you don’t need to be an outdoorsman to take off with your brother for a few days. You can take a trip to another city to catch a concert or visit an old friend. The point is to spend some time together away from the distractions of your everyday lives.
Holidays. Holiday rituals ought to enhance our relationships with relatives rather than to detract from them. So think about the way you’ve typically celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and so on. Do holidays leave you feeling better about your siblings or worse? Does one sibling carry more than his or her fair share of the work of making holiday celebrations happen? Do other siblings feel left out? Does holiday spending get out of hand as you try to buy presents for all your brothers and sisters and their growing families? Is overeating or overdrinking weighing down your sense of joy? Do you long to make some changes, but not know where to start?
To start making positive, conscious changes in the way your extended family celebrates holidays, discuss the issue with your siblings and other relatives. It would be best to have this discussion long before the holiday happens. Get together and brainstorm. Talk about the rituals that still hold their meaning for you, and those that feel obligatory, burdensome, or hollow. You may find that others feel just as ready for change as you do, and they’re relieved that somebody is taking the lead.
Be careful as you make changes, however, to retain those elements of the holiday that help individual family members to feel connected to one another. This sense of belonging is often enhanced through celebrations that emphasize a family’s shared ethnic heritage or religious beliefs. Just think of religious holidays like the Jewish Passover, Christian Easter, or Muslim Ramadan, or ethnically based holidays like the African-American Kwanzaa, the Irish Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Swedish Santa Lucia Day. Such holidays can be a terrific opportunity for siblings to gather and focus on unique traditions that connect them with each other and with values that transcend their individual interests—values that are important to family, culture, and community.
Birthday celebrations and anniversaries. Hosting parties for your parents takes on added significance as the folks grow older. Living a long life in the company of your children is certainly something to celebrate. Many siblings collaborate on special celebrations around milestones like Mom and Dad’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, or Dad’s seventy-fifth birthday. Siblings may invite relatives and longtime friends to come and publicly share their favorite memories of the honorees. Handmade, personalized gifts that express the giver’s feelings are also common. One family I know presented their parents with a quilt, each of its twenty-eight squares decorated by a child, a child’s spouse, or a grandchild.
Caring for a sick relative. Perhaps nothing can strain or strengthen connections between siblings the way that caring for a seriously ill relative can. The burden of labor and responsibility is often overwhelming, requiring an extraordinary amount of cooperation and negotiation among siblings, most of whom want desperately to “do the right thing.” All of this is especially true when it involves a parent with a long, debilitating illness such as cancer, stroke, or Alzheimer’s disease. Such situations require a whole host of difficult decisions regarding long-term care, life support, financial planning, and, if the illness is terminal, funeral planning. Despite having to face such tough issues, however, some families find that they feel more emotionally connected than ever as a result of coming together to care for a sick loved one. Whether or not families can afford professional nursing care, siblings often find themselves collaborating in the intimate rituals of bathing, feeding, and comforting a dying parent, and it changes their relationships with one another in unimagined ways. “I will never forget the tenderness with which my brother cared for Mom during her last days at home,” a friend once told me, “how he read to her, held her hand, fed her ice chips with a spoon. I had never seen that side of him before.”
A photo taken at the reception after her mother’s funeral tells the story. In it, the woman, her two sisters, and this brother stand with their arms around one another’s shoulders. Looking exhausted, bereft, and yet peaceful, they manage to muster weak smiles for the camera.
“We were terribly sad that day,” the woman remembers. “But we also felt proud of the way that we had pulled together and made it possible for her to die quietly at home. We’ll never be the same.”
Funerals. Although it’s hard to think about, our loved ones’ funeral rituals are among the most powerfully emotional events of our lives. And when it’s the funeral of a parent, our siblings are usually the ones with whom we most closely share that experience.
Often, a tremendous amount of decision-making must be done when a family member dies. Arrangements need to be made that involve emotionally charged issues like cremation, caskets, burial plots, eulogies, religious ceremonies, and more. Experts in funeral planning advise discussing these issues well before anyone dies or becomes terminally ill. That way, family members won’t have to grapple with such difficult decisions while coping with intense feelings of loss and grief.
With funeral arrangements made beforehand, family members can turn their attention to the ritual itself, so that everyone can benefit from the help that such rites are designed to provide. Ideally, funerals help grieving people to share a sense of support and connection during a time of tremendous emotional upheaval. They give us a chance to collectively honor the person who has died. They’re also an opportunity for families to focus on the values and traditions that bind us together. When a eulogist at a funeral says, “Mary was devoted to her children, her nursing career, and her church community,” it’s a way for her relatives to acknowledge their common beliefs about what makes life meaningful.
In addition, funerals can help families to strengthen old ties or to reestablish broken ones. Friends and relatives often travel a long way—both in terms of miles and pride—to be present at the burial of a loved one. In fact, it’s not unusual for an estranged family member to come back to the family when a parent or sibling dies. And the reception that long-lost relative receives may set the course of his or her relationship with the family from that moment forward.
Families often benefit from creating a memorial ritual that allows anyone who wants to participate to do so. For example, friends and family members might be invited to share a memory or impression of the person whose life is being honored. This communal act contributes to a family’s sense of connection as they’re saying good-bye to a loved one.
Funerals are not easy. But this much I know: If you set your intention on connecting emotionally with other survivors, the support you give and receive will go a long way toward healing re
lationships and healing from grief.
Building Better Emotional Connections in Coworker Relationships
Step 1. Look at Your Bids for Connection with Coworkers
When I was a young man attending MIT, one of my favorite diversions was to spend time with my older cousin Kurt. He was a garment salesman from New York, and twice a year he would come to the Boston Statler Hotel to show his company’s line of children’s clothes. One day when I was visiting him, a woman came in whom Kurt greeted warmly. After chatting informally for a very long time, the woman finally said to him, “What have you got for me this season, Kurt?” And my cousin answered matter-of-factly, “Nothing, Dorie. Not a thing.”
“All right, then,” she replied, squeezing his arm. “I guess I’ll see you in the fall.” Then she got up, kissed him graciously on the cheek, and left.
“What are you doing?” I asked him, astounded. “You’re supposed to be a salesman! You just told her to go away without buying anything!”
Kurt looked at me for a moment with a kind smile. Then he said, “Let me explain something to you. I have known this woman for a long time. I know her store. I know her clientele. And the line I’ve got this year just won’t go over there. But next season I may have a better fit. If I do, I’ll tell her so, and she will trust me. That’s what business is all about—relationships. Building long-lasting, trusting relationships.”
It was such a revelation to me. I had always assumed that if Kurt was a salesman, his job must involve lots of high pressure, fast talk, and snowing people. But here he was behaving in much the same way he would with my mother, my sister, or me. His success in business came from getting to know people, listening carefully to their needs, and responding to them accordingly.
That was almost forty years ago. So you can imagine how amused and delighted I am to hear business gurus of the last decade talk about the importance of “relationship marketing”—that is, designing business strategies that emphasize keeping customers as much as attracting them. Relationship marketing says you may have to invest a lot of time and resources into identifying and responding to customers. But over the long haul, that investment will pay off in terms of loyalty and commitment.
I’m also gratified to hear employees at large companies and institutions refer to the people within their own organizations as “our customers.” The payroll clerks, for example, call the employees they serve their customers. The purchasing agents have customers, too—the workers down the hall who send them purchase orders. This tells me that everybody is practicing “relationship marketing” with everybody else. It says that organizations are beginning to see that what matters most are the workers’ relationships—their ability to recognize and respond to the needs of people with whom they do business.
Paying attention and turning toward one another’s needs clearly has a positive impact on workers’ lives and the organizations that employ them. Studies show that an employee’s perception that he or she works in an emotionally supportive environment increases job satisfaction, lowers stress, decreases the likelihood of quitting, and improves team performance. Yale University researchers who conducted a study of service workers found that workers’ ability to talk with one another about their stress helped them to cope, and even protected them against health risks. Another one of their studies showed that work groups’ performance suffered when members didn’t communicate well or didn’t pay attention to one another’s feelings, or when individuals became so controlling that they didn’t allow others to contribute. In contrast, when people in these work groups got along with one another, the positive results were synergistic—that is, peers in the group motivated each other to do better, and the sum of their combined efforts ended up being greater than if each person had been working alone.
A responsive attitude is also an advantage in relationships between supervisors and workers, especially in a tight labor market when employers are struggling to retain valued staff people. A recent Gallup poll of two million workers at seven hundred companies revealed that most workers rate having a caring boss even higher than they value money or fringe benefits. A similar study conducted by Lou Harris found that workers who didn’t like their bosses were four times more likely to leave their jobs than were people who thought their bosses were nice.
Exercise: Look for Opportunities to Turn Toward Your Coworkers
Bidding and responding to bids for emotional connection is probably not an explicit requirement of your job description. And yet, if you work with other people, you undoubtedly need these skills to form effective relationships with your coworkers. Much of the work of emotional connection happens in informal ways, in the way we talk with one another as we congregate around the coffeepot or share information before the meeting starts. While it would be impossible to catalog all the ways people in various jobs have for turning toward one another, the list of activities below may give you ideas about opportunities for emotional connection on your job.
Scan the list and circle those new activities that you’d like to try. After a few weeks, look back and see if those efforts have made a difference in your work environment and in the way you’re feeling about your coworkers.
Things to Do for Your Coworkers
• When you go for a snack or a cup of coffee, offer to bring something back for someone else.
• Say hello and good-bye each day.
• Share information that’s vital to both your jobs.
• Be open to laughing at your coworkers’ jokes.
• Turn away from your computer (or other equipment) and look at the person who’s talking to you.
• Say thanks when somebody does something for you.
• Return favors.
• Return things you borrow.
• Minimize distractions when your coworker needs to concentrate.
• Turn down your music if he or she asks.
• Refrain from wearing perfume or cologne if he or she is allergic to it.
• Look for things to appreciate in others, creating a climate of appreciation on the job.
• Remember his or her birthday with e-mail or a card.
• Send a note of praise to your coworker’s boss acknowledging a job well done.
• Offer similar praise at staff meetings for hardworking peers.
• Notice photos, signs, posters, and other personal expressions in your coworker’s environment. Ask about them. Listen.
• Decorate your own environment with things that interest you, if possible. Let these things be a way of helping others get to know you.
• Take photos at work just for fun, and post them, if possible. Make copies for people who appear in the photos.
• Ask your coworker about his or her weekend, holiday, or vacation. Listen.
• Be sympathetic when folks are sick. If they come to work feeling lousy, tell them to go home and rest.
• Ask your coworker why he or she chose this job. Listen.
• Ask your coworker about his or her goals and aspirations. Listen.
• Remember personal things about your coworker, and refer to these in future conversations.
• If you have resolved a conflict, recall the resolution in the future.
• Pay attention to your coworker’s special interests and needs. Honor them.
Things to Do Together
• Go to lunch.
• Take a coffee break.
• Host a potluck lunch.
• Take walks.
• Join a gym.
• Go out for drinks or coffee after work.
• Swap recipes.
• Swap information about other shared interests (music, politics, sports, etc.).
• Take a class or workshop relevant to your job.
• Take a class or workshop on stress management or healthy lifestyles.
• Take a class or workshop that’s just for fun.
• Volunteer for a community project.
• Join a professional a
ssociation and go to meetings and conferences together.
• Start a group at work related to a common hobby such as hiking, theater, or bowling.
• Plan your work group’s holiday party.
• Plan a celebration for another coworker who’s retiring, having a baby, getting married, or has won an award.
• Swap resources for child care or elder care.
• Go get a flu shot.
• Go shopping at lunch.
• Organize a blood drive.
• Commute.
Step 2. Discover How the Brain’s Emotional Command Systems Affect Your Coworker Relationships
To understand how the brain’s emotional command systems affect your relationships at work, take a look back at chapter 4 and consider all the characters involved in the wilderness adventure trip described there. Do any of them remind you of your coworkers or yourself at work? Do the conflicts that arise because of their differences sound familiar?
The emotional command systems questionnaires you completed can also help you to see which systems you’re most likely to have highly activated in the work you do. This awareness could help you to develop insights into why you sometimes have conflicts with certain people on the job. (Your Energy Czar, for example, can’t stand the way his Jester wastes precious time socializing on the job. Or your Jester just wishes the boss’s Commander-in-Chief would slow the pace of production during summer vacation time.)
If you want to gain deeper insights into the way your emotional command systems are activated at work, complete the questionnaires in chapter 4 once more, this time keeping work-related situations in mind specifically as you answer them. Then you can see how your results differ from the first time you completed the questionnaires. This may tell you which of your systems are more exclusively activated in the workplace. You may also want to complete the questionnaires with coworkers and then use the Emotional Command System Score Card on this page to compare results.
