The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships

by John Gottman

  It may also be helpful to consider how group dynamics in many organizations often resemble family dynamics. Here’s an example: Organizations typically have finite resources to distribute among workers in the form of pay, benefits, and amenities such as window offices or parking spaces, so managers have to decide how those resources are distributed. As a result, staff relationships begin to feel like family relationships, with the boss in the role of parent, and peers acting like rival siblings. With their Commander-in-Chief emotional operating systems fully activated, coworkers compete for money, power, and influence. The Nest-Builder system also comes alive as workers try to strengthen bonds with the boss and win management’s favor. When managers develop and communicate fair ways of compensating their workers, all this rivalry can work in an organization’s favor and benefit employees who are willing to play. But if workers perceive that the systems are unfair or nonexistent, they may experience lots of conflict and dissension. They may also feel demoralized, and angry with their managers and coworkers.

  All of this is human nature, as old as the story of Cain and Abel. In fact, because our behaviors are partly based on biologically wired, emotional command systems, such habits are probably even older! What does this mean for forming trusting relationships on the job? Are all workplace friendships doomed to be sullied by office politics and cutthroat competition? Of course not. In fact, people often find some of their closest, lifelong friends on the job. This only makes sense—particularly if you work in a profession you like. On the job, you’re likely to find people with similar interests, lifestyles, and values. Friends at work can give you advice, help you to improve your performance, open doors to better jobs, or simply help you to get things done. Friends can be a great source of information about opportunities or threats in the work environment. And if you establish a high level of trust, they can also be a great source of social support, helping you deal with stress on the job.

  The key is establishing that trust—which is what naturally occurs when two people develop a solid habit of bidding for connection and turning toward one another’s bids in positive ways. But this process can take some time, especially in an environment where ambition can cloud people’s intentions. In her book Toxic Friends/True Friends (William Morrow, 1999), Florence Isaacs suggests that it’s best to go slowly as you make friends at work. To save your job and your reputation, don’t reveal too many vulnerabilities until you’re sure the other person will protect your interests, she advises. And if you’re feeling uncomfortable about what you can and can’t confide in one another, say so. Don’t be afraid to talk about the boundaries of your friendship and why you may feel a need for more or less distance at times. It also helps to have a good network of friends outside the job. That way, you won’t feel the need to rely exclusively on your work buddies for emotional support—which can get difficult, especially if you’re having problems on the job.

  Step 3. Examine How Your Emotional Heritage Affects Relationships with Coworkers

  Like all relationships, your bonds with coworkers may be affected by your emotional heritage—i.e., your family’s attitudes toward emotional expression, their emotional philosophy, and the enduring vulnerabilities you may retain from past injuries.

  As we discussed in the preceding section, workplace relationships often resemble family dynamics. So it’s not surprising that emotional situations in the workplace can cause you to react the way you might have in the past. A woman who was taught in childhood always to sublimate her anger, for example, might have a hard time standing up to injustices in the workplace.

  People’s work relationships may also be affected by traumatic incidents that occur inside or outside the family. You may remember, for example, the story in chapter 5 of the executive who had suffered traumatic wartime experiences as a young man. He then carried the “enduring vulnerability” of often feeling tense and fearful, particularly if he thought his coworkers might “ambush” him with surprising information that could damage his career.

  These are just a few examples of why it’s good to be aware of your emotional heritage and how it can affect your current work life. Completing the following exercise may help you see how these issues relate to your own coworker relationships.

  Exercise: How Does Your Past Influence Your Connections with Coworkers?

  1. Review your scores on the exercise What’s Your Emotional History? on this page. Look carefully at your scores in each category: pride, love, anger, sadness, and fear. Think about how comfortable you feel when you experience those emotions at work. Then answer these questions, thinking about each emotion separately.

  • How does your comfort level with this emotion affect your ability to get along with coworkers?

  • When you experience this emotion at work, are you usually able to express it in a productive way?

  • Do you feel that your coworkers understand how you’re feeling?

  • Do you feel guilty or self-conscious expressing this feeling?

  • Are your coworkers likely to turn toward you, away from you, or against you when you express this emotion?

  Now think about how comfortable you feel when you recognize these emotions in your coworkers. Then answer these questions, again thinking about each emotion separately.

  • How does your comfort level with your coworker’s emotions affect your ability to connect with him or her?

  • Do you feel that you’re able to empathize with your coworker when he or she is feeling this way?

  • Do you feel embarrassed, frightened, or angry when your coworker expresses this feeling?

  • Are you likely to turn toward, turn away from, or turn against your coworker when he or she expresses this feeling?

  • How could you and your coworkers do better at responding to one another’s feelings in the workplace? Is this something you can discuss as a group or with an individual coworker or supervisor?

  2. Review the results of your responses to the exercise What Was Your Family’s Philosophy of Emotion? on this page, and answer these questions.

  • Was your family’s philosophy primarily emotion-coaching, emotion-dismissing, emotion-disapproving, or laissez-faire?

  • How does that affect your own philosophy of emotion?

  • In relating to your coworkers, what’s your emotional philosophy? How does this affect your job?

  • If you could characterize the emotional philosophy of your work team as a whole, would you say that it’s primarily emotion-coaching, emotion-dismissing, emotion-disapproving, or laissez-faire? How does this philosophy affect your team’s performance?

  3. Review the results of your response to the exercise What Are Your Enduring Vulnerabilities? on this page. Then answer the following series of questions for yourself.

  • How do your enduring vulnerabilities affect your ability to connect emotionally with your coworkers?

  • Do you feel that past injuries interfere with your ability to bid for emotional connection with coworkers? In what way?

  • Do you feel that past injuries interfere with your ability to respond to your coworkers’ bids? How so?

  • Do past injuries ever get in the way of your ability to feel included at work?

  • Do past injuries interfere with your ability to express or accept appreciation at work?

  • Do you sometimes feel that you’re struggling too hard to control your coworkers because you feel vulnerable?

  • Do you sometimes feel that you’re struggling too hard to resist being controlled by coworkers because you feel vulnerable?

  Step 4. Sharpen Your Skills at Emotional Communication with Coworkers

  Your ability to read and respond to your coworkers’ emotional cues can be a great advantage on the job. In chapter 6, you read about many different forms of communication, from facial expressions to gestures to tone of voice. We introduced the Emotional Communication Game, which gives you a chance to practice your skills in reading and expressing emotions nonverbally. Here�
�s another short version of the game, this one focused primarily on coworker relationships.

  You can practice these expressions by yourself, or you can do them with a friend or coworkers. Work groups might find it useful to do the game together to learn one another’s emotional communication styles.

  Exercise: The Emotional Communication Game with Coworkers

  To play the game, silently read each item and its three possible interpretations. Then take turns reading the items aloud, as the other person tries to guess which of the three meanings you’re trying to convey.

  1. Did you get it done?

  a. You’re pleasantly surprised that the task seems to be finally completed.

  b. You’re worried that your colleague didn’t do what he or she promised to do.

  c. You’re just asking for information.

  2. Are you going to the staff retreat?

  a. You’re not sure you’re going to go, and you’re trying to decide.

  b. You think your colleague should go and not be so isolated from other people at work.

  c. You’re simply asking for information.

  3. I completed seven units yesterday by myself.

  a. You’re proud of the amount of work you accomplished on your own, and you’d like to be acknowledged.

  b. You’re angry that you didn’t get more help from your coworker.

  c. You’re not feeling one way or another about the workload; you’re just giving a tally of what you accomplished.

  4. Who’s going to take responsibility for this project?

  a. You’re tired of taking the lead on projects you do together, and you want your colleague to do it for a change.

  b. You’re just asking for information about whose turn it is.

  c. Your colleague just naturally takes over. But this time you’d like to have a chance to show what you can do when you’re in charge.

  5. What should we do about including Jane on this project?

  a. The two of you want to do the project alone together without having to think about the composition of the work team.

  b. Jane is not very competent and is dragging down your team’s performance.

  c. Jane would be a real asset, and you’d very much like to have her on the team.

  Step 5. Find Shared Meaning in Your Work

  As you read in chapter 7, emotional connection requires finding common ground with other people, discovering shared values, and realizing that you derive meaning from the same types of activities. Additionally, it’s about honoring one another’s dreams and visions. I believe these things are as true in coworker relationships as they are in our marriages, our friendships, and our bonds with our kids and relatives.

  In his book Principle-Centered Leadership (Summit, 1991), author Stephen R. Covey expresses how important it is for people to believe that their jobs are worthwhile. “People are not just resources or assets, not just economic, social, and psychological beings,” Covey writes. “They are also spiritual beings; they want meaning, a sense of doing something that matters. People do not want to work for a cause with little meaning, even though it taps their mental capacities to their fullest. There must be purposes that lift them, ennoble them, and bring them to their highest selves.”

  What happens when coworkers discover that they derive a shared sense of meaning from their jobs? They connect emotionally, which leads to stronger and more productive relationships. They’re more willing and able to work through conflicts that arise, solve problems together, and get things done.

  Below is an exercise for exploring the meaning you derive from your work. That’s followed by suggested workplace rituals that may help you to strengthen your emotional connections with coworkers.

  Exercise: What Does Your Job Mean to You?

  Here’s a list of questions to consider in your relationships with coworkers. Answering them may help you to clarify issues related to trust, competition, closeness, and so on. As this type of exercise does with other relationships, it may also help to identify what you have in common with your coworkers in terms of your goals, values, and what you find meaningful in life. Discovering common ground in these areas may help you to establish stronger emotional connections, resulting in a better working relationship.

  You can answer these questions on your own to gain insight into your perceptions of your relationships on the job, or, if you have one or more coworkers with whom you share a great deal of trust, you can study the questions together and share your answers with one another.

  • What does your job mean to you? What does it mean to you to provide your service or product?

  • What does it mean to you to be a good coworker?

  • What qualities go into creating a good working environment? Does your current job feel that way to you? If not, could things change to make it feel that way?

  • What does it mean to you to be part of a team? What are the costs and benefits of knowing that others rely on you to do your job well?

  • Are there things you’d like to change about the way you and your coworkers relate to one another? What changes would you like to make?

  • What role do ethics play in your job? What does it mean to do your job in an ethical way? What does it mean to treat your coworkers ethically?

  • What’s the most important thing you’d like to accomplish in your current job? How are your current relationships with your coworkers helping or hindering you?

  • What are your future career goals? How do your current job relationships affect your ability to achieve those goals?

  • How important is it to be compensated fairly for the job you do?

  • How important is it that workers be paid the same wage for the same job?

  • How important to you is recognition? How do you like to be recognized and appreciated for a job well done? How would you like for your boss to show that appreciation? How would you like for your coworkers to show that appreciation?

  • How is your job performance evaluated? How is that evaluation communicated to you? What do you like or not like about this process?

  • How do you feel about being friends with your coworkers? Should friendships at work be different from other friendships? In what way?

  • Should people set different boundaries for the friendships they form at work? If so, what should those boundaries be? Under what circumstances might those boundaries be crossed or changed?

  • What is the role of intimacy in work-related friendships? How much sharing is enough? How much is too much?

  • What about confidentiality among coworkers? Should coworkers have stricter rules about telling and keeping secrets than other kinds of friends have?

  • Should coworkers be able to count on one another for emotional support in times of stress? If you’re having a bad day, should you keep your feelings to yourself or tell others and ask for their support?

  • How important is it to find a balance amid the demands of work, friends, and family? Should the job be made family-friendly to help achieve that balance?

  • What is the role of fun in work-related relationships? Is it okay to be playful or silly on the job?

  • How do you feel about expressing negative emotions on the job? Is it okay to tell your coworkers when you’re angry, sad, or scared?

  • How important is it for you to share your true feelings with your coworkers?

  • How do you feel about flirting among coworkers?

  • How do you feel about coworkers having romantic or sexual relationships?

  • Imagine leaving your current job to retire or to take another position. What would you like for your boss and coworkers to say about you at your going-away party? Are there changes you’d have to make in order for that to happen?

  Rituals of Connection with Coworkers

  Workplace rituals can be a powerful way for coworkers to demonstrate their emotional connection. One of the most colorful examples I’ve heard involves Russian cosmonauts, who like to honor the pi
oneering spirit of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. On the way to the launchpad for his historic 1961 flight, Gagarin got out of the van he was riding in, and peed on its rear tire via a valve in his spacesuit. To this day, Russian space crews always ask the driver to stop so they can repeat the ritual. It’s a silly custom, to be sure. But like all good rituals, it sends a significant message: We’re linked to something bigger than ourselves, and we’re all in this mission together.

  Below are descriptions of a few more common (and less messy) workplace rituals. Whether or not they might occur in your job, they may give you some ideas for instituting rituals that can help you improve emotional connections with coworkers.

  Introductions. How new people are introduced and welcomed into a work group can have a significant impact on their ability to assimilate and perform, especially during the first few weeks on a job. In some positions, the boss arranges to have new employees greeted at the door and escorted through a helpful agenda of orientation activities. The newcomer receives formal introductions, so that all the players can get to know one another and each person’s roles efficiently. In other jobs, Day One finds workers on their own, lucky to locate a desk or a working telephone. Obviously, there’s lots of latitude between these two extremes, but the more your work group can do to create rituals that make a new member feel welcome, the better.

  Arrivals and departures. Hellos and good-byes are simple rituals that can go a long way toward building rapport among coworkers. First, they serve the very practical purpose of letting everybody know who’s present and available for business. Second, they can be a time for the type of “small talk” that typically leads to richer emotional connection. So don’t be afraid to take a few extra minutes around the coffeepot in the morning or the coatrack at the end of the day. Whether you’re just talking baseball, griping about the commute, or swapping photos of your kids, you’re doing the important work of building relationships.