Don’t treat people how you want to be treated!
I’m pretty sure that growing up the vast majority of us heard the mantra from our parents to ‘treat people how you want to be treated’ to make friends, avoid conflicts and generally get on well with others.
Being good children we followed the mantra and played nicely through school and into the workplace where all of a sudden we find ourselves treating people exactly how we would want to be treated, perhaps to collaborate to deliver an important project, change initiative or simply complete the day job, and encountering the baffling scenario that this did not always work well for us!
Whilst not a bad ethos to instil in children who are learning to interact with others, the advice from our guardians rarely changes as we grow, and many people continue to follow this throughout their lives without realising the very simple fact that for adults, it doesn’t work!
As with the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and a certain man in red who visits once a year, I’m afraid this is an instance where your parent may not have been telling the whole truth!
As we grow older and develop, we all develop innate preferences which will sometimes be the diametrical opposite of others.
This isn’t to say that one is better than the other, just that we are all different.
Failing to acknowledge and respond to these differences is often the cause of conflict which can damage working relationships and delivery.
For example we can all get very frustrated by those people who don’t respond to us or seem unable to make the decisions we need them to, when we need them to.
If we accept the logic you cannot force someone else to change, and yet refuse to do so yourself, this situation will continue indefinitely, building up resentment and destroying respect between colleagues.
The great news is that’s once you realise this it’s easy to fix!
Being self-aware enough to recognise that part of the issue may be how we approach someone else who has different preferences to us can resolve the problems and restore harmony and productiveness to a relationship.
For example, I personally prefer to get information in writing so I can consider it, process it, check any other information that I might want to and then reply.
I’m happy to read and digest information and try and reply within a day. I can find it very distracting to get call or have a discussion in the office kitchen where someone unexpectedly presents a lot of information to me and expects a decision instantly.
As such, my default is to email people all the information I think that they need and expect them to reply quickly to me with their decision and answer.
However, I often work with colleagues who prefer verbal discussions, sending them long, lengthy emails with large amounts of background and finally asking the question does not work – they get ignored and delayed because the recipient finds them very hard to deal with.
Once this is recognised, starting to call the person in question or schedule meetings with them to talk though the issue at the level of detail they wanted worked wonders – I was able to communicate with them in the preference that suited them, meaning they were happy to provide the information I needed and we could all move on.
It’s a simple change to make but persisting in using my default approach would have meant further delays and frustration, as Einstein said ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’.
There are hundreds of personality profiling tests out there for both individuals and teams – getting to know yourself and how to identify other people can help you understand not only how best to communicate with others to ensure the smooth achievement of objectives, but also how to identify the strengths of others on your team and help them achieve their full potential.
I’d encourage everyone (disclaimer, in this instance only!) to ignore your mums – treat people how they want to be treated instead and see what benefits you can achieve!
