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For years I have urged people to build their relationships. For years they have told me that they already do that – or have looked at me as if I just fell out of a tree. When I looked at their companies and their relationships with their staff, their shareholders and their clients, I saw relationships that were extremely poor. When I mentioned this I was generally dismissed.
I found this whole situation so puzzling I have gone on a search to find out why people respond in this way.
First, I discovered that people have very low expectations when it comes to relationships. Most people have had very bad relationships with most people most of their lives. Now, before you get cranky with me, just think about it. Our divorce statistics are around one in two. Figures on family violence, alcoholism and other addictions such as gambling and eating disorders make your ‘normal’ family of mum, dad and a couple of kids living together happily very much an endangered species.
According to family therapist Virginia Satir only about four per cent of the population grow up in families that are ‘functional’ – appropriate for the emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing and growth of their members. If you have experienced really good relationships you are, statistically, a freak.
Second, I worked out that when I suggested people work on their relationships, they heard a whole lot of things that had very little to do with what I was suggesting. Many people think working on your relationship – especially in business – means giving the other person what they want. I enjoyed a very inspirational speech at a conference a few years ago about how Sydney won the 2000 Olympic bid through "relationship marketing" – which translated to finding out the likes, peccadilloes and weaknesses of the IOC members and then pandering to them. More recently, similar behaviour has been represented to us less glamorously as corruption. For me, working on relationships means creating a climate where people can grow on every level of their being, while working together in a collegiate environment where people grow to respect and care for each other while cooperating to ensure top performance and financial return. This is hard work, hard rewarding work. It isn't about being a sycophant, a yes-man or a con. Quite the contrary – it's about being true to yourself. Courageous enough to deal honestly with the good and bad in each issue and emotionally mature enough to be honest with yourself and others about your agenda, your strengths and your weaknesses. In an environment like that, corruption just isn't possible.
And third, I found that people couldn't hear me because they didn't want to. It's not that people don't like the dream of having a healthy, growth inducing, productive work environment – we all like the platitudes – it was that the personal risk involved in making the changes seemed to many to be too great. The truth is most people would rather stay somewhere uncomfortable, unproductive and known than move toward something better and unknown.
Joel Baker in his video tape ‘The Business of Paradigms’ tells us that when the paradigm changes, everybody goes back to zero. His definition of a paradigm is that people living in the old system can't even see the new. That is, they are so unskilled in the new model they don't even know what they don't know. For most people this level of ignorance is so terrifying they flip into total psychological denial. They don't even try and see the new. This is why so many great inventors have been tortured, gaoled and outcast. Better to shoot the messenger than admit you have something – even something extremely valuable – to learn.
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