Tip 8 - Don't Forget the Humanity of Others

One key lesson that I’ve learned in my 25 year journey is that it is helpful to look at the whole person, even(especially) in people who put us off. When someone is exhibiting negative behavior, it is often tempting to simply write them off. Yet, if we take the time to look at them from a place of humanity, it can dramatically shift our interactions with them. My 8th Tip - Don’t Forget the Humanity of Others

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” -  Wayne Dyer

Several years ago, I had a powerful moment while teaching a 3-day agile course. I was leading a class discussion about teams and I made a statement something like, “it’s important to treat everyone as a full member of the team.” One of my students raised his hand and asked: '' You don’t mean everybody do you? I really get it, we need to fully include everyone, but some people are so checked out, there’s nothing we can do. Clearly there are exceptions. You don’t mean them as well?” I could see the heads nodding in the classroom. It seemed that many of the leaders in the room struggled with people that just didn’t seem to make an effort or care. I could see the conflict on their faces. 

I paused for a moment to gather my thoughts. “Yes,” I said, “I mean everyone.” The class, which was already accustomed to having energetic discussions, erupted with questions. I calmed the class and told them a story, which I will recap here:

Many years ago, I took a role at a large insurance company. It was the late 90’s and downsizing was common. The company had recently informed a large number of their senior technical staff that they would be losing their jobs in 1 year. Many of these employees left right away. After a few months, the company’s leadership realized how much of the company’s technical knowledge had walked out the door with them. (How they didn’t anticipate this still baffles me). In a knee-jerk response, they hired a couple of technical writers to work with the remaining veteran employees to document the systems. The two tech writers, while competent at writing, were fairly recent college grads with liberal arts degrees. When they met with these senior employees, they had trouble understanding the technology and asked, what many of the senior employees felt were, stupid questions. The senior employees became more and more infuriated, sometimes refusing to cooperate. That’s where I came in. They hired me to interview the senior employees, understand the technology and explain it to the tech writers so that they could document it. 

On my first interview, the technical expert came at me with daggers. He told me how much he resented being there. He almost shouted that he didn’t want to sit through another round of stupid questions. He was rude, mean and actually pretty scary. Wide eyed, I sat back and politely listened. As I listened to him rant, I felt a lot of empathy for him. He had truly received a raw deal. He vented for several minutes about how badly he felt he was being treated. I nodded and let him know that I agreed that his situation was messed up. Then an interesting thing happened. After he got that all off his chest, he shifted. He softened and seemed more sad than angry. Without any malice in his voice, he turned and asked me what I needed to know. From then on he was very helpful and easy to work with. We worked together for a few days and it was quite pleasant. Occasionally I would hit a sore spot, and learned to just hold space for him to vent. At one point, he thanked me profusely for listening to him. I realized in that moment, that throughout his ordeal,

I was probably the first person that had treated him with any humanity.

This even deepened my empathy towards him. We established a good rapport. While he still wasn’t happy about the job and was cold to many people in the office, I began to see him as a whole person and how competent he truly was.

After a few more encounters with similarly jaded senior employees, I began to see a pattern. While many of them seemed scary, uncooperative, mean, or just checked-out at first, if I allowed them the space to vent, most were actually pretty good to work with. I began to consider being empathetic and allowing these employees to express their frustration to be a key factor to the success of the project. I learned that there was much more to these people than what it looked like on the surface. This experience changed how I viewed disgruntled employees for the rest of my career. 

As I told the story, many of the class participants nodded, obviously relating to the situation. I then turned to the class and stated. I know that you are all good and capable people. Have you ever been in a situation where you just checked out? The room was quiet as the class contemplated my question. Most participants acknowledged that they had checked out at some point in their career. After a long pause, a woman said softly, “I’m checked out right now.” The class was deathly silent with all eyes focused on her. She slowly elaborated, vulnerably sharing how the past few years, including the agile transformation process had zapped her of her will to show up fully. She was ready to give up. 

It was a powerful admission. The energy in the room shifted. She and others began to open up about the pain and the frustration they were feeling during the agile change initiative. Several others acknowledged that they had lost their motivation and weren’t showing up fully. As people felt the safety to open up vulnerably, a deep sense of connection was created in the classroom. There was a sense of relief, as they let go of some of the pent up emotion that they had been holding. By looking at their own experiences and those of the people in the room, the class was able to appreciate why it is important to consider the whole person, not just how they appear to be showing up.

Have you ever checked out in a situation? Would you want that experience to define how others view you?

I then shared another story about how treating a disgruntled employee with humanity can shift how they show up. I was hired to create some very complex data reports for a large power company. I was going to be paired up with Sarah, a woman who was considered to be mean, uncooperative, and an all around horrible employee. When they gave me the role they actually apologized and warned me about how difficult it would be. 

At my first meeting with Sarah, she glared at me as I walked into the room. I timidly introduced myself and asked her to tell me a little about herself and her background. She gave a gruff, relatively short answer that was “charged”. I delicately asked her to elaborate. She hesitated at first and then, as I encouraged her to vent, the floodgates opened. She shared about years of being treated badly, including blatant sexism and racial discrimination. A few years earlier, the mistreatment had escalated to the point that she had finally had enough and filed a lawsuit against the company. She was now well over a year into the lawsuit. They couldn’t fire her, yet they had been retaliating by giving her horrible assignments and had become even more unkind to her. Her story blew me away. 

After a few meetings, she eventually let her guard down around me. It turned out that she was actually a very kind, intelligent, and well mannered Southern woman. Few people knew of her situation and continued to make comments about how sorry they were that I had to work with her. I had grown very fond of Sarah, respected her work, and truly enjoyed working with her. 

Again I was reminded, when you connect with someone from a place of humanity, it can change how they show up.

Eventually I turned the classroom conversation back to the original topic - my statement that we need to fully include everyone in our teams, even those who seem problematic. We discussed numerous factors that can affect people showing up as less than their best selves, not just the sense of feeling beaten up over time. Some people experience problems at home, the loss of a loved one, a new baby, taking care of aging parents, negative conflict with a coworker, or even depression which can have a dramatic impact on how they show up at work. People in the class began to share their own experiences and what they had observed in others over the years. We had a rich discussion. It became clear that there can be so much more to a person than what we see on the surface. I think everyone in the room grew from it, including myself.

Later in the class, when we were on the topic of healthy conflict, the concept of seeing the whole person came up again. I was teaching about Speed B. Leas’ model of The 5 Levels of Conflict summarized below:

Level 1: Problem to Solve - Characterized by collaboration, information sharing, fact based

Level 2: Disagreement - More focused on personal protection, guarded

Level 3: Contest - Becomes about winning, personal attacks 

Level 4: Crusade - Factions and tribalism, ideological, attack people for affiliation

Level 5: World War - Aim is to destroy others, winning is not enough, the others must lose

I described how important conflict is to healthy teams, provided everyone communicates at Level 1, by refraining from personal attacks, harsh judgment, or assigning blame. (This is similar to the healthy conflict that Patrick Lencioni describes in his book the Five Dysfunctions of a Team). Interpersonal conflict only becomes problematic when it escalates to the higher Levels in the model and starts including self-protection, personal attacks and win/lose sentiments. 

I shared that as leaders, it’s important to practice communicating at Level 1. I apparently shocked the class when I described one of the ways that I’ve used to practice having Level 1 conversations. At the time, I was in the habit of seeking out someone who had opposing political views and attempting to engage in a Level 1 conversation with them.

My class looked at me wide eyed, as if I had said the most unimaginable thing. Fortunately, they were also intrigued. They asked a lot of questions about how this worked out for me. I shared that it didn’t always work, but when it did it was very educational and connecting. On one occasion, I talked with a colleague, Mike, who had very different political views than my own. At the time, my perspective was that no one in their right mind could support such views. (I was very judgmental). I had a lot of respect for Mike, so with curiosity I asked him why he held these views. I was genuinely surprised by how much of what he said I agreed with. He complained about a number of things that I also found very problematic (i.e. congressional dysfunction). The primary difference was what we believed would help remedy or solve these issues. We had a passionate, yet judgment free conversation about our different perspectives. In the end, we agreed to disagree on many items. Yet, there was a connection that was formed, as we realized how much more we actually had in common than either of us could have imagined prior to the conversation.

I shared with my class that the key to engaging in Level 1 conversations is to let go of judgment and find a way to be genuinely curious about the other person's point of view.  I observed that when I was able to engage in a Level 1 conversation with someone with an opposing political viewpoint, we both gained so much from the conversation. I always learned something and shifted in some way. Typically we each continued to maintain our core beliefs. At the same time, we often shifted from thinking there was only one way of looking at the issue to being open to alternative perspectives. On more than one occasion, the other person indicated that I was the first person that had really listened to them. It seemed that when I took the time to fully understand their perspective, they felt heard and they often became able to truly consider my perspective. We were able to get to Level 1 communication and connect from a place of humanity.  These were some of the most interesting and enlightening conversations I’ve had.

When is the last time you’ve had a real conversation with someone who has different beliefs, without judgment?

We often write people off for many reasons without considering them as a whole person. 

Where in your life have you judged or written someone off based upon a single attribute? (Perhaps a checked-out coworker, someone of a different socioeconomic background, a different gender, a member of a religion or ethnic group, or a member of the “wrong” political party.) What assumptions have you made about who they are just based upon seeing just a small part of their whole person? What could shift in how you relate to them if you approached them with judgment-free curiosity? Have you considered that there might be so much more to them than your first impression? 

With the current climate in our country, seeing humanity in others is even more relevant and more challenging than ever. The combination of political tribalism, seemingly endless disinformation, and widely differing perspectives about how to respond to the pandemic has led many of us to judge or write off our friends, family, and colleagues. In many cases, we’ve stopped seeing the humanity in other people, even some that we were once very close to. Instead of seeing the whole person, we often can’t see past their affiliations or opinions on certain issues. In many areas, we’re operating at Level 4 on the conflict scale. It’s become very difficult to have Level 1 conversations that are fact-based and free from personal attacks, harsh judgment, and blame. Yet, I believe it is worth making the effort. If we are going to heal our nation and our interpersonal relationships we’ve got to learn to talk to each other again. 

Have you lost your connection to someone that you once felt close to? Are you able to look past differences and see their humanity?

Some people engage in behaviors that may limit our desire to want to form a connection with them. I don’t believe that you have to agree with or approve of the beliefs, choices, and actions of others to view them as whole people. A great place to start is with people who we’ve distanced ourselves from or written off in the past few years. Start by asking yourself, if you have ever truly listened to their perspective from a place of curiosity. Or has your opinion about one or more of their viewpoints led you to see them as “less than” in some way?

What could be possible if you approached someone that you’ve written off in some way with curiosity or from a place of humanity?

When we take the time to look at people from a broader perspective, we can often see things that we didn’t see before. The next time you interact with a jaded coworker, someone who is guarded, or someone who has different ideological beliefs from you, consider looking at the whole person. There is often so much more to them than what first meets the eye.

My 8th Tip - Don’t Forget the Humanity in Others.