Connecting to People’s Humanity

August 11, 2024

TRANSCRIPT

I am being asked to work at a particular pace, and everything we're learning here in this training is telling me to implement things and to not just be only focusing on putting out fires, but be focusing on the relationship. But the people I'm working with don't seem interested in the relationship. They just seem interested in results.

I mean, I yeah. I guess what I would say is being aware of relationship and being connected to the importance of relationship does not take time.

Are you are you setting up a lunch with everybody and sitting around and having breaking the ice questions? Okay. That would be a specific purpose, and you would you would get to know each other or you're doing some kind of meeting and you're getting to know each other. Okay.

That that's legit. Right? That you have time that the manager is putting some kind of team building as part of the process of of getting having people get to know each other. You could suggest that.

You could say, hey. I think it would be great for us to have a one hour luncheon where we do this or something like that. I think in terms of you as an individual being connected to people, so much of this has to do with your attention and how you listen and how you respond. So I can be relational in an email.

I always say thank you. I always wish people a good day. I always say happy you know, hope you have a happy Thanksgiving.

I find that being more connected hue like, in humanity, like, being connected to people's humanity, that I get really great responses when I ask people for stuff. When I say thank you, when I look at people when I'm walking through the hallway, I say hello to people. So I don't think being connected to people takes time necessarily.

If you like, for instance, if there's no time for any of that, nobody does any team building, nothing like that, you can say on your own, hey. I just wanna thank you. That was really great. I really liked your contribution in the meeting, or you can put, you know, your hand forward first and do that. Yeah.

That's great.

Because it's a distinction that lives in the way you occur in in the world. It is not something you do.

It's that I see you as another human being, and I welcome you, and I, you you know, I appreciate you, that stuff you're doing, but it's because you have that context.

And I think that that, you know, that in and of itself is sort of a shift for people to make.

But Right.

I have been amazed sometimes where I will hear someone be rude to someone else for no reason.

Almost like an attitude of, sure. Give it to me. Or, no. I don't need that right now. You know, that as a way of being is not gonna make the other person feel safe. It's not gonna have the other person wanna help you.

So just being aware of your mood and your attitude toward other people can go a long way.

Yeah. That's great.

I mean, we kind of exemplify that thing you just said by the homework even that we give on the first day. It's not anything extra. It's take this frame we gave you and apply it to your conversations and try like, practice listening generously so this doesn't take extra time out of your day. Just put intentionality around what you're doing.

And even that, so many people come back and they're like, I forgot about it. Didn't do it. So it's more of an issue of a lack of intentionality and present than time. But we'll say, oh, I don't have time for that.

Right. It's more like, I just don't want to or I don't care.

Yeah. I'm not even sure if it's I don't want to and I don't care. I think people literally forget or they don't commit to the result that they could get if they did that. They don't maybe see, hey.

If I did it's almost like if I said to you, you know, if you if you took a one mile walk every single day, you would sleep better, you would feel better, you would until you really commit to that result, I wanna feel right? It's not commit to the walk. It's commit to, I wanna feel better. I wanna sleep better.

That's what I'm committed to. Alright. So what do I have to do? I have to walk to do that.

So I think sometimes people don't understand the unintentional outcomes of the way we listen, the way that we talk to people. Those things, people oftentimes, it's just the way it is. I don't I don't see that being connected to my results. I don't see that being connected to, did I get asked to be in a meeting, or did I get promoted to that thing, or, you know, do I have good relationships at work?

I think people think those things like health, it's just luck. We can see it's lazy, but is it? I don't know.

I don't know. It's like a jettisoning jettisoning your agency. Just being like, well, I happen to have a good team. I happen to have a good team. Yeah. I have no part in it, which is probably how a lot of us are about relationships in general, like whoever happens to be around us or whatever family we happen to be born into or whatever, and there's not a lot of responsibility about our own experience.