More on E-Mails and Partnership
Last week I discussed a recent e-mail generated conflict from a short term group I was working with. Because the example is so rich and layered, I’ve decided the best way to present the material is through a longer length work. I’ll make this available as the work is complete.
For now, I’d like to take a moment to reiterate some broad generalizations in regards to e-mails and the partnership model, as well as dominance. In case you’re wondering, I’ve owned my own business, worked as a mid level manager for two large corporations and a number of smaller organizations. I’ve taken on a variety of service industry roles—carpentry, cooking, cleaning, maintenance, waitstaff, delivery and the like—as well as volunteering on the steering committee of a local non-profit. Additionally, I have done a variety of group and individual work under professors while working on most recently an AS in Psychology, undergraduate work in an Environmental Studies program, and an Environmental Humanities Masters Program. I earned a BA in English and History in the early to mid-1990’s.
You may think I’m running down my pedigree and list of credentials to tout my authority and expertise. Certainly if you look from the dominant way of thinking why else would I run down these things? Another way of viewing this information is to see it in terms of varieties of collaborative experiences. Another possibility is the list suggests it’s likely I’ve worked with a broad range of people in a fairly broad (though there are much broader) array of experiences, organizations and roles.
Moreover, I’ve spent my free time over the years immersing in readings as varied as depth and personal help psychology and managerial and organizational behavior, especially on ways to improve the health and wellbeing of persons and organizations from those points of view. These perspectives have informed a range of practices. Non-judgmental awareness and acute observation are two crucial practices. I also have worked on formulating ways of communicating and guiding others that allows for a great deal of independence while offering alternatives in situations where people are stumped or seeking input. Cultivation of problemsolving strategies and communicative styles has been complemented as well by the cultivation of general wellbeing-oriented communication.
To put it in the terms an expert in the communications and negotiation field has used, while we are used to, perhaps even in need of, performative communication when experiencing conflict—expressing anger, hurt, rage or a sense of injustice in the most pejorative, polemic or victimized language available—other types of communication become valuable as we move towards attempting to manage for instance conflict in a way that preserves or re-establishes sound, workable relations.
Riane Eisler in her chapter “Work and Community Relationships: The Widening Circle of Caring,” in her book The Power of Partnership, sees as the primary goal of managing our perceptions and our communicative and behavioral responses as a way to maintain a strong sense of wellbeing. Because we spend so much time in the workplace, there is no more valuable place to manage our consciousness. Statistics show that however much we try otherwise, the sheer volume of time we spend in work relations, including our personal relationship with ourselves and our work, the feelings and mindset that are cultivated in the workplace will bleed over into other social and personal theatres of our lives.
Returning to the topic of e-mails, a few givens are worth remembering. No matter how sure we are of what we are attempting to communicate, the party on the other end may receive what is said differently. By the same token, what is read in an e-mail, no matter how clear the e-mail may seem to be, may not be what the author intended or what is most in need of being heard or communicated. As I see it, especially when a sense of conflict or disrespect emerges, it pays to investigate. In the partnership model, these might serve as golden rules. As a person who has been a student of communication and interpersonal psychology for most of my life, regardless of how well I actually communicate across all instances, the cardinal rule of communication for me is to confirm with the source that what I have heard is what was intended, or what the respondent meant.
This guideline has been highly valuable for me in insuring that communication is working at a quality level. So why aren’t the majority of us practicing this guideline? If you are, more power to you. I want to suggest some partnership versus dominance reasons why some of us might not be invested in practicing this guideline.
First of all, in many of the places I have lived, socialized and worked first in Texas and later in Utah, to ask a person to repeat what they have said, or to re-state what one has heard, is considered dumb. Honestly. This is a prime example of how dominance has socialized wise communication practices out of us. In some instances, one or the other party may just not care about the other party. In that case practicing communication conducive to maintaining flow between co-workers may take more effort than we want to put out. In the dominance mode, we may act out passive-aggressively just because we’re stressed or the whole idea of being imposed on to communicate well is something we’re not interested in putting effort into; something we resent having to do.
In the partnership model, we might—might—eschew passive-aggressive communication in favor of more caring communication, even with strangers or in the workplace. I believe such a practice is favorable, and cultivates respect among humans that has the potential to bleed over into how we treat the natural Earth environment and its inhabitants. On the other hand, it may be more than we can expect of ourselves under stress, or when coping with a trauma. An alternative might be to acknowledge our less partnership-oriented behavior to the other party. “Hey, I just want to let you know I’m not being as partnership-oriented as I could be, because I’m feeling…” for instance.
I sometimes think that when partnership behaviors aren’t practiced, especially when committing to an interpretation of an e-mail, without investigating whether the ascribed meaning was the one the author intended, the intent is to reinforce the sense of power that comes from the dominance-based way of doing things. Retaliation, passive aggression, and behavioral enforcement of discipline through outrage or deep victimization can be—though we must be very careful when assessing messages of victimhood, because these can be very complex—ways of exercising power and getting what we want manipulatively.
In the end, proactive communicative strategies, especially with e-mails, is a vital partnership-oriented practice. Such a practice can pay off in the long run, since how we behave and perceive we are being treated by others today will largely affect how we perceive we are being treated and hence how we behave towards others tomorrow. The overwhelming preference for us as human beings is to turn to automatic pilot. Heuristics, mental shortcuts that may have been embedded in our emotional memory from previous, especially unpleasant situations, may be used to judge and prosecute what is happening and who is behind it without sufficient inquiry. The fight or flight mechanism is designed to protect us, and has fallen to protecting our egos. That same mechanism can react too quickly to guarantee that what we believe is happening to us is actually the whole truth, much less what was intended.
