Employing Differences, Episode 186: Would a rule help?

"If somebody showed up sobbing and saying, 'I'm having a horrible day,' we would probably shower care upon them. I want to encourage that same thing when they're showing up as loud and angry. The same neediness is actually being expressed. It's easier to do it when someone is weepy and sad and not lashing out, but it's the same problem."

Paul  & Karen talk about how creating a rule is rarely a helpful response to people getting upset.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.  

[00:00:13] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig.  

[00:00:14] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis.  

[00:00:16] Karen: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, Would a rule help?  

[00:00:24] Paul: What Karen and I want to talk about today is a pattern that we see that's pretty common in groups working together. Which is they start working together, they're doing some things for a while, and things are kind of going, however it is they're going.  

[00:00:36] Paul: And then at some point, somebody does something that someone, perhaps everyone else in the group, gets upset about. And this is normal, by the way, this happens. Like, this is not necessarily a sign of dysfunction. Things happen!  

[00:00:51] Paul: And the pattern that we often notice is that as everyone is still really wound up and reactive about this thing that happened. That this person did, the behavior that they don't want, inevitably, someone says, "Well, we should make a rule against that."  

[00:01:07] Paul: And what we want to talk about is the rather mixed case of success that we see with that sort of strategy. And what other alternatives might be given what we've seen in that pattern. 

[00:01:21] Karen: So I'll say the classic example of this is. Something happens, somebody gets angry. They send out an angry email, Slack, Discord message, however you want to say it. They send out an angry thing on the group channel.  

[00:01:36] Karen: And other people get very hurt by the reactive language. And somebody inevitably says, "You shouldn't ever send angry emails", and "We shouldn't allow that anymore." 

[00:01:48] Karen: And depending on the culture of the group, they may just say "There should be a rule against that", or "There is a rule against that". Or perhaps "We need to come up with a communications policy."  

[00:02:00] Karen: All of this basically is at the same thing, which is saying, 'Okay, this thing happened. Something happened, somebody got upset.' 

[00:02:07] Karen: 'They expressed their upset in a way that many of us found hurtful. We don't like being hurt. Now we're all disconnected and feeling icky and it's painful and we don't like it. We don't want to ever be here again. We're trying to figure out how to get out and make sure that we're never here again. So obviously the thing to do is to prevent people from sending angry emails.' 

[00:02:26] Karen: And the way that we know to do that is to have a policy that says you're not allowed to send angry emails.  

[00:02:32] Karen: And let me tell you, I can't think of a case where somebody really felt like sending an angry email and they went and checked the rule book to see if it was allowed. This is not the way this goes. 

[00:02:42] Karen: The way this goes is whatever the rule is, they knew before they sent it, people weren't going to be happy about it. There's some reason they did it anyway. And if there's a rule in place?. This person who's already upset enough to be somewhat out of character, not in their best self, doing things that on a different day, they would know better than that, that person then gets a bunch of judgment and blame thrown at them saying 'You weren't allowed to do this'. And 'You broke a rule' and 'You're the cause of all of the problems'.  

[00:03:13] Karen: Which funnily enough does not make them feel any better at all. In fact, it tends to just rile them up more, and it's especially dynamic if the way that they get corrected is on the group email. And it tends to just spin and spin and spin. And if you've ever been in a group where this happens, you know exactly what I'm talking about.  

[00:03:34] Karen: And so what we want to point to is almost never is a rule going to solve that kind of problem. There are things for which having a procedure that we talk about and agree to, or sharing our feelings about, you know, maybe some of us think it's okay to share politics on email and some of us don't, and we have to work that out and we can do an agreement, maybe that works. 

[00:03:54] Karen: But if the rule is about trying to stop reactive or angry behavior, it's not going to help.  

[00:04:01] Paul: Yeah. And in particular, rules that we come up with about angry and reactive behavior are really not going to help. There's this weird disconnect that happens.  

[00:04:13] Paul: A lot of times when we're in an emotionally reactive space, where we're angry about a thing, we're upset, and the group is all kind of on this. But it happens in, you know, one on one as well. That I see this happen a lot where something happens, someone gets upset about it, we're upset about it. And the thing that we try to do is take a left turn out of the emotional relational space, and into objective reality.  

[00:04:38] Paul: We somehow think that 'Well, the emotional side isn't serving us well, so we need to go to something that we're actually not capable of engaging in right now, which is that objective piece. I see this where, when people, you know, they get upset about something where it's like, 'Well, that's not true!' Or like, 'That's not what I said!' 

[00:04:58] Paul: Or we try to bring facts into the case while we're still upset, which then of course makes people defensive, makes us even more upset. Things like that.  

[00:05:07] Paul: And the idea of creating a policy is another one of those things that isn't in so much the relational space as in the sort of cognitive and the more objective space. 

[00:05:18] Paul: And that doesn't work. And particularly the things that we come up with then are unlikely to actually be well suited to the situation. So more of what we tend to find works for this. Is working through and processing kind of whatever the reactivity is. Like whatever is in the group, helping people feel heard, getting things expressed in ways that are perhaps a little less, uh, a little less triggering, a little less blamey, a little less toxic. 

[00:05:47] Paul: How do we actually work through it? And then we might think about what are things that are useful to do. The reasonable precautions we might take in the future. But we actually need to repair the upset, the emotional damage first, before we can leave that space and go back into the space of whatever it is we're trying to do together and talk then about facts and cognitive pieces and things like that. 

[00:06:14] Karen: And of course. If somebody is coming to me saying, 'Help us come up with a communications policy, so we don't ever get angry emails again'. And I'm going to be trying to encourage them to engage with that angry person. And they're going to say, 'I don't feel safe with them while they're in this place.' 'It's not a good thing for...' 'I'm not up for that.' 'It's not a good thing for me to do.' 'What good would it do anyway?'  

[00:06:38] Karen: And the thing that I really want to point to here is that in a group, your resiliency doesn't come from an expectation that no one will ever behave badly. I've never seen a group where that happens.  

[00:06:53] Karen: That's not true between me and my husband. And I love him more than anything on earth. And the last thing in the world I'd ever want to do is hurt him.  

[00:06:59] Karen: And I do sometimes. Because people, and actually the more close and safe that we feel with people, the more likely we are to say really awful things when we're having our worst day. And so the thing I like to think about is when I'm having my worst day, what I count on, in a group where I'm connected, and where I can in the end to be safe, is that somebody else isn't.  

[00:07:25] Karen: And that somebody who's not having their worst day, can hear me behaving out of character. 'I'm not okay.' 'I'm doing things that are not okay.' And they can come to me and say, 'Wow, you don't seem okay. How can I help?' 'How can I hear you? How can I engage with you?'  

[00:07:45] Karen: Now, is this a safe thing for them to do? No. I'm raging and angry. Now, it should be safe in that I don't tend to throw things. I think they can count on that, right? I'm not going to haul off and hit them. They're not physically unsafe, but they're going to have to be prepared for, I might still be in a yelling mood. And, they don't have the safety that they normally would expect if they started a conversation with me. 

[00:08:11] Karen: And that's why it works. Is because they show up with vulnerability, which is always the key to connection. So if you see that I'm disconnected and you want me to reconnect, showing up with all your armor on, whatever that may be.  

[00:08:27] Karen: Rules. Lots of 'specialty language', lots of reasons that I'm right. And ' You're right. And I'm the wrong one.' Showing up with all your armor on is just going to keep me more defended.  

[00:08:40] Karen: The thing that will get me to begin to reconnect and feel safe is for you to show up with vulnerability. And you get to have days you're on out for that too. Like, I'm not saying every time this happens around you, you have to be the person who's responsible.  

[00:08:58] Karen: But in resilient, effective, long term connected groups, when somebody's off, somebody else isn't. 

[00:09:06] Karen: Somebody else can show up and do the vulnerability thing, and that's what has to happen if you're going to get reconnected.  

[00:09:12] Paul: Mm hmm. The piece there that's important is this idea of supporting each other and reciprocity. But not in the moment. The reciprocity is in the long term. That when I'm trusting that when you're having a bad day and I'm having a good day, that at some point in the future, I'm going to be having a bad day when you're having a good day. And that's when the scales will balance.  

[00:09:34] Paul: What I can't do is in the moment demand that you be vulnerable with me. If I'm in that spot where I can do that, where I'm willing to wait in, where I'm willing to take off the armor.  

[00:09:45] Paul: And that is where I've got to moderate myself, right? I've got to do the self management piece of like, 'Wow, would I really like you to admit that you completely disregarded this. The thing that we previously talked about?' It's not useful for me to bring that up in that moment, right?  

[00:09:59] Paul: It's more about like being able to sit with, 'Yeah, there are things that I would love for you to say and admit and give me in that spot. But that's not going to help with the situation at hand.' 

[00:10:12] Paul: And so instead, how can I set that aside for the moment. For now. For me to be able to sort of be there with you and work through that emotional reactivity that's there.  

[00:10:24] Paul: And it sometimes this is when we're working in a group, right, it's like, ' How do I do that when three quarters of the group is that way? How do we help, when we're having our good day, you know, help everybody else who's not having their good day and not become resentful about it. 

[00:10:41] Paul: I do have a friend who said at one point, "I'm tired of being the bigger person." I want to be, "When is it my turn to be the tiniest, weest, pettiest little person?"  

[00:10:54] Paul: But like recognize that- it is one of the things about getting good at this, is that sometimes, you know, you feel like you always have to do that.  

[00:11:01] Paul: And it can be a challenge. But recognizing that when you do it, you're able to meet people where they are, that's actually useful. In terms of getting you back to a state of repair so that you can move forward from there.  

[00:11:16] Karen: Yeah. I want to point to one other fallacy that's in that reciprocity kind of realm, which is 'I don't want to reward them for doing a thing I didn't like.'  

[00:11:26] Paul: Right. 

[00:11:26] Karen: And I want to just call that out as a fallacy. It's it's based in behaviorism and Pavlov passed it on to us. And the idea that people behave mostly rationally on the basis of whether they could expect a good or bad result from whatever they're going to do. That might be true in some circumstances, but it's not true when they're angry. 

[00:11:48] Karen: Angry people don't make good choices about that. And the next time they're thinking about sending an angry email or somebody else is thinking about sending an angry email. I promise you they're not going to say, "Well, the reason to send it is because last time that somebody sent an angry email, so-and-so was nice to them." 

[00:12:04] Karen: So that's the way to make people be nice to me. I don't think we have to worry about that happening.  

[00:12:09] Karen: I think we're much better off if we stay in the relational space that if somebody is really angry, there's a reason that they're really angry. And if they're behaving in ways that they know we don't like. I mean, if they don't know, then we should let them know that that would be an easier problem to solve, but probably they're behaving in a way that they know we don't like it's because they need something they're not getting. 

[00:12:32] Karen: And if I want to be in connection with them, I got to figure out a way to be in connection with them even then. And once we're in connection, and things are resettled and we've gotten back to a place, I may have an opportunity to say, "I'd like to express to you how I experienced the impact that you had on me when you did this thing. Are you open for that?"  

[00:12:56] Karen: And very often they are. And very often, then they can learn. Like, then there's a conversation that might pop into their head at the moment that they're thinking about sending the next email. Like, then they can realize the full impact that they had, but it doesn't come from withholding help or support, or withholding the care that we would otherwise give them. 

[00:13:20] Karen: If somebody showed up, you know, sobbing and saying, "I'm having a horrible day and I'm just", you know, looking very sort of victim-y and weak, we would probably shower care upon them. I want to encourage that same thing when they're showing up as loud and angry. The same neediness is actually being expressed. 

[00:13:39] Karen: It's easier, of course, to do it when someone is weepy and sad and not lashing out, but it's the same problem.  

[00:13:48] Paul: There's three small things that I want to point to and that one is we actually know from neuroscience that people don't actually learn when they're in that angry, emotionally reactive state. Like, our brain isn't capable of making new patterns when we're there. So we don't actually need to worry about them learning that they were going to reward them for it, but it also means that there's no point in trying to change their behavior by doing something different. That's not going to happen.  

[00:14:14] Paul: And that's why if we can get to that point of when people are calmed down later on, we can say, "Can I talk with you about how that affected me?" Now they're in a spot where they could actually learn something and do something different. So that's, that's one thing.  

[00:14:27] Paul: The second thing is it doesn't mean that we don't get to have boundaries. 

[00:14:31] Paul: We've talked about this before. Like, there may be points where it's like the way this person is reacting or responding and things like that, where it is too much for you, or it crosses a boundary for you. And you're like, " I'm actually not going to subject myself to this." Like "I, I'm not willing to engage in this way." 

[00:14:45] Paul: You do get to do that. You don't just get to, you know, have to, when you're having a good day, let people walk all over you. And you do get to have boundaries around that.  

[00:14:55] Paul: And figuring out what those are so that you can still usefully engage as opposed to you just folding. This is about creating connection, not about letting yourself be run over. It's like, how can you sort of still be there with them and connect to them?  

[00:15:07] Paul: And I'm reminded of something that Terry Real talks about where he talks about harshness and he says, "There's nothing that harshness does that firm kindness doesn't do better." And that's kind of what we want to be able to do there. 

[00:15:22] Paul: It's like when the other person is harsh towards us, or when the group of people are harsh towards us, because there's some need of theirs that isn't being met. When something's going on, when they're upset, it can be really tempting to respond with it. Or when somebody else's defensive, it's easy for us to get defensive, or to get blame-y,  

[00:15:40] Paul: And it's understandable! And as we've talked about, that doesn't actually help. That what we actually want to do as much as we can when we're in our best selves is to respond to that with firm kindness. Where we can treat them as human beings who are probably saying things that they probably will regret later. 

[00:15:59] Paul: We hope they're going to regret them. We hope they learn from that, but that we're not going to beat them up for it. And we're not necessarily to meet them in that same way. And also just not be bowled over by it.  

[00:16:10] Karen: So I'm going to summarize, introducing some slightly different language for the same things that we've been saying, which is in groups that work well, there is a strong sense of connection. 

[00:16:23] Karen: And sometimes things happen that create a disconnection, that break that connection. And when that occurs, people don't feel safe, people hurt, people want to get reconnected and often don't know how. As they feel hurt and want to get reconnected and don't know how, they often do things that result in further disconnection. 

[00:16:46] Karen: And the usual pattern of how that plays out if people aren't paying attention about doing something different is there's a lot of pain here, and we're all feeling unsafe. So we all put up our defenses and we all say, "I'm going to make myself as safe as I can in this unsafe, disconnected situation." And the result of that is that we make everybody else less safe with us. 

[00:17:09] Karen: And if we want to break that cycle and pattern, what's essential is for someone who has the capacity for it in the group to say, "Right now I need connection more than I need safety. I have enough safety. I can tolerate it. So I have some capacity. And what I really want is connection. And I know the currency for connection is vulnerability." 

[00:17:29] Karen: So I'm going to engage probably one on one, maybe it's in a group setting, but I'm gonna engage with the people who are behaving in disconnecting ways. In a way that is caring and kind and engaging, and that will rebuild connection with them without resorting to defenses along the lines of blame, judgment, put downs, which, by the way, rules tend to land in the company of blame, put down, and judgments.  

[00:17:55] Karen: And through rebuilding that connection, reset the safety that the group has in the connection. So following that, the less safe I feel, the more I have to ask myself, "Do I really need safety here? Or is what I need more connection?" And that balance is such that I can tolerate being vulnerable enough to try to rebuild connection. 

[00:18:21] Karen: And on the day that my answer is, 'No, I need safety more.' I'm crossing my fingers that I'm in a group where somebody else says, "Yes, I can." And they go the vulnerability route. And that spreads through the group.  

[00:18:35] Paul: And so to answer the question that we asked at the beginning of 'Would a rule help?' in situations like this? Probably not. So that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.  

[00:18:46] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.