Ever heard of the Love Lab in Seattle? No, it’s not a perk of working at Microsoft (nor a perk that they once had and then lost when they became big bad business – they never actually went for those Googleplex type perks anyway). The Love Lab is a lab at the University of Washington where emeritus professor of psychology Dr. John M. Gottman (also co-founder of the Gottman Institute) conducted extensive research on the nature of relationships, particularly what makes for a good marriage. One of the cornerstones of his findings on relationships of all types is that relationships rely on something called bids for connection - the verbal and non-verbal requests for attention and validation that take place hundreds of times per day in human relationships.

The relationships we have at work are significant. Like our families of birth, we generally have little control over who the members of the family are. Our work relationships have the power to bring us joy or cause us anguish. They can lead to the greatest creative breakthroughs or significant physical and mental breakdowns. Or they may be nowhere near those highs or lows, just droning on in the background of our work life, not driving us crazy but not making our lives any richer either. The bottom line for business is that an organization filled with happy humans is more likely to be profitable than a similar business filled with the unhappy sort. In his book The Relationship Cure, Gottman says “A bid can be a question, a gesture, a look, a touch – any single expression that says “I want to feel connected to you.” A response to a bid is just that – a positive or negative answer to somebody’s request for emotional connection.” According to Gottman, there are three types of response to bids: turning toward responses, turning away responses, and turning against responses. One example from the book (pp 36-37) works as follows:

Turn toward the bid
BID: How was your vacation?
RESPONSE: It was all right. The slopes at Sun Mountain are magnificent, but the ski conditions were lousy. Have you ever been there?

Turn away from the bid
BID: How was your vacation?
RESPONSE: Have you got any messages for me?

Turn against the bid
BID: How was your vacation?
RESPONSE: As if you really cared.

Relationships that involve mostly turning toward responses are far healthier than relationships that do not. Interestingly, relationships that involve turning against and turning away from responses both fail at equal rates, but the turning against relationships fail more slowly than the relationships where the predominant form of response is to turn away from, or ignore, the other person.

When I take on a new client, one of the first things I do is observe relationships among team members in the area in which I will be advising. It is not unusual for a business to possess all the knowledge and talent it requires to be successful, but for that knowledge and talent to be inaccessible to the organization - even as it collects a paycheck. Once I observe interpersonal communication I gain tremendous insight into how my help may best be offered. When I read Gottman’s latest book, I started watching the bid processes specifically. Some of the most difficult-to-understand team dynamics became much clearer to me with this simple but powerful information.

In one situation, I have a division head who, based on my observation, seemed would be a very unpopular manager. He is one of the worst interrupters I have ever met, and I found just trying to complete a conversation with him to be exhausting. Much to my surprise, I encountered a staff who is genuinely devoted to him. It’s not that they don’t notice he interrupts - they simply take the interruptions in stride. Without the information on bidding, I would not have been able to sort this out. But armed with my new knowledge, I realized that in all other ways this guy turns toward their bids, and bids them frequently (even if he interrupts their answers). The staff clearly feels connected to their manager, and they forgive him his irritating habit. Another constant interrupter who perhaps turned away from or turned against their subordinates’ bids - and who did not bid others effectively - would likely become negatively known for the habit of interrupting.

In another company, an extremely capable and hard-working specialist is failing miserably, and her senior sponsor is worried about whether or not the situation can be turned around. She is responsible for three teams, and in each team is entirely dysfunctional. Not cruel to one another, overly competitive, or filled with slackers. Quite the opposite, in fact. The teams simply do not engage. Trying to get a handle on this problem - because this strange staff demotivation was my only real clue regarding my clients’ difficulties - I asked to observe two team members who were also on other teams with different leaders. I observed that both individuals were participating energetically in those other situations. Using my new knowledge I realized that this woman systematically turns away from bids, ignoring them, changing the subject, or vaguely “um-hmm”-ing a response. Gottman says that bidders who are ignored learn quickly not to bid again. I was brought in to solve what seemed to be a management and strategic problem, but I honestly think this woman has all the management and strategic skill she needs. So in addition to reviewing and tweaking the existing management and strategic framework, I have shared this information with her and started coaching her in turning toward the bids of others. Already we are seeing a warming up of the operating environment - though team members are understandably skeptical and may take a while to trust that their manager intends to respond to their bids consistently.

I personally find turning against responses difficult to work with. People who are cynical and antagonistic toward others seem to me to be less inclined to work on their communication skills than those who are simply mindless. But when I see turning against responses now, I have a better understanding of what they are. I have always had a negative gut reaction to people who use strong sarcasm or express cynicism during job interviews, though I couldn’t always support why I thought those behaviors were bad signs. Now I understand that there is a good chance those behaviors will present themselves as turning against responses in the work environment, which will disrupt team harmony and ability to innovate.

Not that argument and debate can’t be consistent with team harmony. One of my customer sites is an absolute joy to work with and they are constantly arguing with one another. My new Gottman knowledge helped me get beyond knowing that they are a joy to work with, to understanding why. A recent meeting to discuss the launch of a new product illustrated the power of turning toward the bids of others. The team was divided in three camps over the product launch and their debate was heated within minutes of the beginning of the meeting. Yet the atmosphere in the room was one of excitement and fun rather than competition and discord. The team members turned toward one another’s bids even as they argued against them, peppering the argument with humor and laughter, and building on each others’ ideas even as they fought to make sure their own were heard. I didn’t record one moment of sarcasm or criticism during the exchange. There was no point at which a team member cut another down. Over the next two days I watched the team closely, and sure enough, they turned toward one another’s bids constantly, and bid one another constantly. This behavior is described by Gottman as a sort of bid banking, storing up a savings of positively-exchanged bids, to be cashed in at times of conflict, making the conflict easier to deal with and the relationship more likely to repair afterw
ards.

Many years of corporate management have taught me that one dysfunctional person can alter the chemistry of an entire department and hold that department’s performance to suboptimum levels for years on end. This new information on bidding has introduced me to a whole new way of evaluating work groups. I highly recommend that you evaluate the following questions to improve your work relationships and results:

• Evaluate how often you bid
• Evaluate how effectively you bid. Are you direct or round-about? Positive or negative?
• Evaluate how you respond to the bids of others. Do you turn toward, turn away from, or turn against most often? When you are turning away from or turning against, why are you doing so?
• Evaluate your most important work relationships in terms of how those people respond to your bids
• Have you stopped bidding anyone? If so, why? Is it hurting your work relationship or your professional performance?
• Is there any particularly influential person in your work experience who consistently turns against or turns away from your bids or the bids of others? Is there anything you can do to bring this problem to their attention?
• How do you react when someone turns away from your bids?
• How do you react when someone turns against your bids?
• If you can’t influence the person who is responding in undesirable ways, what steps can you take to protect your feelings (i.e., most people feel insignificant or insecure when they are ignored) and manage your reactions to minimize their negative effect on you and your performance?

We’ve all experienced some work situation that got under our skin and we couldn’t figure out why it bothered us so much. The woman who ignores you every time she walks past in the hallway, the guy who wanders off or answers his cell phone just as you begin to speak to him, the person who turns even simple inquiries into cynical little jabs. Everybody is moaning and groaning about the economy and Wall Street, but economic down cycles come only every five or six years and only last for 8-10 months. Negative work relationships last for years and damage your business even when the dollar is strong and the economy is booming. So one more thing to add to the list. Next time you’re book shopping or at your local library, check out a copy of John M. Gottman’s The Relationship Cure. Because building better connections with co-workers may be the best economic boost a company can hope for.

(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill