Bring your humanity!

A call for genuine human relationships at work

In my experience, many people in business act as if the people they have relationships with at work are from an entirely different species or planet than the people they have relationships with outside of work.

Said more simply, too many people engage in behavior with humans at work that they know would be ineffective, or even crazy, in their personal lives.

Let me share an example so you get a sense of what I’m talking about.

For the purpose of this example please assume you’ve got a significant other, a few kids, and you’d like to keep it that way.

You’ve been feeling dissatisfied with your life for a while. Bored at work. A little uninspired by where you live. Tired of the same old same old with your friends.

You start reading self-help books and see a therapist once a week.

After a year of introspection and advice, you decide it’s time for a change in your life. A big change. You’re going to start a new career and move to another country with your family.

So you send an email to the family, post a copy on the refrigerator, and leave Lonely Planet guides on the kitchen table.

Two weeks later, you wonder why their bags aren’t packed.

Crazy right?

OK. But does it not remind you just a wee bit of nearly every corporate change initiative ever? The corporate change playbook seems to be: 1. A leader spends months thinking about the need for a new whatever. 2. The leader discusses it with an inner circle for a few more months. 3. They hire a consultancy for yet a few more months to plan the launch. 4. They announce it in a single email to the entire workforce as a fait accompli. 5. They have training sessions. There are post-its. 6. Three months later the leaders wonder why nobody has changed their behavior.

We naturally see the silliness of “being corporate” in our personal lives but often fail to see the larger point — that those behaviors are absurd in all human relationships, even those we’re a part of “at work”. By the way, if ever there was a time to realize that the distinction between “at work” and “at home” is illusory, this is it!

And guess what: The reason that behaviors which are crazy in your personal life are also crazy at work, is that, wait for it…human beings don’t magically transform into another species when they show up at work.

That’s the point. People are people. Our relationships with people unfold in a variety of scenes, settings, and contexts. Some relationships are intimate, others are distant. Some are formal, others are not. Some involve money, others don’t. Some go back many years, others have less history. But none of that changes the fact that when you have a relationship with another human, you’re having a relationship with…go ahead, if you know it just shout it out…that’s right, a human being!

Work is just another context for a human relationship. Yes, in most organizations the work context is more “professional” than other contexts (whatever the heck “professional” means). Still, people bring their humanity with them whether they want to or not, to all relationships in all contexts. They may not fully reveal it (we rarely do), but it’s with them all the time — all of their hopes, dreams, fears, quirks, neuroses, and flaws. You can pretend that stuff isn’t there, but that will only make you less effective.

So, here’s an outline of the characteristics of human relationships as I see them and some practical tips on how to engage in a more authentically human way at work.

One caveat: I’m not suggesting that all human relationships are good. I am suggesting that truly human relationships — even the bad ones — have a set of characteristics that distinguish them from relationships that aren’t truly human.

Human relationships are:

Rooted in care

Being cared about — not just cared for — is one of our deepest human needs and, perhaps, the most important reason we form relationships with other people — we care about them and want to be cared about by them.

Just as you have a pretty good sense of when someone doesn’t really care about you — or, worse, is using you — other people have that same sense about you. Recognize that even if on an org chart or job description someone’s role exists to serve you, no human being is merely an instrument of someone else’s goals. Every human being has inherent dignity.

Start by getting to know everyone you work with as a human being, not just as an employee. Ask people about their personal lives, but don’t pry or make them uncomfortable through forced attempts at friendship. That would be unacceptable behavior in any human context.

Make an effort — in an appropriate way. And you can always start with your imagination. Ask yourself what they might care about. What they might aspire to. What might be motivating them in this moment. What they might be worried or excited about.

And certainly, you should pay attention to the information people voluntarily share. If someone tells you they have kids, it doesn’t take too much to realize that they might need to leave work at a reasonable hour and that their evenings may be spoken for.

Remember that, like you, everyone is someone’s child, parent, or friend. Put yourself in their shoes or imagine them in yours. That should help you genuinely care about them as a human being.

Emotionally oriented

While transactions — such as exchanging gifts — are a part of every human relationship, the true benefit of a human relationship is emotional — how it makes us feel. It’s why we say of gifts “it’s the thought that counts”. Even when the gift itself is not to the recipient’s liking, the emotional intent of the giver, how much they cared, is what makes receiving a gift a wonderful experience.

Even though people get compensation and financial benefits for coming to work, always remember that money is never just money. It’s also pride in a job well done, a marker of status to others, or a metric of self-worth. I’m not saying that money should or shouldn’t be these things, just that it is for most people.

Imagine how you’d feel if, at the end of the year, your manager threw a check in your face and said “here’s your damn bonus!” I imagine you’d still enjoy cashing the check, but surely you’d rather get the bonus along with a heartfelt comment about how much your contributions matter.

It’s rarely just the substance that matters; it’s also how it makes people feel.

Never forget that human beings crave meaning and belonging. Even at work. We want our lives to matter. We want to feel appreciated, respected, loved. (Note: It should go without saying, but sadly, it doesn’t. People do want to be loved, but not always by you, not always in any given moment, and definitely not in an inappropriate way. Be appropriate.)

So always think about not just the transaction, not just the substance, but about the emotional impact you have on others.

And to do that, please see above: it has to be rooted in care. A phony “thank you” or expression of appreciation is easily seen for what it is. You have to mean it. And btw, if you really care about someone, when it’s time to give tough love, don’t avoid the conversation because it will be difficult. Being emotionally-oriented is not about being sugary sweet. It’s about understanding that our emotional lives are often as important as our material lives — sometimes more important.

Mutually beneficial

Each person in a human relationship is better off for being a part of it. Each person gives to and gets from the other. This may not be true in every moment and the idea is not to keep score, but over the course of a human relationship everyone benefits.

Make sure to spend enough time thinking about what other people at work are getting out of the relationship they have with you. It might not be a bad idea to do this before any important meeting — whether that’s a group meeting or an informal 1:1. And if it helps you to write it down, go for it.

And again, the goal here isn’t to be 50:50. Not necessarily ever, and certainly not in any given moment. Sometimes we give more and sometimes we get more. That’s normal. But when people go for a while and feel like they’re giving and not receiving, they feel taken advantage of. Which, fyi, is not good.

Remember, compensation and benefits are not enough. You don’t get to be thoughtless about people’s aspirations and emotions at work just because they’re getting paid.

Think about how you can provide benefit to people. How can you help them grow and develop? How can you be a role model to them or give them an opportunity to be a role model to you or others? How can you give them access to knowledge and experiences that they couldn’t otherwise have?

Authentic

People in human relationships reveal their true self. We don’t necessarily reveal absolutely every aspect of who we are in every relationship, but what we bring to the relationship is real — it’s who we really are.

Many people confuse authentic with unfiltered. They are not the same. Authentic doesn’t mean expressing every thought and acting on every urge whenever and wherever you have it. That’s not authentic; it’s crazy and sociopathic. Similarly, authenticity does not mean inflicting your whole self on someone who isn’t interested or in a time or place that’s not appropriate. You don’t live in a bubble. You still have to be a good person.

Authenticity means having a core, an essence, a set of beliefs and values, and then living them in a way that’s appropriate to your context.

You probably wouldn’t talk to your parent, child, and spouse using exactly the same words and tone of voice; if you did, it would be really creepy! But that doesn’t mean you’re being phony, it just means you have a different relationship with each. Similarly, you aren’t going to show up exactly the same way in every work relationship.

The point here is not that you have to be an open book with everyone; it’s that you should show up as a human being, not a corporate robot, and that the human you show up as should be the one you actually are.

If your spouse, or kids, or friends would spend the day with you at work and find that “work you” is very different from “real you”, you might want to think about why you’re wearing that mask at work. And whether you really want to.

Risky

Being in a relationship with another, revealing ourselves to them, and becoming accustomed to the emotional benefits they bring us, makes us vulnerable. Which means we can hurt and be hurt.

Don’t only share the good and the beautiful from your life. You’ll be missing out on the opportunity to develop deep and meaningful relationships with people.

I’ll give you an example. More than ten years ago, I got divorced. The marriage had been awful for a long time and I always felt embarrassed about it. I felt guilty that I wasn’t the husband I should have been, and I felt like a failure because I couldn’t keep a marriage on track when so many others I knew had such wonderful marriages.

Once the divorce process started, I opened up to some people at work. And wouldn’t you know it. All of a sudden people started coming out of the woodwork to tell me their story of a failed relationship. People I didn’t even know cared about me at all came up to offer support.

Sharing something I was embarrassed about didn’t feel comfortable. (Well, duh, that’s why they call it embarrassment!) But it helped me move forward and build stronger relationships.

The fear of rejection is such a powerful force in our lives. We feel it in the schoolyard, and we feel it in the boardroom. I have seen rich and powerful executives worry obsessively about their image, about what other people will think of them.

This fear is totally normal. But it often holds us back. I spent years maintaining the façade of a happy healthy marriage. It was emotionally exhausting for me and it got in the way of developing meaningful relationships with so many of the people in my life — and at work.

Your example doesn’t have to be as extreme as mine. But the fundamental truth is the same. The value of our human relationships is in direct proportion to the risks we take in revealing who we really are — not just our wonderful, beautiful, noble qualities, but also our fears, weaknesses, quirks, and foibles. (I really just wanted to use the word “foible”. I hope it was as delightful for you as it was for me.)

This stands in direct contrast to purely transactional relationships. The financial return you realize in your stock portfolio is probably not going to improve because you revealed your peccadilloes to your stockbroker. But human relationships require human connection. And if it doesn’t go at least a little below the surface then it won’t be of much value to anyone.

By the way, I’m talking about revealing something of yourself, not about being weird or creepy. Please don’t do that. Also, if what you want to reveal is a crime, best to find a lawyer, not to blurt it out over mediocre sandwiches in the cafeteria or during an icebreaker at your next innovation workshop.

Organic

Human relationships are not fixed; they evolve over time. As each person learns more about themselves and the other, as circumstances change, as they experience more of life and more of the world, the information they glean causes the relationship to grow.

Relationships that don’t evolve feel like a weird version of Groundhog Day. Imagine every time you met the same person, they forgot everything they knew about you from past conversations. Wouldn’t it feel incredibly strange to have to repeat everything you ever told them? Even more, unless they had a cognitive deficit you knew about, wouldn’t it feel insulting to you that they never paid enough attention to what you told them?

As an example, every now and then I get an offer from a credit card company for a card that I already have with them! In that moment, all the work they’ve done to “personalize” the customer experience crumbles. I see behind the curtain and know that they don’t really care about me as a person.

In case you were wondering, no, I am not pining for a close personal relationship with my credit card company. My point isn’t that this credit card company inflicted a deep emotional wound on me. My point is that their failure to base what they say to me on what I’ve already told them reveals to me that it’s not a human relationship.

We demonstrate this characteristic all the time in our human relationships. Someone tells you that their mother is sick and the next time you see them you politely ask, “How’s your mom?” Human relationships are a series of interactions that build on each other. And when they don’t, we realize that the relationship was never a truly human relationship. It’s like seeing inside the Matrix for the first time.

I heard a story of a guy who checked into a hotel. The staff member at the counter asked, “Are you here for a meeting?” The guy answered, “No. Actually I’m here for a funeral.” And the response? Wait for it… “Would you like a newspaper delivered to your room in the morning?”

That is not a human relationship! That staff member was not there as a human being, she was there as a hotel employee implementing Standard Operating Procedure #47. Instead of thinking of the guest as someone entering her hotel, she would have been better off thinking of herself as having entered this guest’s life — and then using that opportunity to truly learn about him as a person instead of just going through the motions.

People expect you to learn from your interactions with them, and to use that knowledge for the betterment of the relationship — not just for a more effective or efficient transaction.

This isn’t hard. It just requires that you pay attention not just to the substance of the work but to the human moments in every interaction. Over the years, I’ve had many people on my teams encourage me to do a better job of sticking to a meeting agenda after they felt we spent “too much” time chitchatting with the client at the start of the meeting. I rarely take this feedback. To me, that “chitchat” is the good stuff. It’s how you get to know another human being. It’s how you come to learn more deeply what they really care about, what they truly aspire to, and what they are really afraid of. It’s how you develop trust. And by the way, it makes the work better too.

Unless you have an incredibly prodigious memory, it’s ok to write stuff down. We probably all have hundreds of professional contacts, many of whom we don’t interact with for months at a time. I’ll often keep a note of something interesting someone has told me about themselves.

Relax, it’s not a J. Edgar Hoover type of thing — I don’t have secret tapes of that time you told me about XXXXXXXXXXX. But if someone tells me that they like surfing, tequila, photography or whatever, I’ll often write it down. It’s helpful when I want to send them a gift, and it opens a door to future conversation about shared interests. And though it can feel like a cheat, it’s actually a sign of respect. It means you care.

I believe these six characteristics are at play in all truly human relationships. They don’t guarantee a positive, healthy relationship — all of them can show up and evolve in unhealthy, toxic ways — but they do create the conditions for genuine human connection. When we show up in these ways, we can develop beautiful, meaningful, fulfilling relationships. The kind that nourish us, give us communities where we can belong, challenge us to be our best selves, and give purpose to our lives by allowing us to be in service of others.

We all need more of these relationships. Even at work. Especially now.