Relationships — Reciprocity and Conflict

Let’s say there is a scale of effec­tive relat­ing — it goes from high trust and col­lab­o­ra­tion at one pole to destruc­tive hos­til­i­ty at the oth­er. In between there are some inter­me­di­ary points, so that we get some­thing like the fol­low­ing. Please click on the graph to make it larger.

What the graph dis­plays is an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, of course. There are many ways of relat­ing, more nuanced, with more lay­ers. The point is that in any giv­en rela­tion­ship there are always cues being picked up about the nature of the rela­tion­ship two peo­ple have.

One way con­flict in this rela­tion­ship shows up is via what I believe I am express­ing toward you vs. what I believe I am receiv­ing from you.

For exam­ple, I might believe I am offer­ing you sup­port and coop­er­a­tion (B), but I am receiv­ing only judg­ment in return (D). The rela­tion­ship then isn’t rec­i­p­ro­cal. As a result, I may decide I want to build more trust with you and con­tin­ue to oper­ate as I do. This means I con­tin­ue to make pos­i­tive attempts and invi­ta­tions to some­thing bet­ter than what we cur­rent­ly have. In con­trast, how­ev­er, I may also decide, giv­en your appar­ent behav­ior, that it is not worth it. In this case I may slide down the scale to meet you at judg­ment (D) in return. Or per­haps, I slide even fur­ther, giv­en that you did­n’t meet me at coop­er­a­tion, dip­ping toward hos­til­i­ty and active dis­cred­it­ing (E).

As anoth­er, dif­fer­ent kind of exam­ple, I may sense that you are offer­ing an invi­ta­tion to me to move toward a high trust style (A) but I also sense that I am more of a reserved, C kind of per­son, a lit­tle sus­pi­cious of such open­ness. I may feel drawn toward a risky leap out of my com­fort zone — and will take my time about mov­ing toward A, assum­ing you con­tin­ue to treat me favorably.

The point is that what we want and what we receive from anoth­er may be very dif­fer­ent and this cre­ates all kinds of emo­tions. Con­sid­er, for instance, the vice-pres­i­dent who sud­den­ly feels the CEO has a new favorite on the exec­u­tive team. “It’s not that she’s no longer sup­port­ive of me,” the vice-pres­i­dent tells me, “but she does­n’t col­lab­o­rate the way she used to, and some­times she comes across in a rather cool, unfor­giv­ing way. Heck, we used to go out for drinks and talk for hours on end about how best to build the firm; now some days we just smile as we pass in the hall, hard­ly offer­ing a greeting.” 

This is a state­ment of con­flict, loss, dis­ap­point­ment that comes with the demise of a par­tic­u­lar­ly pos­i­tive (A) reci­procity. I sense these things are more felt than thought out. The whole thing can be an almost uncon­scious process, a thing that hap­pens to us in a rela­tion­ship over which we imag­ine we have lit­tle say.

By the way, there’s noth­ing inher­ent­ly bad about two peo­ple who say, “We’re at B (or C) and we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want to take it fur­ther.” That’s actu­al­ly a state­ment of har­mo­ny around mutu­al expec­ta­tions. For two peo­ple at D or E, how­ev­er, reci­procity will feel quite dif­fer­ent since their con­flicts are most often high­ly dys­func­tion­al. By com­par­i­son, dif­fer­ences at A have pos­i­tive val­ue and serve as a source of learn­ing rather than mutu­al erosion.

This scale can be a use­ful tool when applied to con­ver­sa­tions between peo­ple who work togeth­er. There are all kinds of impli­ca­tions and exten­sions that can be made. The con­ver­sa­tion can begin with each per­son pri­vate­ly rat­ing the relationship:

• Behav­ior I believe I am receiv­ing from my partner.….….….…______(letter)

• Behav­ior I believe I am express­ing toward my partner.….……______(letter)

The results are then shared between the part­ners. Facil­i­tat­ing the con­ver­sa­tion aims to help each per­son see where they are and where they want to be by check­ing the reci­procity lev­els. The dis­cus­sion can be quite enlight­en­ing (and some­times painful) as feed­back emerges: e.g., “You say you believe you are express­ing B, but I don’t expe­ri­ence that — I’m get­ting C at best and D most of the time!”) 

All of that is less impor­tant than the les­son, of course — which is that we all have choic­es to make around our rela­tion­ships. I can choose to enter a more col­lab­o­ra­tive, high trust rela­tion­ship with you, or choose to not go there with you; keep try­ing or give up. I can choose to explain why high­er trust between us does­n’t work for me — or not. I can choose to ask you more effec­tive­ly and direct­ly for what I need, and I can choose to lis­ten to your needs in return. It’s not about blam­ing one anoth­er for the rela­tion­ship that is. It’s about being clear as to the choic­es we have already made and now intend to make to invite anoth­er per­son into or deter them from the rela­tion­ship we both own. In my expe­ri­ence, peo­ple in con­flict often find that they do want things to change and they are will­ing to make com­mit­ments about their own behav­ior to that end. The feed­back that illu­mi­nates the dis­crep­an­cies between what I think I am express­ing ver­sus what I actu­al­ly leak into a rela­tion­ship may very well be a sur­pris­ing cat­a­lyst to deep­er self-knowl­edge and change.

©2015 Daniel K. Oestre­ich (post and graph­ic). All rights reserved.

Singing Group — Afro-Latino Festival, Seattle

RSS and email sub­scrip­tion, occa­sion­al Unfold­ing Lead­er­ship newslet­ter, search and oth­er func­tions may be found at the “Fur­ther Infor­ma­tion” tab at the bot­tom of the front page.

Pin­ter­est users, you can pin pic­tures from this weblog via this Board.