Genuine Caring

Stop Sabotaging Your Career: 8 Proven Strategies to Succeed - in Spite of Yourself
by Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D.

(Page 8 of 9)

The last of the three ingredients for successful relationships, genuine caring, is the hardest of all to coach. It's something that comes from deep inside the heart and transcends logic and intellect. The absence of caring is a lot easier to explain than how to care, because the absence suggests the lack of caring in your own life. With the exception of perhaps sociopaths, who truly lack the ability to care about their fellow human beings, most people have a deep and profound capacity to care. Women tend to have an easier time showing that they care, but it doesn't mean that men don't. Men have simply been socialized to hide it better. Therefore, the question is not How can I show that I care? but rather Why don't I show that I care? When you have the answer to this, you'll have the answer for how to genuinely care.

Chris appeared not to care at all about her staff of twenty salespeople. Her single-minded devotion was to provide the best service possible to the company's customers. Her natural energy and enthusiasm made her want to storm every hill she encountered. She was always coming up with unique and creative ways to better serve the customer and overcome existing obstacles to superior service. There's nothing wrong with all this, of course, but Chris failed to take into account the fact that she could successfully do this only if her staff followed her into battle. While she was charging up the hill, she failed to look behind her to see that her followers were lingering at the bottom, deciding whether or not they wanted the hill.

My first contact with Chris was through a team building session that she requested to find ways for her staff to be more effective. When it came time to assess the team's strengths and developmental areas, the staff bravely pointed at Chris as being the primary obstacle to their success. They felt she was so self-absorbed that she either didn't care or couldn't see whether they had the time, resources, or interest to pursue the projects to which she committed them. So when it came time to deliver, Chris was often left holding the bag and trying to figure out why things weren't done as she directed or expected. Chris neglected the human needs of her team, and they responded (very humanly) by resisting her efforts.

Chris was hired because it was clear that she could bring value-added service to this company. Her past achievements in former employment situations pointed to this fact. Chris saw herself as someone who could do anything she put her mind to, and she typically did - provided that she could do it alone. When it came to gaining the cooperation of others, she couldn't quite figure out why she never really got it. Heretofore, Chris had been a tremendous individual contributor, but to maintain momentum she would have to learn how to accomplish the goal through others.

Fortunately for this team, Chris did care about other people. She just had a hard time showing it. She told me about her military father, who expected high achievement but seldom rewarded it. She realized that, in some ways, she had become her father. She expected a lot from her team, but she didn't see them as people, only as objects there to assist her with meeting her goals. When she understood how this behavior actually impeded her reaching the goal, she was distraught. She had vowed never to do to others what her father had done to her, and yet she now found herself displaying the same behavior. Chris had to learn to complement her already good task-oriented behaviors with skills for building relationships with each team member and creating a cohesive team. Drawing on her teenage experience as a member of a tennis team reminded her of the value of teamwork and became an important point of reference for just how interdependence works.

Chris began trying to win the cooperation of her team with doorway conversations - just dropping by to say hello to people and to find out how, not what, they were doing. As you might imagine, the team at first regarded her with skepticism. They wondered what ulterior motives she had. This discouraged Chris initially, but she was determined to win them over. She approached building relationships in much the same way as she approached her other "projects" - with vigor and enthusiasm. Pretty soon the individuals on her team began responding to her friendly overtures and expressions of interest. Chris didn't do it to get more work out of her team, but to get to know them as unique and valuable individuals. She learned the hard way the true meaning of Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu's saying "Fail to honor people, they fail to honor you." It took her a while, but she finally succeeded in building trust, reciprocity, and caring into workplace relationships. That's what made team members want to work for Chris in the long term and helped keep her on an upwardly mobile career path.

You Like Me! You Really Like Me!

So far I've been focusing on how to build strong 360-degree relationships. But perhaps you're already good at it - maybe even too good. The "You Like Me" acceptance speech that Sally Field made when she won an Academy Award a number of years ago speaks to a unique issue in building relationships. It reveals why she was typically cast in "cute" roles rather than more mature ones. She had an inordinate need to be liked, and that need was typified over and over in her behavior and the roles she received. Thus, a word of caution about building positive relationships: There is a difference between taking the time to build positive relationships and making it the focal point of every activity and decision because you're afraid people won't like you. An inordinate need to be liked interferes with your ability to make difficult decisions, be direct with people, get your own needs met, and be perceived as someone who can perform well even when the chips are down.

Although both men and women suffer from this problem, it seems to be more prevalent among women - and for good reason. Women have been socialized to be the nurturers, caretakers, and accommodators in society. They are expected to be good relationship builders. When women act in a manner counter to that expectation, they are often called overly aggressive, bitchy, or some other choice terms. So they go out of their way to be pleasant and try to win support for their ideas by making others like them. It's one of the self-sabotaging behaviors I talk about in my book Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office. Over utilization of this particular strength can create situations where others don't take you seriously. Ironically, it's the people, both men and women, who have established good workplace relationships who can afford to err on the side of being more assertive or direct. Their accounts are full of chips that can be cashed in at the appropriate time.

Maria is the perfect example of someone whose strength in building relationships interfered with her ability to achieve her career goals. She is the coordinator of outreach efforts for a nonprofit organization. Technically, she knows her job and is respected for her ability to perform it effectively. But when the department manager position opened up on several occasions, she was consistently overlooked as a viable candidate to fill it. When she asked why, she was told that she "wasn't ready" to take this next step.

If you were to meet Maria, you would like her - as does everyone in her office. She's warm, affable, and a good listener. She makes you feel as if what you have to say is important to her. If you spend any length of time with her, however, you realize that her strength in this arena stems from the need to be liked and is not balanced with the ability to be direct and straightforward. If she has an opinion different from yours, she won't tell you. She'll embrace yours as if it were her own. She won't take a stand on any issue if she thinks it might offend you. If you correct something that she does wrong, she becomes overly apologetic and tries to make up for the mistake by bringing you home-baked cookies or some other small gift the next day. Maria will never be considered management material until she overcomes this particular strength by balancing it with more assertive behaviors.

Copyright © 1998, 2007 by Lois P. Frankel

About the Author

Dr. Lois P. Frankel is the president of Corporate Coaching International as well as the author of several books and numerous articles. She is internationally recognized as an expert in the field of workplace behavior. With over twenty years of experience in human resources development, she is a frequently invited guest on talk radio, television, conferences, corporate workshops, and retreats.