As a social worker, I have been working with relationship skills and conflicts in communities, organisations and with individuals for over 40 years.
Since 2010, I have been working with mediating workplace conflicts, when I started undertaking dispute resolution with a wide range of business environments, including banking, agriculture, education, government agencies, even veterinary practices.
Since 2015, I have also been working with couples and families in conflict, helping resolve arguments, teaching great relationship skills, and even how to uncouple a relationship respectfully and with children’s best interests at the heart of conversations. Recently, I have been reflecting on what I have learned about the overlap of marriage and work from these experiences.
1. Relationship Skills are Essential for Good Mental Health
We would all agree that a fundamental human desire is a committed partner relationship where individuals feel understood, cared for, and can share life plans. We would all no doubt agree that a workplace leadership that offers understanding, compassion, and support your career goals is an ideal many strive for.
However, today, our social values, which reinforces individualism and undermine working together, complicates achieving either of these goals. Our social media feeds and “reality” entertainment-based culture reinforces the drama of adversarial conflicts, highlighting self-interest skills, blame and fault-finding when things go wrong. This justifies regular yelling, making disdainful and contemptuous remarks, using silence and ostracism, hiding valuable information, and bad-mouthing the other person to others. Contempt, at home or at work, is one of the most destructive attitudes and behaviours in all relationships contexts.
2. Recognise the difference between relationship conflict skills and adversarial conflict skills
Relationship conflict skills operate within a moderate emotional range and consider both individual and partner needs, aiming for processes and outcomes that preserve the relationship. An example is using “repairing statements” like “That sounded harsh, let me rephrase that…,” or “I’m sorry I just said that…”
Adversarial conflict skills use extreme emotions and often involve “looking out for number one” and being more committed to resentment and blame than understanding unfamiliar perspective and finding solutions to problems .
Relationship conflict skills, in both business and family life require prioritising understanding each other, taking turns speaking , turning toward the other person when they are talking, rather than away. “Turning away” refers to a non-verbal or verbal response that dismisses or ignores a person’s attempt to connect or share something important. “Turning towards” means listening and empathising with the other person’s distress, while we are feeling our own discomfort.
3. The Magic of the 5:1 Ratio in Personal and Work Relationships
Building a “bank of goodwill,” according to Dr John Gottman’s research, means maintaining approximately a 5:1 ratio of positive statements and experiences to negative ones. This positive balance helps couples navigate conflict effectively because the reservoir of positive interactions can cushion negative exchanges. They also found that couples that never seem to argue actually have negative interactions – but also about a 5 :1 ratio of positive to negative It may be surprising that about a third of conflicts in healthy, long-term marriages never get resolved. Active appreciation is a big part of the magic, sustaining the goodwill bank with comments such as, “You’re so good at …,” “Thanks for just being you!”
Research has explored whether the Gottman Magic Ratio also applies to work relationships. In a study which evaluated the effectiveness of 60 leadership teams, measured by financial performance, customer satisfaction ratings, and 360-degree feedback ratings of team members, the most key factor that differentiated the most and least successful teams was the ratio of positive comments to negative comments that the participants made to one another. The average ratio for the highest-performing teams was 5.6:1, positive to negative. The medium-performance teams averaged about 2:1, positive to negative. But the average for the low-performing teams was 1:3: These groups experienced almost three negative comments for each positive one. It’s interesting to note that the ratio for the high-performing teams was remarkably similar to the original Gottman ratio for marriages.
4. Learn about Acceptance and end Resentment
The implication is that a preoccupation with constantly trying to resolve these chronic disagreements and differences can be detrimental, and accepting certain differences and agreeing to disagree can be more beneficial. Feeling ongoing resentment breeds contempt.
Healthy acceptance involves acknowledging and living with certain unchangeable habits or perspectives of a partner, even if you disagree. Unhealthy acceptance, on the other hand, involves tolerating unacceptable behaviours like contempt, abuse or chronic substance abuse, and it’s crucial to recognise the limits of acceptance for one’s well-being.
Learning about both sides of acceptance is a relationship conflict skill in itself. Gottman’s research clearly identifies a high correlation between curt, dismissive behaviours and poor conflict management with marital relationship failure, which in a workplace might be described as incivility. Although seemingly trivial, everyday incivilities can make for an unjust work environment, having a negative impact on not only victims, but also bystanders and likely whole organisations as well.
5. Listen with Purpose when you Disagree
Unhappy couples often do not truly listen to each other, with one or both partners having given up on effective communication. Instead, they focus on being “correct” and try to persuade or bully their partner into agreement, often “turning away” when the other speaks. They both say there is a long history of this avoidance of listening, which is really “kiss of death” for the relationship, before they decide to get a divorce.
The equivalent skills are required in any workplace and in any leadership role. Really listening during disagreements means deciding to be “on purpose,” fully committed to understand and acknowledge another’s perspectives, rather than immediate defensiveness. This is vital because it involves paying attention without interrupting, making eye contact, and attempting to summarise what you have heard before responding.
6. Create shared Meaning
I am saddened when couples say they have operated for years without sharing common interests or activities. Work pressures, parenting, educational and sporting activities, and of course, the general unequal division of labour in a marriage, can lead to separate interests and friendships. Over our long lifespans, couples can naturally develop separate interests, potentially weakening their connection. We need find ways to reconnect and understand how each person evolves as they age and mature. The connection of the relationship may slowly die without either of you realizing it at first, as the business of marriage take over the romance and fun. Engaging in shared activities, even if unfamiliar, helps to maintain and strengthen the bond of the relationship.
At work, does the organisation have an ethos that is understood by all staff? How does the organisation support roles, processes, informal and formal structures that develop meaningful roles, processes and even rituals that define a shared workplace culture? Teams that have work processes that respect personal and professional goals are more likely to be aligned with the organisation’s purpose. Therefore, clients experience a consistently reliable service and outcomes that respect their goals.
7. First and Last, Take Responsibility
When things go wrong (as they will), start with looking at you may have contributed to the problem, rather than looking for fault and blame elsewhere. Taking responsibility for your potential or real contribution to problems, rather than immediately accusing another, is the most constructive approach to resolving issues and fostering a less adversarial dynamic. Couples who look for their spouse’s strengths while also recognising their own strengths, and recognise their own failures and vulnerabilities are their more important focus to change than their partner’s failures, are more likely to manage conflicts successfully.
“High-conflict” couples are primarily focused on blaming each other, making the counselling or mediation process more challenging and raising concerns about each person’s future relationship patterns. They could look at their own patterns and how they might want to change these, however, few high-conflict people are interested in introspection and responsibly looking at themselves at all.
Workplaces with a commitment to responsible and proactive conflict skills have strategies established to address solvable problems and manage persistent or repetitive problems within teams and with client disputes. It is important to remeber that 10% of the popualtion could be considered “high-conflict” personalities, and that means both staff and cutomers.
Leaders who model appropriate and reflective conflict resolution behaviours in an open and transparent manner support staff who feel educated to directly resolve many conflicts themselves. Through organisational commitment to developing skilled staff, respectful relationships ,and active management of dismissive or intolerant behaviours, high levels of resilience and tolerance to experiencing problems and setbacks are part of a positive perspective about individual work roles and workplace as a whole.
Conclusion
In any relationship, in business or family, the skills are the same: work/life balance is really about relationship balance. How well can you find balance between individual, interpersonal and organisational relationship priorities? There is much to learn from the business of marriage to inform a business that you are not “married to.”
From an extensive career working with business,(especially family business) and couples, the key foundation to personal and professional success lies in the quality of your relationships, and your ability to manage the inevitable, and the surprising, human conflicts. Fostering positive relationships can lead to remarkable improvements in productivity and overall wellness throughout your company, and satisfaction and fairness in your home life.
Do you know where to learn the essential skills to manage this balance act successfully?
