If I'm being honest (which I do try to be), I've spent so much time daydreaming about being back in person with colleagues at work that I hadn't considered what it would really mean to be back in person with colleagues at work. For many of us fortunate enough to work remotely, we've become accustomed to the "perks": no commute time, dressing for meetings only from the waist up and not having colleagues (except the occasional family member or rescue animal) sharing our workspace. Our brains are so conditioned to try to make things "normal" that interacting with colleagues (or humans in general) - some of whom we may have known for years - in only scheduled, distanced, web-based hour-long spurts now seems normal. And for many of us that's about to change.
Like with all transitions, we're going to have to figure out how to navigate going back to in-person work. It's already causing many of us anxiety and it will inevitably cause conflicts to arise. How can we manage this transition to the "new normal" better for ourselves and our colleagues? I'd recommend looking at the return to in-person work as a negotiation.
Negotiation, as I've been teaching for more than a dozen years, is simply a conversation to get our needs met. The problem is that we're not naturally good negotiators. A combination of our brain wiring (fight-flight instincts kick in when we find ourselves in uncomfortable or unfamiliar situations, particularly ones we perceive as threatening), lack of practice (when was the last time you tried negotiating in a low-stakes situation to hone your negotiation skills?), and, for many of us, culture and gender messaging (e.g. it's insulting to haggle and/or we should be "team players" and not ask for more), makes negotiation something that seems bigger than it really is: a conversation.
For those re-entering the workplace, it can seem like there are already too many things to consider without adding workplace negotiation to the list. We'll have commutes to time, child (or parental) care to manage, figuring out how we'll get our work done now that we'll be interrupted more*, never mind having to remember to wear pants.
But without mindful, pro-active conversations about how we can manage the transition smoothly we're almost certainly setting ourselves up for more stress and conflict. When I mention the word "negotiation" most people bristle (I'm guessing some of you did when you read it just now). That's because when we hear it, we conjure up images of a battle or a war: there's a winner and a loser, a victor and the defeated, the conquerer and the vanquished. No one wants to take part in that and risk being on the side that doesn't prevail.
But when we look at negotiation as a conversation to get our needs met, we reframe not only the outcome and bring forth the possibility of a win-win solution, we highlight our responsibility in that conversation. Namely, our responsibility to make our needs known to others - and not to assume they already know them - if we ever hope to have them met. If we fail to share our needs (as many of us do because instinctively we're avoidant of uncomfortable interactions), we make it impossible to get our needs met.
The majority of workplace conflict is rooted in miscommunication around roles and responsibilities, expectations and boundaries. We need to be prepared to have clear (and yes, sometimes uncomfortable) conversations about these things with others as we'll all be experiencing these things with each other in the same space for the first time in over a year.
And how are we going to talk about it? Many of us have not been truly face-to-face in more than a year and because of that we've been bombarded with communications via email, voice mail, slack, text etc... I recently mediated a case that involved a group of exceptionally bright and talented individuals finally sharing with each other their personal understandings and preferences around different methods of communication. For two of them email was anxiety producing because it seemed "overly formal" - who knew? For another, texting was appreciated because of the immediacy of the message while for one of their colleagues texting was reserved for family and friends. Again, who knew?
As we re-enter in-person workspaces with each other after more than a year, we need to know...and we need to be ready to let others know by having a conversation with them to make sure they understand our needs and that we understand theirs. We need to negotiate.
*While some studies show we're working longer hours but are less productive working from home, others show that we are actually more productive. *******
This month I'll be the plenary speaker at a conference on managing the transition back to in-person work. For more information about how to best prepare for in-person or hybrid work, or to have me share my presentation with your organization, feel free to contact me at iabrillcass@fixerrr.com
Over the past year I've had the honor and real pleasure of working with many organizations and institutions whose work I respect and admire, to help them provide space for their constituents to raise important issues, increase their skills and capacity to manage conflict productively, and recognize ways that they can become and remain more inclusive. These are just a few of those institutions.
Hope you have a restorative summer! See you in the fall!
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