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Molly and Julie's Story Revisited

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Molly and Julie (from my earlier post) is described below.  

Step 1: Presession interviews

The facilitator conducts a presession interview by phone, before the face-to-face session. Each party is asked to state her hopes for the meeting and to describe what a positive outcome would be. She then tells her version of what happened and why she felt hurt. The purpose of the interview is to help each woman organize her thoughts and her story, to allow the facilitator to know key details of her story to remind her of them during the session if she forgot something significant, and to build the rapport between each woman and the facilitator.

Step 2: The Two-Hour Face-to-Face Session

The parties arrange a two-hour meeting in a quiet, neutral location.

The Facilitator Role

The role of the third party, or facilitator, for the face-to-face session is to propose a structure, to get buy-in from the participants to the structure, to help both parties listen to each other and not interrupt each other, and to ensure that both feel heard. The facilitator may help keep track of time boundaries that the parties agree to. Time boundaries may be open (“take all the time you need”) or fixed (“take 20 minutes each”), based upon the structure that is agreed upon. It can be helpful, at the beginning of the session, for the facilitator to express her belief that this process can really work and has worked with others to invite an open mind set for the participants.

Roles and Process for Speaker and Listener

Each woman takes turns being either the speaker or the listener. This means that the person who goes first as the speaker has all the time she needs, or all the agreed-upon time, to tell her version of the story, as she perceives it, of how she was hurt and why. During this time, the listener can ask clarifying questions or check for understanding (sparingly), but she cannot argue, debate, express her own opinions, or tell her story. Once the speaker has finished, the listener summarizes what she heard and the speaker corrects that understanding until she feels heard by the listener. The listener doesn’t have to agree; she just has to demonstrate that she heard the speaker’s perspective. Once the speaker verifies that she feels heard, then the listener can state what she heard that was a new insight or new information to her. She will have more opportunity to do this again at the end of the session. The listener may be able to apologize at this point by saying something like, “I’m sorry that my actions/behaviors caused this hurt for you.” If she is not ready to apologize, this can come at the end, but the sooner it can be done, and the more often it can be done, the better!

Role Reversal

Next, the listener and speaker switch roles and repeat the process described above for speaker and listener.

Wrap-Up

Next, each party states or repeats what she heard from the other party that was a new insight or a deeper understanding. Each apologizes for what she said or did that caused hurt for the other person. (Note: Her intentions are irrelevant. What is important is to acknowledge the impact of her behavior.) For the next step in the process, the facilitator asks each party to make a statement about how she is feeling at the end of this session. Usually, if the participants have fully engaged in the process and have been open, they will say that they are hopeful or cautiously optimistic, reflecting the development of some mutual empathy that has reopened their connection and made renewal of the friendship possible. Because this is a deeply emotional process for most people, it can be hard for people to fully articulate their understandings and feelings, and the facilitator can help people feel comfortable to express themselves. As a final contribution, the facilitator again expresses her belief that this process can really work and has worked with others. She can encourage the parties to stay hopeful and be open to moving forward together and letting go of the past.  

Guidelines for creating relational resilience

Goal: To create mutual empathy to repair a relationship Skills and Competencies Needed: Listening skills, skills for asking clarifying questions, the ability to apologize. Process: Turn taking as both speaker and listener
Before the face-to-face meeting
• The participants engage support from a third party to facilitate the meeting. • The facilitator interviews each woman before a two-hour face-to-face meeting.  
During the two-hour face-to-face meeting
• The speaker tells her story until she feels she has conveyed the important points. • The listener summarizes what she understood until the speaker feels fully heard. • The listener shares new insights or understandings gained from listening to the speaker. • The listener apologizes for the impact of her actions, if she is ready. • The participants switch roles and repeat the above steps. • In the wrap-up, each participant repeats what she now understands and apologizes again. • Each participant shares a feeling about the session (hopeful, optimistic, etc.).
  An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

Triangulation

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  • “It’s hard for me. I’m not good at confrontation.” (Paula, nurse)
  • “I don’t like confrontation. I allowed a coworker to intimidate me.” (Laurie, manager in the travel industry)
  • “I’m a wimp! I would let conflict slide and then come around, behind the scenes, and do that passive-aggressive thing. That’s not good.” (Sheri, technology manager)
  • “It’s difficult because you don’t want to make somebody angry.” (Claire, nurse)
    • Paula summed it up best for this group of women: “We weren’t raised that way [to be direct and confrontational]. We were told that women didn’t do that . . . you were to be seen and not heard.” “Seen and not heard”—I remember being told this when I was growing up, along with “girls are sugar and spice and everything nice.” I remember thinking that I had to avoid confrontation because it could damage a relationship—or, as Claire said, “make somebody angry.”   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Transknitting in Practice

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    other daughter must have told her. “Why are they talking about me?” he asked. “Don’t I have a say about who talks about me? And besides, why does Patty care whether or not I’m sick after all this time?” “You don’t have a say, she doesn’t care, and,” I answered, “this isn’t about you.” “What do you mean ‘it’s not about me’?” he said. “I’m the one they’re talking about.” “They are transknitting,” I replied. “You are not the point. They are using information about you to do their mother-daughter relationship work. This is really not about you.” They were talking about Mike to connect, just as my mother and I talked about people we both knew to connect. There was no negative intention toward Mike. His daughters and their mother were engaging in one of the positive types of talk.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Sharing Gossip and Transknitting

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    As the scene opens, Janice, the supervisor, is sitting alone at her desk. Her employee, Cynthia, approaches her.

    Cynthia is quite agitated as she explains to Janice, “I really need to talk to you about something. I have to ask you,” she says in a pleading tone, “please don’t tell anyone in the office. My husband just left me, and it was a surprise. I can barely deal with it. I’m barely functioning here,” she says, choking back tears. “On top of that,” she goes on, with her shoulders and head slowly drooping forward, “I just got back from the doctor and I have to have a hysterectomy!”

    “Oh my goodness,” exclaims Janice with a look of concern on her face as she reaches over to pat Cynthia on the arm. “I’m so sorry to hear this.”

    Cynthia goes on to explain about her need for privacy. “I really need to keep this quiet.” She looks Janice in the eyes pleadingly. “I don’t want people coming up to me. I can’t deal with it emotionally right now. It’s just too much. Is that all right?”

    “I understand completely,” Janice says.

    We next see Janice as she enters the lunchroom with a worried frown creasing her forehead. She is trying to maintain her resolve to keep quiet as she approaches two women waiting for her at a table for lunch. “Uhh!” is the sound of her resolve escaping as she loses the battle. “I just had a—you can’t say anything!” The two women agree. “Cynthia’s having a hard time, and I just want to, you know—this has to be confidential. But we really need to support her and to help her. She’s having problems in her marriage, and female problems, too. I can’t go into the details. I trust you two to keep this under wraps. I’m just saying something because we just really want to support her.”

    The two women agree, “Yes, of course!”

    After a quick lunch, Janice gets up to leave. After she leaves, one of her lunch partners, Andrea, gets up and goes over to another table with two women having lunch and sits down.

    Practically whispering, she asks, “Did you hear about Cynthia?”

    “No, what?” they say, leaning in with curiosity, glad to be sharing what is apparently a secret.

    “Yeah, she’s got some female problems and some marital issues. You have to keep it quiet, though. Don’t tell anybody where you heard this from. All right? You know, we just want to be there for her and make sure to support her.”

    The two women mumble their agreement, and they all get up and go their separate ways. One of them, Sandra, sees Cynthia in the hall and goes over to her. “Oh my gosh, Cynthia, I just heard,” says Sandra, as all the color drains from Cynthia’s face and her mouth sags open in surprise. “I’m so sorry about everything that’s going on! I’ve had two miscarriages myself, so I know what it’s like. And, you know, my husband and I were separated for a time.” Cynthia is mortified as it hits her that everyone knows, and she hides her face in her hands. “We were able, through counseling, to work it out, though, so don’t give up,” says Sandra.

    “Gotta run!” She hurries off, noticing that her supportive comments have not been well received and feeling a little bit hurt about it.

    Cynthia groans. The role-play ends.

    As I watched the role-play, I thought, “Yuck! Another role-play about gossip!” But when I asked the group to discuss what they had seen, an argument broke out about whether or not this role-play was about gossip. I was baffled. I could not understand what the argument was about, but the group quickly changed the subject and went on to discuss the other three role-plays that had been performed. I left the session still confused about that argument. An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Next Steps for Keeping Relationships Healthy

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  • Practice the skill of mutual empathy. Identify a relationship, either inside or outside of work, where you have recently experienced some tension that was not discussed.
    1. Write down what you experienced (describe the behaviors you noticed) and what you felt (for example, surprise or discomfort).
    2. Ask the other person for a time to get together to talk something over. Tell her you are concerned that a misunderstanding might have happened. Tell her what you experienced and felt, and ask her what she experienced and felt.
    3. Listen deeply to each other and ask questions for understanding. Do not interrupt each other. Really listen.
  • Practice naming and negotiating. If a misunderstanding was developing in step 1 above, then name the friendship rules that may have been operating for you, and ask the other person how they compare to hers. Try to agree on new ones that will work better to meet the needs you both have.
  • Practice role hats. The next time you are going to a meeting with a woman who has a role different from yours (with either a level or a functional difference), ask a colleague to help you clarify the roles before the meeting. Write down the role hat you think you will wear and the one the other woman will wear in the upcoming meeting. Debrief with your colleague after the meeting. What did you notice about your expectations for the interaction? Continue this practice before the next few meetings to sharpen your skills.
    •   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Successful Boundary Management

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    To be friends at work requires total transparency—you must be totally honest on both sides of the boundary. It cannot work to be the senior or the junior person if you cannot trust that what you are seeing is what you are getting. I explicitly name the role that I’m coming from—which hat I’m wearing—boss or friend. My friend can ask me which hat I’m wearing in any interaction. She can ask me to change hats. We are always clear about how the role hats are going to work. I am clear with her that when I have my boss hat on, I am speaking from my supervisor role, where I am responsible for the quality of her work—and I may not be happy with it. There may also be things going on in the company that I cannot discuss because of my role, and I will tell her that. We can also be good friends outside of work, as long as we stay clear about our hats. I have joked that I am friends with bosses and bosses of friends. A friendship may not survive if I have to discipline or fire her—but I’ve had good luck with that, so it’s not always a problem. “Total transparency”—this, along with the role hats tool, is the key to enable you to “switch the light on and off” to manage role boundaries and relationships at work.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    When a Friend Becomes the Boss

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    I have two close women friends at work, and one of them—it was announced last week—now reports to me. I feel somewhat upset because I think she’s upset. I feel she used to look to me as a friend, and now it’s like, “Oh, gosh. You’re my boss!” She was instant-messaging me the day we found out. She was asking, “Did you know about this?” She came to my house Saturday. I mean, we’re friends! I would never, ever want to upset her by any means. And I was a little bit upset that she thought I would know about something like that and not tell her. There is trouble ahead for these two friends if they do not talk about how this change in their roles at work means their friendship expectations need to change. Kate will not be able to tell her friend everything about confidential information she will have as the boss. If the two women can name and negotiate their expectations for how they will deal with professional topics that come up versus when they are just being friends, they will be able to continue being close friends. If not, the consequences could be disastrous for them professionally or personally or both. A recent example of the kind of trouble Kate may be facing with her friend if they don’t learn to manage the changes in their roles comes from a new coaching client in my practice. This client, Stephanie, a white woman in her twenties who is a union executive, hired me as her coach because she was recently promoted and her good friend, a man, now reports to her. He is upset because he was not promoted, and she feels guilty and thinks she must prove her loyalty to him and their friendship. She has shown her loyalty by telling him information she now hears in her new position, and she has also pushed him into the limelight in some situations where she was supposed to be the one there. Her boss is disappointed in her and is now questioning whether she is willing, or able, to step into her new leadership role. He wants her to cut off the friendship with her colleague and distance herself from him. Stephanie feels stuck. Without the intervention of her coach, she might lose her promotion or damage the friendship or both—but neither needs to happen. Later in this chapter, we will take a look at the tool, role hats, that Stephanie is learning to use. But first, let’s consider some other ways that problems can develop when a friend becomes the boss.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>

    Confusion for Bosses

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    My women staff will come to me and say, “How’s your boyfriend?” They feel like a relationship with me should be all access, and I don’t want to set up a situation where I’m becoming this kind of friend with them—not just a friend but an intimate friend. We tell all. Then all of a sudden I’ve got to be the person who says, “Get that done. Get it done tonight.” Then that’s a betrayal of womanhood to assert my authority when it’s going to cost them something. In chapter 2, we considered the negative consequences for female bosses when they are too distant or aloof and do not meet the relational expectations of their female staff. Letitia, a white technology manager in her forties, explained the dilemma that Penny faces as the boss: “It’s as though they expect you to subordinate the boss-subordinate relationship to the woman-friend relationship. They would not ask that of a man.” What is the answer? Both scholars and about 25 percent of the women in this study propose that women learn to make a distinction between being friends and being friendly with women at work, especially when they are the boss. I would go a step further and say that it does not need to be an either/or option—that we can be both friends and friendly as the boss, but we need to be able to name whether we are the boss or a friend in any given interaction, with a clear understanding of how the relational rules or expectations are different in each situation. Kathy, a technology manager, explained how this approach works for her:

    I do have two women I was friends with before I was promoted to management. I think we do a wonderful job of saying, “All right, this is a professional conversation.” If it’s a professional conversation, they know there are some things I cannot talk about. And if it’s not a professional conversation anymore, we are also clear with each other about that.
    When Kathy says the women are clear about when they are having a professional conversation and when they are not, this means that she and her friends have specified where the boundaries are for each of them in a professional conversation. In other words, they have specified what they can and cannot talk about in their professional roles so that the expectations are clear. More details about a tool to accomplish this type of successful boundary management will be described later in this chapter. But before we go there, let’s take a look at a type of boundary confusion that can be particularly destructive if not handled well: when a friend becomes your boss.   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>