Assuming you have expectations - what are you going to do about it?

Also - you can now vote to learn from me how not to die alone. If that's not a teaser, I don't know what is ;)

Dec 09, 2024

If I’ve learned one thing from being part of the polyamorous and queer community, it’s this: Everybody is doing the best they can given their history, so learning how to navigate those individual stories makes everyone’s life easier.

Basically, in small communities, there’s no such thing as a “I am never going to speak to this person again”, independent of the reason. Turns out, the same is true in business - which brings me to today’s topic: human connections.

I’ll get into more details below, but first: a call to action!

The public voting process for SXSW London is now open. I have proposed two topics, and you can vote for me (and
RoRemote 💚
) now:
Fireside chat with Rowena on: Professional Polyamory: what business executives can learn from the poly network relationship models. Find out more and VOTE HERE.
A practical workshop on how to create: Your personal friendship manual: how to not die alone. Find out more and VOTE HERE.
You’ll need to register with your email to vote, and I really appreciate the time you take to lend us your support.

I’ll wait for you to finish voting - and then, back to the topic ;)

Story time: break-ups in small communities

If you break up with your partner within a small community, you can’t afford to burn all bridges, never to speak to them again, making everyone choose sides.

This is true for small villages as well as minority groups. If everyone knows everyone else, you can’t force people to choose sides. You are bound to run into each other, so you need to figure out how you can coexist in the same space without becoming the next telenovela act.

The same happens at work.

A woman dating women, EVEN in a big city, will run into her exes whether she wants it or not. Because there’s only so many queer venues everyone attends, and both her and her ex will probably end up dating someone within that community.

A couple embedded in a polyamorous relationship network can split up, and the enmeshment with other partners and close friends require them to work it out somehow - or put the entire community at risk.

At work, you cannot start a feud with a coworker, even if you disagree over fundamental problems. You need to find a way to cooperate towards the joint company goal, even if you do not like the person you need to cooperate with.

*Comparing a relationship network at work and the classic non-monogamy network by the amazing Kimchi Cuddles author Tikva Wolf - they aren’t thaaaaat different.*

Whenever personal animosity translates into malicious compliance (doing the absolute minimum) or active antagonism (actively hurting the projects of the other part), the entire work environment is at risk. And that means, the company is at risk.

But how do you support your employees in working through those hard conversations? How do you help your friends survive those difficult moments of realignment.

It takes reframing - seeing the situation from a different angle. Some people are great at doing it themselves, others need the support of their community. At work this support can come from colleagues, or from you, as a leader.

Here’s some things to take into account when diving into a reframing conversation (with yourself or with others).

Assumptions: what you believe to be true

Assumptions are profoundly shaped by personal experience and story. Just like you assume that the sun is coming up tomorrow again (because that has happened every day so far), you assume that your colleagues are at the office by 8 am, that someone is going to write those meeting notes, that nothing gets done in December.

Assumptions allow you to navigate the world with a level of certainty, based on either something you learned, or something you’ve seen happen over and over again.

Your assumptions also shape the expectations you have of individual people.

Expectations: what you expect to happen

Expectations are the things you expect to happen (based on your assumptions). If you assume that everyone starts working at 8 am, you expect others to accept your meeting invite for 8:30 am. It’s a reasonable time, after all.

However, that invite might feel like an attack for someone in a different timezone or with a different morning routine who does not want to be (or can’t be available) before 10 am your time. Unfortunately our brains are wired to scan for threats first, joy second - so small instances like these can snowball into significant loss of good will.

Where assumptions are a cheat sheet to understand how the world works, expectations are the instructions we expect other humans to follow - at work and in our personal life.

As soon as you add diversity to the mix (different upbringings, different cultures, different ways of working), this can become really messy really quickly.

What do you mean by “relationship”? What do you mean by “collaboration”?

In the polyam community there’s the adage that swingers have sex, and polyamorous people have conversations. That’s because as soon as you leave traditional monogamy, you need to redefine words. What does it MEAN to be in a relationship?

The same happens with companies - as soon as you hire people from different backgrounds, try to integrate an acquired workforce, or branch out into new territories. What does it mean for you to collaborate?

Does it mean daily stand-ups? Does it mean ad-hoc check-ins before major decisions? Does it mean more meetings? How do you know if someone collaborates? How does it look like if someone does NOT collaborate? Which specific behaviours can you call out as being collaborative - or not?

Without defining what we mean with all of those big words, we won’t be able to connect.

(Hint: if a world can be found on a bullshit bingo quiz card, you probably need to define it together.)

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