Do You Like Your Colleagues?

Do you like your colleagues? 

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “We do business with those we know, like, and trust.” 

I'm going to offer you another perspective on this: Remove the "like" factor from that sentence. 

What if you stopped asking yourself, or examining, whether or not you liked your colleagues. 

Everyone has beautiful qualities. Everyone has annoying qualities. Your job, especially as you expand your leadership capabilities and broaden your circle of influence, is to work with everyone whom you can know and trust. It really doesn't matter if you like them, and refraining from asking yourself that question will make you a more effective leader.

we do business with people we know, like & trust.

I was in a yoga class the other day and the teacher reminded us of a Buddhist tenet: find that sweet spot between "non-attachment" and "non-aversion." She was referring to the way we were psychologically experiencing the physical pose, but this concept applies throughout our lives.

Breaking this down: Non-attachment means you are not "glommed on," energetically and emotionally, to something or someone. The situation is not taking up a ton of your mental space and you are able to “let go” of whatever happens.

Non-aversion means you are not spending emotional energy against or negatively toward something or someone.

Put these two together and you have what Buddhists call "equanimity." You simply don't get knocked off balance by the things that come across your interaction field. I like the metaphor of a boat whose ballast is heavy enough to prevent keeling over. This is where “even-keeled” comes from.

Taking the concept of non-attachment and non-aversion back to your relationships at work, the problem with asking yourself whether you like someone is, well, that you're being judgmental. I know that’s a frank thing to say, and “being judgemental” is a hot-button term, but at its core, putting colleagues in “like” and “dislike” buckets requires drawing a judgment.

Instead, find something that you like about everyone with whom you work. Focus on that. There is something relatable in everyone. You might have to try harder to find it with some than with others. If someone has qualities to which you can't relate, curiosity and compassion will get you farther in your working relationship than will making conclusions about the person.

Some colleagues will trigger you more than others, and you may choose to distance yourself because it creates too much pain for you. This is still beyond the realm of "liking." Working on yourself will lessen the potency of those triggers and increase your capacity to work with anyone. 

In summary, take “like” out of your equation. Removing the filter of “like” in your collegial relationships means you’ll be able to work with anyone you can know and trust.