A gentleman, by the name of Dr. Al VerBerg wrote on a napkin for me in the early 1970s. He said in all of his counselling, he had never found anything that described a strong relationship better than this pyramid. Realizing he had been in a counselling practice for over 30 years, I was very excited to see what he was going to scratch out on that napkin. You have in front of you the result of that as a poster.

He drew a pyramid with the word “Happiness” at the top. He said, “Nobody gets married believing that their life is as happy as it could be with the goal of ‘let’s see if we can’t make it more hideous by getting married.’”

We enter into relationships in order to increase our happiness. But what is happiness? You’ve certainly seen couples where you’ve wondered, “Why isn’t he happy with her?” Or vice versa, “Why isn’t she happy with him?”

And yet at the root of happiness is always the role of our expectations.

Possibly, his expectations are so high that he’ll never be happy. Or her expectations are so low that she can be happy with him. Happiness has as its undergirdings that of expectations. Expectations are built in relationships from the bottom up.

Communication.  Very often, two people only communicate when they have something to discuss that’s a crisis. Communication, however, is far more than that. There are many levels of communication — the cliche level, the facts about others level, the facts about yourself level, but sharing your thoughts and your feelings is the deepest level of all.

Strong communication in relationships is when I talk about and share my thoughts and my feelings with you so you can come and look through my eyes – seeing what I see so that I start to make sense to you, and you can grow to an understanding of me.

When I used to do marriage counselling, I would have couples come, and I would have the man sit in one corner and the woman sit in another, and they would write lists. I said, “Complete this sentence, ‘For the life of me, I can’t understand why he –’” and she would complete that list. And he would complete the list, ‘For the life of me, I can’t understand why she –’

And when they turned that paper over, and they were still writing; I knew we had a lot of work to do. Their list of what they didn’t understand about each other had grown quite lengthy – indicating that there had not been good communication (i.e. sharing of thoughts and feelings) going on.

Imagine for a moment that you return to the office and you greet the receptionist by saying, “What a beautiful day!” And she said, “Oh, shut up!” You’re kind of taken aback, you return to your desk, and you start thinking about that response – getting more angrier and angrier.

Finally, you go to lunch (obviously not with the receptionist). It’s during lunch that someone says, “Did you hear what happened to –?” and mentions the receptionist’s name.

You lean into the conversation only to hear the other person say, “Her husband asked her for a divorce last night.”

You returned to the office changed.  The receptionist didn’t change. She’s just as surly as the last time you saw her, but it no longer bothers you because you’ve added understanding. In fact, you’ve added acceptance of where that person is because you’ve  received that piece of understanding.

Very often we find it that somewhere along the line, we may have picked up the thought that “I can hate things out of my life.” If I just hate myself being fat, I’d get skinnier. If I just hate myself being unkind, I’m going to become kinder. But experience shows us that trying to hate things out of our lives only drives them deeper.

Trying to hate things out of another person’s life has the exact same result.  It only drives it deeper. It is only within the realm of acceptance that I find myself changing and not digging in my feet.

Only as I grow in that acceptance can I ultimately trust. Then even in business relationships I can grow to where I love the people that I work with – caring about them and their well-being that deeply.

A leader who grows to the place where he or she cares deeply about his or her followers will have followers that will go the distance for them.  However, as the pyramid reminds us, such relationships are built one step at a time.

Categories: Authority Relationships, Conflict Management, Empathy, Sociability

Tags: conflict