Most of us take a hit or miss approach to our relationships: some work well, some don’t, some jog along OK. It is often hard to tell why or to really see what is going on beyond a kind of intuitive sense of wellness or otherwise. So, where do we start in becoming more intentional in our consideration of our relationships and our investment in them?
One good place to begin is to raise your awareness of the way a relationship works. Every interaction in a relationship takes place in four contexts at the same time – interior, exterior, between and meta. Each context interacts with the others. This works whether the relationship is one-to-one or between a group of people, or whether it is family, workplace, community etc. Together they are complex, but if we can tease each one out, we can see a little more clearly what is going on. In more detail they are:
• the interior context – the assumptions, expectations, needs, personality traits and habits of behaviour that each of us bring to a relationship;
• the between context – what goes on in the space between us, the chemistry or climate we create – fun, serious, deep, tense…; in a team you would consider team culture here;
• the exterior context – this ranges from the practical eg, the place we meet, the time we give ourselves; to the frame within which the relationship exists, eg, its purpose, its stakeholders. The Relational Proximity model which Tim referred to in his last blog entry fits here.
• the meta context – a broader exterior context which takes in the context created by the wider organisation, society in general, world affairs etc.
You could take an important relationship and think through each of these areas, jotting down a few words that describes each of the above. This will raise your awareness of the contexts within which each conversation or exchange in the relationship takes place. You will begin to see how they influence the relationship.
Then you can start to pull the levers which will change things. But more on that another time…
ALISON MYERS