Nagging is the home version of Groundhog Day. People repeatedly break a commitment. We talk about the original infraction, but we don’t address the bigger issue: they’re continually making commitments and not keeping them.
The second time a person fails to pick up her clothes off the bedroom floor or doesn’t put his dishes in the dishwasher or continues to squeeze the toothpaste in the middle of the tube, you have a new problem: That person has failed to live up to a promise. You are at a crossroads. You can converse about the pattern. You can nag. You can cope.
Toothpaste tubes and dishes in the sink are the stuff nagging is made of: minor infractions, often repeated and often reprimanded. Nobody ever says, “My wife is such a nag. Every time I have an affair with a woman half my age, she makes a big deal about it.” Big issues, often repeated, are ongoing disasters. Little issues, often repeated — that’s nagging. Choose your battles.
If the original issue continues to bother you, talk about the pattern, but only if the original issue is worth it. Sometimes the infraction is just not worth the aggravation. This is a toothpaste tube we’re talking about. Maybe you should expand your zone of acceptance. If you choose to cope, explain to the other person that you’ve decided that it’s not worth arguing about the issue. You would prefer that he or she not squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle, but you’re not going to bring it up again. Then let it go.
“YEAH, BUT…
I WORK WITH A PERSON who is constantly making mistakes. Every conversation we have is about a problem. I get the feeling that he no longer listens to me. I walk in the room and the guy bristles. How do I problem-solve with a person with whom I have such a one-sided relationship?”
It’s hard to make it safe to talk about performance gaps when you have no relationship with the other person save for the occasional accountability discussion. Like it or not, every relationship has a tipping point. When the majority of your conversations turn into holding an accounting, the other person starts to wait for the other shoe to drop, no matter the topic, no matter your intent. You cease to be a force other than a nag.
Get to know people under less strained circumstances; it matters a great deal. In fact, three separate studies conducted by the authors revealed that the single best predictor of satisfaction with supervision is frequency of interaction. And if your interactions are infrequent and only about problems, you’re really doomed. Every accountability discussion starts off on the wrong foot. Others only hear your position; they never see you as a person.
So go out of your way to create a wider range of interactions. And when you do interact, feel free to let down your business persona and connect at a personal level. The very first leadership study the authors conducted revealed something rather astonishing. When those who were viewed by senior managers as top performers showed outsiders around their work area, they introduced their employees. They bragged about them. They shared interesting tidbits about their children. “Kelvin’s son is at the Naval Academy.” They had obviously talked about a whole host of topics and developed a personal relationship. Bottom performers, in contrast, showed outsiders the equipment and products. They walked right by their people as if they weren’t even there.
So develop more full relationships. Take people to lunch. Don’t have an agenda — just talk. Walk around and casually chat about topics that interest the other person. And when you see “things gone right,” recognize people for doing a good job. Become a whole person, and not just a purveyor of problems. Create a healthier context for solving problems when they do come up.
As far as your family is concerned, if you don’t take a break from your busy schedule and take your teenagers to lunch, with no purpose other than hanging out together, you’ll eventually pass the family tipping point. No matter how wrong they may be or how often they may cause problems — no matter how called-for the conversation — at some point you’ll be seen as little more than an uncaring nag. Your motive will always be suspect. Your ability to have a broader influence by holding meaningful conversations becomes severely limited. So don’t pass the tipping point. The more often others let you down, the harder you’ll have to work to create a well-balanced relationship.
“YEAH, BUT…
THESE ARE LIFELONG PATTERNS we’re talking about. I’m not sure that I or any of the people around me can actually change. Reading is a lot easier than actually acting differently.”
It’s easy to get discouraged when staring into the face of habit. When it comes to human interaction, much of what we do, we do almost without thinking. We follow lifelong scripts: well worn, familiar, and nearly automatic. We lay into our kids with the same ease and lack of thought typical of ordering fast food. We know what we’re going to say, we know what others are going to say, and we don’t even have to think about it. We could play either part.
How do you break away from lifelong habits?
It’s also easy to get discouraged when we know that we tried to make improvements in the past and failed. Ninety percent of those of us who have attempted to lose a few pounds have dropped and then regained the same weight so many times that we no longer believe our own stories: “This time I’m going to keep it off for sure. This time it’s different.” Or maybe it’s been an exercise program that has yielded a different mechanical contraption every year until the garage is bursting with nearly new aerobic ab machines, and yet we still break into a sweat trying to open a jar of pickles. Or perhaps we made a commitment to eating healthier foods but sort of lost steam when we found ourselves stopping at a Fat Burger for a pick-me-up on the way to the health food store.
Accustomed to talking ourselves into short-term action that can’t be sustained, we become cynical self-doubters who are reluctant to start down one more trail we’ll never follow to the end.
So how do we stick to a plan?
The good news is that nothing in this book is new or the least bit alien. The skills we teach weren’t discovered on the planet Krilnack. On your best day you do much of what every interpersonally smart person does. You step up to accountability discussions, work hard to ensure that you don’t fly off the handle or otherwise act stupid, and do a pretty good job. On your best day you are the kind of person the authors were studying when they isolated the best practices for dealing with failed promises.
You don’t have to change everything — just a few things — and maybe be a bit more consistent. Better still, you don’t have to change your underlying, immutable, “I-can’t-help-it-if-I-was-born-this-way” personality. To improve your results, you need to reshape a few of your thoughts and alter a few of your actions. That’s it. There is no need for a full-fledged genetic intervention, and frontal lobotomies are out of the question (save for recreational purposes).
To make this “tweaking of thoughts and words” easier, we have a few suggestions. First, studying this book is best done in pairs. Find one or more other people and share ideas. Develop goals, practice together, and support each other as you step up to new and untested accountability discussions.