Helen Major wonders how to deal with what seems at first to be mutual antipathy

We are delighted to welcome Helen Major as the latest guest author on Slow Leadership. This is her first article for us.

“We noticed that there were babies that we were drawn to and babies we didn’t like. Each of us had our favorites. There was no rhyme or reason for it; the babies were only days old and totally helpless. And the baby one of us found unattractive, another nurse would find adorable, so it evened out.”

That quotation is from my mother. Her experiences as a supervisor and instructor in Pediatric Nursing at St. Mary’s hospital during the early years of the Baby Boom convinced her that favoritism is innate and unaccountable. My mother believes that if helpless infants (whose appearance, cries, and capabilities are absolutely innocent, innate, and equal) attract or repel professional caregivers in a neonate nursery, then favoritism must be hard wired in humans.

I have been mulling this over the last few months, having inherited my predecessor’s staff and discovering that his favorites are not necessarily mine. My team includes a talented and abrasive employee who introduced herself to me by saying she didn’t trust me and didn’t want to work with me. Since she had no previous experience with me or contact with any one I have worked with over the years, it has seemed to me that she just didn’t like me on sight and I found I returned the favor. Interactions between us have been consistently strained, and I found myself communicating with her only when it was unavoidable. It came to a head last month when she accused me of ignoring her and favoring other members of the team.

When a leader’s attention is limited, how do you ration it out?

According to Craig E. Johnson in “Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow”, favoritism consists of a leader showering a select group of congenial employees with opportunities for advancement and resources denied to others in the organization. One of the resources that only a leader can provide is to share their own time listening to and interacting with their followers. Susan was correct in claiming that I was avoiding her while I was building relationships with her co-workers. While this was easy to do, since Susan is located at a satellite office three hours drive away, the impact of avoiding her was creating unhealthy tension in the whole group.

I realized that, as the boss, I had a professional obligation to provide leadership and professional mentoring to someone who had made it clear she didn’t like me. I needed to reintegrate her into the team even though her presence created difficulty for me. The biggest issue for me was coping with my own sense of being inadequate and defensive every time we interacted.

Can you find it in yourself to care?

Going back to my mother’s story, the nurses on her staff found an effective way to handle the dilemma of favoring some of the babies over the others by exercising professional care of all the babies regardless of preference. But because babies need to be held and touched with love and genuine tenderness, the nurses would swap assignments until each baby had the care of at least one nurse who found them appealing. To be truly professional, each nurse needed to know her own heart and her own limitations.

Since I had no one to hand Susan off to, I had to find it in my own heart to care enough about Susan to offer her respect, reassurance and access to me, despite my growing aversion to her.

Steps to a better relationship

First, I decided to share with her how painful I found interacting with her to be and what she did that prompted me avoid her. Then I offered to meet with her every morning by phone just to touch base so we would have more chances to interact positively. She seemed surprised that her behavior affected mine, but agreed to the daily call.

Next, I planned a team building retreat to acknowledge the contributions of the team as a whole and demonstrate to the rest of the team that I valued Susan as a team member. Rather than sit around and talk about our relationships, I organized a day trip down the Mississippi in a canoe. The entire team piled into a voyager canoe and off we went under city bridges and through river locks. For four hours we paddled down the river, dependent on each other to get to the park where I had arranged for us to be picked up. Susan and I shared a bench in the canoe, paddling in unison. Because I am recovering from a torn tendon, I depended on Susan’s help getting in and out of the canoe. She helped me graciously.

It is too soon to tell if Susan and I have resolved the issues that led me to avoid her and favor the others, but I hope that by sharing my strengths and limitations with her in the presence of the whole team I have given us all the foundation for a stronger professional relationship. What I am certain of is that, by accepting Susan’s challenge to prove myself a leader and stop playing favorites, I have gained a priceless insight into my own leader’s heart.

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