I’m going to tell you a truth that might shock you……..I don’t like Yorkshire Tea (my family may disown me as Bolton Upon Dearne is in my blood). I don’t even really like fruit tea. I have a tea ranking system:

• Darjeeling
• Lady Grey
• Earl Grey
• Jasmine (preferably flowering)

You’ll probably be looking at this and thinking why on earth is she telling me this. Well, the reason is if I am this picky about my tea is it any surprise that I am not everyone’s favourite person. If I’m this picky about tea, other people are bound to be this picky about other things, including people.

You are not going to be able to convince me to take my tea strong and with milk instead of weak, black, and with lemon at a push. I’m equally unlikely to convince you that I am someone who fits into your world view if you’ve decided that I don’t.

So why do we fight against this simple truth so hard?

For a very long time, I’m talking decades of my life here, I thought if I tried hard enough, I could be liked. If I tried to reign in parts of myself with different people, if I tried harder to fit the mould, I would be able to win people over. Now I’m into my 4th decade I realise there are some fundamental flaws to this way of thinking:

• It assumes you have to be liked to suceed or to work with someone on a project
• It diminshes the strength of difference
• It assumes being a lesser version of you will be better, without acknowledging that being inauthentic has other downsides
• It only works if you can do something to control the behavioural response of another person, in all likelihood a flawed concept
• It starts out from a point of thinking there is something wrong with me

Winning personality

So where does this flawed thinking come from? I think we are told as children, whether explicitly or not, that if we behave well enough and fit into societal expectations then we will be liked, we will be popular as a reward and we will succeed. The reality is that it doesn’t matter how much you smile, how much effort you make, sometimes you will encounter people whose world view is just different to yours. That doesn’t make that person bad, it doesn’t make you wrong or right, just different.

I’ve had professional relationships where it took me years to realise this. Professional relationships where I tied myself in knots trying to make a break through where the other person would suddenly see the value of me. I tried to be less me in order to meet some undefined standard, I tried to hold the line in case they respected strength, I tried praise and engaging in discussion in their topics of choice in order to bond us. It failed, sometimes it failed horribly, because none of those things ‘fixed’ the fact that our fundamental world views, value and beliefs were just never going to reconcile.

Two things about this approach. First, even if it had worked it would only have worked short time, that kind of lack of authenticity to who you are is too difficult to maintain over time and actively harms the way you feel about yourself. Secondly, it was a massive waste of energy and effort. In hindsight I understand now that I would have been better served by understanding that I was never going to be liked, I was never going to have the break through I craved, but instead invest all of that energy and time into learning to find areas where we could work together irrespective of the way we saw the world.

If only I could explain it better

Everyone loves a trier…….err no, no they don’t. One of the things that people like least about me is the fact that I pick up ideas and run with them. I have an idea, become enthusiastic and just crack on with it failing to consider that a) some people are less comfortable with change than I am or b) other people care much more about territories and boundaries than I do, and so me running with my great idea may result in me breaking through other people’s fences.

I used to think that if only I could explain my concept or my idea better then everyone would just get on-board. This just isn’t the reality of the situation. It doesn’t matter how great my plans are, they alone are not going to change how others receive or are impacted by them. Explaining them better isn’t enough. Instead of sulking about the fact that others ‘don’t get it’ I need to work harder to see the whole landscape from the angle of those impacted by my plans. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not great at this one but I’m at least I’m aware and working on it.

Secretly everyone is like me…..right?

Humans are by their very nature ego centric, as no matter how hard we try we can only truly hear our own thoughts and voices. This can present some really true communication issues where we can come to believe that everyone is like us. I often see my vision of the world so clearly that it can be hard to adjust or even truly realise that others see the world in a completely different way. Your personality, your experiences and your surroundings all work together as a jigsaw puzzle to create the picture you see. The flaw in the thinking is to think that those things all combine in a way that means others will have the same image when they come together as you.

I’ve been slow to realise the truth of this. The things that are fundamental truths in my world are not the same in other people’s. You can’t make the assumption that deep down we are all the same and care about the same things, because we don’t. As healthcare professionals I think I’d always assumed that there were things that we could extrapolate about each other because of our chosen profession, things like patient centred care being at the top of all of our list of drivers. This isn’t true. It took me years to figure it out, but that’s the reality. You can’t shortcut this stuff on the basis of labels, such as job title. This doesn’t mean these other people are bad at their jobs, it doesn’t mean they don’t care about patients, it’s just not necessarily the thing that gets them out of bed every morning. Some of them are there for the intellectual challenge, some are there because they like to lead, and some are there because they enjoy the fulfilment of papers being published etc.

All of this means that if you enter a scenario making assumptions that the drivers are the same and therefore base your success criteria on those assumptions, one or both of you are likely to finish the interaction believing it to be a failure. You also won’t get the most out of those involved, in terms of either engagement or ideas. The power therefore is not in being liked or being the same, the power lies in learning to both identify and work with difference. This means finding areas of overlap where different people can contribute differently, reflecting who they are as people.

You can’t always be what people need you to be

As a leader one of the things I’ve become aware of over recent years in that sometimes you can be disliked because you can’t be the person someone needs in the moment. Leadership is about balancing the needs of everyone, your team, your patients, your service. It’s about being open to opportunities for everyone and ensuring that doors are kept open. Sometimes that means that you have to say ‘not now’ to some people in order to maintain parity of access, as not everyone is able to ask for support in the same way.

I found this to be one of the biggest burdens of being a leader. I like to be liked and I just failed to keep everyone happy. Understanding that sometimes to be fair you have to also be OK with being disliked was a turning point for me. By seeking to be liked I could actually be disadvantaging others and that is a price that is too high to pay, just to make me feel better.

Understanding what is and what is not within your remit of control has really helped me with managing my emotional response to some of these situations. My remit is to try and make transparent decisions which are articulated in terms of both thought process and outcomes. I need to take ownership of that process and ensure that I engage with learning about how to do it better. This involves acknowledging responses to it. What I can’t do it take on board everything that happens emotionally linked to it. I can’t ‘fix’ everything and others are entitled to disagree. I need to take on feedback and turn it into something productive rather than trying to White Knight everything in the hope of changing minds, as in the long term that doesn’t help anyone.

The sooner we realise the truth the better. The sooner we realise the truth then we can understand that working together doesn’t need us to be soul mates or best friends. Our differences will (if we can get over ourselves) likely make our processes better. The sooner we realise this, the sooner we can have open non judgemental discussions about areas of over lap and shared drivers in order to work out where energy and resources will be best place. The sooner we realise this the sooner we will stop putting energy into diminishing who we are to fit some non existent ideal and open the door to liking ourselves that little bit more.

I’m off to have a super weak cup of darjeeling…………please don’t judge me for it

All opinions on this blog are my own