Interpersonal Algorithmics

During my career I have had the pleasure of working with countless pleasant and professional individuals. These are the people who say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and are easy to interact with. They are happy to answer a question or try to help in a crisis. I always tried to reciprocate. It was like depositing goodwill in a bank for later withdrawal. Hopefully on balance I deposited as much as I withdrew. In my view, the value of a resource is increased or decreased by the net effect they have on those around them.

Recently I counted the number of nationalities I have worked with. Forty-four. Working in technology has offered me the wonderful opportunity to interact with people of all these nationalities and glean a tiny window into how their culture, history and training may have differed from mine. Clearly this has been a positive experience and I feel wiser and more tolerant as a result. This applies to both my professional and my personal life. These experiences have taught me to try to take an objective view before making a declarative statement, as well as pause when someone disagrees. In effect, they have played a role in shaping the interpersonal algorithm I use to interact with others. I can’t help but think those in more inward-looking industries are at a disadvantage.

For these considerate individuals, happily the great majority, I feel as if the standard interpersonal algorithm in my head is sufficient to interact with them. I don’t need to choose my words carefully or consider what their agenda is before interacting with them. Even when transparency and politeness do not suffice, I know it’s a transient misunderstanding which will resolve itself quickly and naturally. Smiles and cooperation are just on the horizon.

Then there is a second smaller category of people for which my standard interpersonal algorithm does not suffice. I need to choose my words carefully or interact with them in some restrictive manner. For these people it’s as if I need to write a separate unique subroutine (applet, method, program or function if you prefer) in order to interact with them successfully. Perhaps the circumstance of our interaction causes the foundation of communication and collaboration to shift from the norm. Maybe the nature of my position or assigned goals conflicts with theirs. One occasion was when I needed a knowledge transfer from someone who was losing their job.

In other cases they may have had some personal problem or personality trait which negated the effectiveness of my default interpersonal algorithm. Or perhaps the uniqueness was on my side. Although it often took many difficult interactions, for these people I was able to develop a special algorithm tailored to our differences. Ultimately, I benefited from working with them. Looking back, I find these successful meetings of the mind among my most memorable career accomplishments. 

Then there has been a rare third category of people for which all my interpersonal skills have failed me. Try as I might, I was never able to formulate an algorithm to interact with them successfully. In some cases I received an adversarial response to my first hello. I’ll never understand that.

In many cases politics appears to have been the culprit. Some see only value in the political return of a contentious public interaction. Others just see the world as a zero-sum game. When such a person is in a position of leadership, they often create a defensive working environment (see my article Working Offensively, Working Defensively). In other cases I believe mental illness, such as bipolarism, or substance abuse may have been a factor. I suspect mental illness is more pervasive among functional adults than we realize. 

Luckily there have only been maybe a dozen such people in my career. Interestingly, they seem to have been evenly distributed in time and between companies. Maybe they behave as particles dispersing uniformly in a fluid, like raisins in tapioca pudding. Or perhaps when two come together the negativity is so great, it forms a black hole and one is swallowed.