What to Avoid when Building Relationships and Influencing Others
Leo flinched and shot up, his eyes darting wildly. “What was that? Oh no, not now.”
As his colleague Maya calmly assessed the fallen supply rack, Leo fumbled for his phone and hit the button for maintenance, his face heating up in stress and irritation. With clipped, exasperated breaths, he began to explain the problem, which was clearly a looming disaster in his telling, when suddenly his email pinged with an urgent client email.
He let out a distressed sigh and buried his face in his hands. “This is impossible! They can’t ask for this now.”
Without stopping to read the requirements, Leo spent the next hour catastrophizing the new demand.
Maya, meanwhile, quietly fixed the rack, put the supplies back in place, and returned to her desk to start on a project outline.
Leo, by now mentally exhausted and jittery, had only managed to increase his anxiety and alienate two departments. He was a boat, constantly being tossed by every passing wave.
Reactivity Kills Relationships and Influence
Over the past 20+ years of research, training, consulting, and writing, I’ve come to the conclusion that reactivity is the number one relationship and influence killer.
Reactivity surfaces in a few ways.
You can be reactive to:
- People by defending, blaming, or controlling
- Challenges by avoiding, panicking, or withdrawing
- Responsibilities by complaining, stressing, or evading
Reactivity essentially means that you’re not thoughtfully managing yourself.
The inability to manage yourself reduces your credibility, your connections, your clarity, and your creativity. It places you as a victim without agency, intentionality, or influence.
Many people spend much of their time reacting to the way others treat them, what others ask of them, and the circumstances surrounding them.
Perhaps you can relate to feeling:
- Overwhelmed by everything on your plate
- Stuck in a pattern of urgent requests and demands that need your attention
- Controlled by a schedule filled with back-to-back meetings
- Frustrated by the people around you
- Depleted by ruminations about the past or the future
- Insecure about how you’re acting to gain approval
- Conflicted by constantly shifting priorities
In my last article, I highlighted the importance of simply taking the next step. Doing the next step, however, doesn’t mean you don’t first think about the best next step to take.
The next step shouldn’t be a knee-jerk, impulsive, triggered action.
It should be a step towards what matters most.
The Antidote to Reactivity
The psychologist Edwin Friedman says the cure to reactivity is differentiation:
Differentiation means minimum reactivity to the positions or reactivity of others. Differentiation is charting one’s own way by means of one’s own internal guidance system, rather than perpetually eyeing the “scope” to see where others are at. Differentiation refers to a direction in life rather than a state of being, which includes:
- The capacity to take a stand
- Asserting ”I” when others are demanding “we”
- Maintaining a non-anxious presence in the face of anxious others
- Knowing where one ends and another begins
- Being clear about one’s own personal values and goals
- Taking maximum responsibility for one’s own emotional being and destiny rather than blaming others or the context
Differentiation is inherently an anti-victim, anti-blaming focus.
Reactivity is the easy path. Differentiation is hard. But those who are the best at relationships and influence — people like Maya — do the work to manage their reactivity.
What will you do when the next (real or metaphorical) supply rack falls?
Which path will you take when people, challenges, and responsibilities press themselves on you?
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