Only Two Kinds Of People?

ONLY TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE?
By Bill Cottringer

Getting along with other people and working together cooperatively is the fundamental foundation of successful outcomes in the workplace. This is true teamwork at its best. Organizations without this foundation don’t grow or prosper, at least over the long haul. Instead they have costly turnover, unhappy customers and employees and poor bottom-line results.

Although learning, growing and improving is a very universal and natural part of life, there are some things that inhibit this process within each of us, including managers and leaders. One major way this can happen to us is when we allow ourselves to fall prey to the dualistic trap our minds lead us into. We are all a victim of the unproductive, irreconcilable habit of dividing all things into this or that, either-or, exclusive categories—good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, yes vs. no, valuable vs. worthless, etc. We tend to keep score and assign people to either one side of the basic life equation or the other.

Consider the following partial division between how people can think and act at work. Go down the list and recognize co-workers, and yourself, if you dare. Then consider how we are convinced that the right side of this listing is the only thing that can lead to long-term success. (I suspect there is agreement with this even with people operating from the left side of the list). At any rate we can get easily troubled, annoyed and frustrated when we try to deal with people who are different from us—those being on the other side from where we are (more so by people on the right because they know they are right!) Ha to that! The temperature is equal on both sides and we know it!

Pessimism, negativity vs. Optimism, positivism
Individualist vs. Team player
Closed-minded, know it all vs. Open-minded, eager to learn
Critical, judgmental vs. Accepting, understanding
Disagreeable, argumentative vs. Agreeable
Overly aggressive vs. Assertive
Extreme, unbalanced vs. Temperate, balanced
Over-emotional, irrational vs. Reasonably rational
Taker, self-serving vs. Giver, other-serving
Dishonest, manipulating vs. Honest, spontaneous
Rigid, stagnant, stuck vs. Growing, flexible
Chaos-creating vs. Order-restoring
Destructive vs. Constructive/productive
Disabling others vs. Enabling others
Arrogant, egocentric vs. Humble
Over-talkative vs. Good listener
Insensitive to others vs. Empathetic with others
Impatient vs. Patient
Impulsive vs. Thoughtful

Now the trouble is, we have created an un-reality with this extremely artificial polarity with such a marked division—we all know we are never always one way or the other, but somewhere in between. And even keeping score to determine how someone is most of the time isn’t really that accurate or reliable. Our memories aren’t as accurate as we want to believe.

We all have a right to choose which side of the equation we will be on with these things, depending on what we find works best for us most of the time. That is reality, but guess what? We can easily make two critical mistakes with our choices: (1) we may think we are operating from one side but really from the other, unknowingly (2) there might be times where both sides are needed for the most productive resolution between the two opposing sides.

Then again everyone and everything can serve a positive purpose—the people on the left side of this list may serve the purpose of showing others how not to be, or reinforcing the correctness of being on the right side. Of course that is an unfair judgment from the right side. Our perspective always gets in the way of what we are trying to see.

There only seems to be one way out of this conundrum that won’t go away in today’s workplace (the dualistic demon in our minds which creates artificial polarities, just so we know whether we are coming or going, so to speak). The wise approach is to separate the person from the situation, unconvincing yourself of the truth that a person is really just one way or the other, and then realizing we all think and act in both ways and a lot in between, depending upon conditions and the corner we paint people into unfairly (and inaccurately) or corners they paint us into.

Here is the good news: Our world is finally beginning to make the needed transition from the old either-or, win-lose mentality to the reality of the and-and, win-win one, and we should take great pleasure in that shift. In the meantime, we can all make our effort to reduce the overload of toxic psychic pollution in our atmosphere, by realizing the artificiality of polar opposites that our dualistic minds have deceptively convinced us really do exist. Nonsense to that unreality!

If the right side of this equation is the best way to be, then being that way consistently and persistently will allow the other side to reconcile the current power struggle between the two sides that undermines organizational synergy and performance. And if that is not possible it is because it is the very movement from the left to the right side of the list that is the main purpose for us all; and we can all make better progress together helping each other grow and improve by being the way we aspire towards and pretend we are already there. Self-perceptions are strange that way! Up with acceptance, down with judgment.