Core Values in Workplace Disputes
By: Seattle Ruzek
Tags: Relationships, Workplace, Work, Values

Work relationships aren’t any different, they’re all based on core values. Navigating the professional workplace is testing, and it’s not because of the challenging workload and long hours, but because of the relationships that you’re quite literally forced to maintain. Like it or not, those relationships are what makes a career. My mentor said to me, “your career is built with 10% of your intelligence and 90% of your ability to understand people.”

The next time that you genuinely believe that someone is wrong at work, think again.

I’m not talking about being wrong in the sense that your co-worker thought that Natalie Portman was Keira Knightley in Black Swan. They’d be wrong, sure, but that doesn’t (at least, it shouldn’t) violate anyones core values. A quick Google search would clear that up.

I’m talking about when someone becomes aggressively offended during a workplace dispute and you don’t know why. Or vice versa. What you think is right, isn’t necessarily right to the person sitting next to you. It’s what you value, and if what you value isn’t the same as your co-worker, it can lead you into some rough waters. Let’s avoid that, yeah? Here’s some real-life experiences (if you didn’t already guess, my scenarios before were completely arbitrary).

I don’t care if you’re late to a meeting with me. I don’t mind if you reschedule 20 minutes into it. I’ll take notes, I’ll share them with you. If you don’t text me back or respond to my email immediately, that’s fine. If it’s important, I’ll text again, I’ll follow up. It will not affect or impact our relationship in the slightest. I won’t think less of you or think that you value your own time more than my own and I won’t think that you’re being disrespectful. Because while we all value time, it’s not one of my core values.

Let’s go to the opposite side of that. I have seen an extraordinarily respectable person lose all sense of decency, and pulse with shimmering, boiling blood because I was late to a meeting, and I wasn’t responding to the many, “where are you?” text messages. I wasn’t responding because I was driving, but that’s beside the point.

I’m a hard worker and everyone knows that, so when I was late, I thought that the angry monster who was saying awful things to me was just temporary; it’s just his anger getting the best of him. I’m also an avid believer of the benefit of the doubt, thinking, “maybe he’s having a bad day.”

But weeks later, I still saw him have a lack of trust in me. That one wrong thing offended him and disrespected him so much that when he looked at me, he thought of only that wrong thing, instead of the hundreds of right things I’ve done for him. The meeting is irrelevant. I didn’t speak and I wouldn’t have spoken even if I was there at 8:30 AM instead of 8:40 AM. He lost his trust in me because I didn’t value that time and he couldn’t get in touch with me, because he values timeliness and responsiveness. By disrespecting that, I disrespected him.

Later that day, I was in an intense 1:1 meeting with him, baffled, calm, and doe-eyed, saying, “what’s the big deal?” and that, my friends, is one of the worst things you can say when you offend someones core values. Lesson learned. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big deal to you or not. If it’s a big deal to the other person in the working relationship, you need to understand that and treat it as such.

Not everything is so loose with me. I have my triggers, as does he, as do you. So here’s something that shoots electric shocks of anger from my neck to my palms. When I see someone blatantly disregard the help or contributions they received and take the credit for themselves for a completed project or deliverable, my immediate response is to interject, giving credit where it’s due. How I handle that interjection is up to me, but considering how angry it makes me, I usually lack grace in the moment. Even worse, when I see someone throw a teammate, one might even consider a friend, under the bus behind their back in a manipulative way, it breaks my heart. Again, handling your responses is an important part when someone violates your core values, as hard as it may be to do.

That same person who lost their trust in me for being 10 minutes late doesn’t even notice this selfishness or care enough to speak about it or let it impact his decisions or opinions. But the backstabbing snake just lost my trust because I value teamwork. By disrespecting that, you disrespect me.

Trust and respect are outcomes, not values.

Yeah, words are tricky as we end 2020. If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend Words that Work by Dr. Frank Luntz.

Respect isn’t a core value, it’s earned. Trust is something that you give to people when you believe that they deserve it. It’s all based on who they are, what they value + who you are, what you value. If this is the first time you’re reading about core values, then you should know that when you go against someone’s core values, you’ll only know after you did it.