Good Company

David Zimmerman believes that, like good music, our work relationships contain tension that must be resolved. In this article from our series Reconciliation at Work, David argues that by taking responsibility for the tension we will be “satisfied with the music we’ve made together.”

When people work together there is going to be conflict.
You can't outrun your problems.
And that is why the idea of a cage match is so universally appealing. (Michael Scott, The Office)

“I can see why there was tension between you and your former boss.”

It’s not the sort of thing you want to hear, but I sure did hear it. I had broken protocol in a way that had started to look suspiciously like a pattern. Ironically this behavior, so far as I know, never bothered my previous boss. I was a self-starter, an outside-the-box thinker. I got stuff done, and I didn’t bother anybody with the messy details.

Or maybe that’s just how I saw myself. I never actually asked anyone whether my going outside the box was making any messes. And while I didn’t bother anybody, I didn’t let protocol bother me. I was at work, but I was doing my own thing.

A surprising number of the words associated with the workplace are relational: company, corporate, shareholders, win-win. Every employee has an employer; every conference call has callers. Even boss isn’t just a noun. As a transitive verb, it requires an object: I boss you; you boss me.

So the workplace is a relational place. And we draw on our other relational places to inform our participation in it. It’s tempting to think of the people you work with as your “work family,” but they’re not. You report to some; you compete with others. Your conversations linger long around work and rarely venture beyond it. The paterfamilias of an office can fire you with or without cause; the queen bee of the hive you work in can clip your wings on a whim. Not that they (or she) would, but they could.

Tension at Work

All relationships have the capacity for tension, but family tension is its own thing. Families deal with tension with the knowledge that they are, by and large, stuck with each other. Your coworkers may or may not come to your birthday party, your wedding, your hospital room, or your funeral (you may or may not want them there). But your family shows up because, well, how could they not? And when they don’t show up, they know they’ve crossed a line, broken a covenant. They also know that the relationship itself isn’t severed. They are stuck with their failure, their breach, for the rest of their lives. It’ll come up again in unguarded moments during Thanksgiving dinner. It’ll be front-of-mind as the invitations go out for the next big family thing. Families are a circling of wagons, and even when the circle is broken, it remains a circle.

The workplace isn’t a family. It’s more like a gathering of friends. C. S. Lewis described friendship as a side-to-side arrangement in which the relationship is based on the common path the friends have taken. Grade school friendships end, effectively, when friends are sent to separate middle schools. High school friendships end when the diaspora of graduation sends friends into their now separate lives. And so on. The school was the binding agent; the binding agent no longer binds them.

The workplace is similar. It’s the work that binds you to one another. It’s always been interesting to me how friends from different departments in my various workplaces see the challenges of the work so very differently. Blame is laid at the feet of different offenders, problems are solved by different proposals, success is measured by different metrics. Our vantage points differ because we walk on different tributaries of the same company path.

If the workplace is a side-to-side venture, then our friendships at work have to wrestle with the tensions of impermanence (Who knows when the next diasporic event will send some or all of us packing?), of commitment (Which of us owns the mission more, and how will we contend with those who see things differently?), and of perspective (How side-to-side can autonomous individuals ever really remain?).

Tension in a relationally dynamic setting on a journey taken together is a good thing, actually. As Seth Godin observes in his Icarus Deception, “If we smooth out the rough edges and the dark spots and there is no one different, no one who cares, no one who speaks up, we might as well go back to bed.” Without tension in motion, nothing wobbles, sure, but nothing new is discovered. Without tension in motion our journey loses its forward momentum. The ground beneath us erodes, and we are left, ultimately, with nothing.

Responsibility at Work

In a larger sense, though, all relationships—even work relationships, even friendships—are family relationships. The Scriptures tell us this throughout—born of Adam, born again in Christ, tethered to one another by the Spirit according to God’s mission to reconcile all his children to himself. Consider that God calls Egypt “my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance” (Isa. 19:25). All three he calls blessed. If three great and powerful nations, whose relationships with one another are so complicated and tension-filled, can be gathered together under the love of God, then is anyone—even your most frustrating colleague—exempt?

So, there we have it. Our work relationships are side-to-side, moving in the same direction on a common journey, like friends do. And yet underneath these friendships is the more primal, more foundational interconnectedness that best resembles a family. In our work, we are responsible to both.

Harmony at Work

It’s in this sense, this steady forward momentum undergirded by interconnection, that the workplace reminds me of music. In the great Western tradition at least, music is directional: from classic cantatas to the latest pop earworm, our music has a start, a finish, and a middle—a melody. Each composition takes us on a journey from beginning to end, like a friend would.

And yet with few exceptions, our music, like our journey, is undergirded by chords and rhythms that reassure us that there is something grounding us, keeping us together. The greatest music isn’t just the crafting of a melody; it’s a respect for harmony.

Melody and harmony, as a whole piece, enrich each moment as we move along our common path. Dissonant chords inevitably come, but we progress with confidence that they will resolve. And as the final notes are played, the final chord struck, we are satisfied with the music we’ve made together.

Ultimately, this idea of melody plus harmony helps me as I negotiate relationships at work. I’m one of many players, and I’m as responsible for my notes as they are for theirs. I have developed a tolerance for dissonance based on confidence (and a commitment) that the harsh tones will resolve. Even these serve a purpose.

“I can see why there was tension between you and your former boss.” So can I, with a little reflection. Here and there I flubbed my notes; here and there my former boss did the same. But also, here and there, the tension was written into the piece: the best music demands it, even as it demands that we resolve it.