Values in Action: Treat Others How THEY’d Like to be Treated

At Clef, many of our individual behaviors in the office, as well as business decisions, are heavily influenced by our company values. Here, we focus on how we all strive to “Treat Others How THEY’d Like to be Treated.”

In an ideal world, the people we share our lives and communities with would always understand our perspective and experience. In every conversation, we would feel true connection and warmth. Imagine being included in a never ending cycle of positive reciprocity that helps us to grow as individuals, and ultimately, empowers us to act out of love and compassion on one another’s behalf in all cases. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

However; in actual reality, our interactions are often peppered with miscommunications and missteps. We don’t always understand another person’s perspective on the world, even when we care a lot about the other person and try hard to put ourselves in their shoes. Fairly frequently, conversations, especially important ones, result in confusion and disappointment. It takes special effort to identify our own needs, much less the needs of others around us. Even if we do know what we want, we often fail to communicate those needs in a way that others can understand.

At Clef, one of our company values is designed to guide our internal conversations, and our work in building software, that is considerate of the needs of others. This value acts as a prompt for behaving in a way that increases the likelihood that we will feel empowered to act out of love and compassion on another’s behalf more often.

Treat others the way they’d like to be treated.

“Treat others the way they’d like to be treated,” sounds like a simple statement that we have heard a million times, but there is more complexity involved in actually living it. Take note that treating others in the manner THEY would like to be treated is different than “the Golden Rule,” treat others as YOU would like to be treated. By changing one word, the interpretation of the statement is radically transformed. In order to treat someone the way they would like to be treated, one must actually know what another person expects from their interaction with you. This information can be hard to come by in conversation. In order to effectively communicate your needs in any conversation, special communication training is usually required. There has been a lot written about this topic so I won’t go into too much detail here. In short, most of us that grew up in the Western world were never exposed to people communicating in the context of their needs. Instead, most of our language is oriented in such a way as to levy judgment on others as being right or wrong. When we hear statements from other folks, we immediately begin to defend ourselves and our actions. We hear statements as attacks. In fact, we are so used to being judged in this way, sometimes we mistakingly hear statements that aren’t judgments as such and instantly move to defend ourselves anyway. This cycle can also become self-perpetuating. If disagreements are allowed to proceed in this attack and defense mode we are all used to, issues can spin out of control and result in a complete breakdown of a relationship. Both sides truly believe they are ‘right’ and their actions are justified and fair. Debates grow heated and there seems to be no middle ground. A self-perpetuating cycle of insult and retaliation begins to gather momentum.

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If one side wins some ground, the other side feels -forced- to accept the new reality, and resentment grows. This is an outcome that most of us do not want in any situation, but it is common to see and experience.

NonViolent Communication, a system of dialog advocated by Marshall Rosenberg, PhD, posits that lasting peaceful resolution can only be reached when people feel empowered to act in kindness toward one another out of love and compassion. People must feel free to act; not forced. When actions are taken freely out of love and compassion for one another, everyone feels good and trust is built up. There is no latent resentment. Positions can then be explored in a safe environment.*

A big part of the “Treat Others…” value is being able to determine what other people’s needs are at the time of the conversation. In order to “treat others the way they’d like to be treated” we need to listen for their needs. If we aren’t sure what their needs are, we need to ask. Even knowing that you don’t know what the other person’s needs are at the time requires a certain set of skills. B, our CEO, says “The core of this value is empathy, and understanding that the people we interact with are not like us. I think it’s critical to building a product for a non-technical audience and for building a diverse team.” We need to get good at being empathetic in our one-on-one conversations and in building software for a large and diverse community of users. We need to constantly check that we are taking the needs of others into account before levying judgment and taking action.

But, being able to identify the needs of others is only half the equation required to set our cycle of positive reciprocity into motion. We also need to identify and find a way to communicate our own needs, and then give people the opportunity to meet them. In order to really understand what our own needs are in a given situation, we have to be in touch with our own emotions and understand what aspects of the environment, or others behaviors, trigger those emotions. Not easy stuff. “Treat Others” is worded so as to encourage a reflexive analysis of how we can empower OURSELVES to behave in a way that gives others the opportunity to act out of love and compassion on our behalf. We describe the value on our website in the following way: “Our customers and teammates have different needs from our own, so we must consider their perspectives to communicate effectively. We work best together when we empathize with one another, and we create the best product when we understand the people we are building for.”

Jesse sums up both sides of the value, “It can be really hard for people to communicate how they want to be treated. I think there’s a joint responsibility. Trying to both feel when you can be treating someone better and then creating the space for them to proactively tell you.” At Clef, it’s of critical importance to our success as a company that our team members be conscious of all of these facets involved in creating and sustaining close personal relationships and designing considerate software for the world. The “Treat Others” value is designed to provide guidance and direction in realizing that ideal world scenario.

* This is a core tenet of nonviolent communication. Although, I do not have the space to explore this idea more fully here, it is worth thinking about and reading up on. Learning NVC has improved my life by improving the quality of almost every relationship in it. The most successful teaching tool of NVC in my opinion, short of attending an in-person workshop, is the NVC Training Course.

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