Useful PM skills learned from a therapist
tl;dr — therapy is stigmatized, but actually useful. When partners, stakeholders, teammates “act out,” look for the deeper root emotions that are causing it.
Today’s goal is to remind myself to look behind the anger, aggressiveness, and hesitation.
I want to create products that make lives better. I’m listening to Banjo by Kevin Sauderson today.
The stigma of therapy
I grew up with stereotypical asian tiger parents. There was an unspoken stigma around therapy: it was something only for “crazy people.” The culture was one of hard work and self-achievement, and it was deeply engrained in me that asking for help is a sign of weakness, whether it be therapy, mentorship, or just plain old helping hands.
In hindsight, that was absurd. Some of the most accomplished and effective people I know over my career have used therapy to strengthen their personal and work lives. Asking for help is an important way to grow and learn. I need to remember to challenge these preconceived notions — my prejudices have only made my life unnecessarily harder!
What is therapy and what did it do for me?
I don’t proclaim to be an expert on therapy and I suspect the value may vary depending on the quality of the therapist, so take this with a grain of salt. I decided to try therapy as my company offered some free sessions as a perk. My experience with therapy was essentially like having a highly emotionally intelligent third party “angel over my shoulder.”
I find that my particular upbringing, working style, and approach to reasoning can be unempathetic towards others who don’t think and behave the way I do. After a few sessions of chatting with a wonderful lady in New Jersey, I found that she was able to give me a bunch of new frameworks and approaches to solving problems, defusing situations, and better understanding people’s emotions.
Therapy techniques at work
One nuance that differentiates the techniques I noticed with therapy versus standard business school / leadership-program type courses is that a lot of therapy stems from a deeper understanding of emotions and accepting / allowing for mistakes.
One technique that I will certainly be using more often is to try to discern and be more self-aware of the root emotions that may be driving certain behaviors in people, both at work and in my personal life. This sounds somewhat obvious, but has multiple layers of depth that I found insightful.
First, let’s take an example at work: you’ve got a coworker who is being difficult. Maybe it’s their attitude or something about how they seem to always poo-poo your ideas and decisions. It can be easy to fall back on thoughts like: wow this guy is just a jerk, he’s so self-absorbed that he constantly thinks his ideas are always better and can’t be wrong, what a terrible team player! Things we could do to resolve this may be to confront him, or speak to his manager, or just stop working with the guy anymore.
All of those thoughts could be true. But for a second, maybe one thing I could do is think about what emotions could be driving his behavior: maybe fear? Jealousy? Loneliness? Feelings of disrespect? Even if I think they are unfounded or irrational, if I’m able to figure out the root emotions driving his behavior, it actually opens the door to many more solutions that could be more constructive. What might change if you could help dispel his fears of losing his job to you? Or make him feel more like he’s part of the team? Or make him feel like you valued his opinions more?
It’s also possible that his emotions may stem from sources that are outside of my control. Maybe he’s feeling jealous that my boss got promoted and is the VPs favorite now, and he’s just taking it out on me as I represent my boss’ team? If that’s true, I may not be able to do anything about it directly, but some adept stakeholder mgmt can come in handy and may turn the tides, albeit indirectly.
The reality is that many of us naturally act and react based on our internal emotions, sometimes even more so than based on logic and data.
This was a valuable reminder that even in a “data-driven” job and “data-driven” company and “data-driven” culture, it’s important to remember we’re all human and a lot still comes down to how people feel.
“People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”
