The last few months have been interesting ones, and much more challenging than usual.  I’ve found myself in the middle of several conflicts and am still actively navigating my way through some of them.  Like most human beings I don’t like conflict and have often looked for ways to avoid it in the past.  Maybe I avoid having the difficult conversation or just avoid the person entirely.  Navigating these murky conflicts has also been a struggle because I crave certainty.  It’s often easier to handle a bad outcome if we know what the outcome is.  The process of navigating through ambiguity, of uncertain outcomes, of not having closure can create a lot of angst.  It’s been hard to sit with.  But I’ve made a conscious choice to lean in rather than run and to get more comfortable with the things that are difficult to sit with.  So sit I must.

It’s been challenging too because I value relationships.  I pride myself on showing up as a relationship-oriented person.  I’ve worked hard to cultivate that over the course of my career – early on I got feedback that I tended to focus on my goals and objectives while ignoring that was important to others.  I took the feedback seriously.  I worked hard to bring more balance into my approach.  To not be the kind of leader and colleague who only focused on task at the expense of relationships.  To model servant leadership.  To show up as a true collaborator with my peers.  To put people first. 

Our inner critics will scare us out of conflict if we let them

But no matter how much work I’ve done and no matter how many tools I have in my belt – all this outer turbulence has still managed to kick up inner turbulence in my mind.  My inner saboteur has grown louder and louder as the conflict intensified.  Maybe I haven’t worked hard enough on the feedback from early on?  Maybe I’m bad at relationships after all?  I should be better at difficult conversations at this point in my life.  I should have learned all these skills by now.  What kind of coach am I if I can’t practice what I preach?  My saboteur has been using every trick in the book to get me to run away from the hard work and just throw in the towel.  Conflict is scary after all. 

It’s funny how the mind works and how it plays tricks on us.  For a long time, I think I viewed my worth as a human through the lens of my accomplishments.  How much money did I earn this year?  How many fortune 100 clients do I have?  How many times have I had articles published?  How many certifications do I have?  These were the benchmarks by how I measured my success.  And I say “were” very intentionally because I don’t think about these things so much anymore.  I’ve learned to let go of many of these metrics as a measure of my worth.  It’s been powerful, it’s been freeing.  I now view my success not through a lens of how much I’ve accomplished but through a lens of how much I’ve learned to let go of.  It’s been a revolutionary way of thinking and often runs contrary to popular culture, where we are always being pushed to strive and achieve more and more and more.

What does success in relationships look like?

But in letting go of accomplishments as the yardstick of success, I inadvertently replaced it with something else unconsciously – Relationships.  The measure of my success is not so much the things I’ve accomplished but the relationships I’ve built.  How many friends do I have?  And how long have I had them?  Am I close with family members?  How many successful business partnerships have I cultivated?  How many people know me and my work and speak highly of me?  How many connections do I have on linkedin? 

It’s a seductive trap for sure.  Relationships are important, we know this.  They are a key aspect of what it means to be human.  So it logically follows that if I’m successful I should have a lot of successful relationships, right?  I should be able to find a way to keep every relationship that I have.  I should be able to seamlessly navigate conflict, or even better, never create it in the first place.  That then proves that I’m a good person, a good friend, a good business associate, a good family member, a person worthy of the title “coach.”

But there’s a huge cost to this type of thinking. We avoid issues, we don’t have the conversations that really matter. We say yes when we want to say no. We become increasingly resentful and the resentment eventually comes out sideways – often in explosive or passive aggressive ways.

What’s the purpose of relationships?

As I leaned into this insight, I found myself asking an even deeper and more fundamental question:  What’s the purpose of relationship with other human beings? 

It’s a big question. We take it for granted that we have to have relationships with others, but is there an ultimate purpose to it? I sat with that question for a long time, because deep down I realized that the purpose lied not in yet another yardstick to beat myself up with, or another measure of success to stress about.  It lied in something much, much deeper.  And the best answer I could come up with is to love.  The purpose of relationships is to be love, to experience love and to know love. 

And this doesn’t just pertain to personal relationships, but business ones as well. Just this morning I was facilitating a leadership program where the concept of empathy came up multiple times.  Empathy is closely connected to love.  It’s being able to put oneself in another’s shoes.  To see them for who they truly are.  To experience the world through their eyes.  The context in business may be different, but on a macro level I truly believe it all boils down to something quite simple.

And sometimes the person that needs the love in a relationship the most is ourselves.  Relationships are also an opportunity to learn to love ourselves.  One of the things I’m noticing as I navigate these conflicts is that they are powerful opportunities for me to advocate for myself.  To value myself and to honor myself. 

But we often focus on outcomes when it comes to relationships.  And if the outcome doesn’t look a certain way, then the relationship wasn’t successful.  How many friends do I have?  How many likes did I get?  Did that difficult conversation go the way I wanted it to?  How many strong business relationships have I built?  We focus on things that didn’t go the way we wanted them to, relationships that went south, friendships that ended, divorces, maybe we beat ourselves up over something we said or did.  Or something they said or did.  But if relationships are just an opportunity to love, then I can choose to love, no matter what the outcome is.  And perhaps I get to define what success looks like in relationships.  What do I want it to be?

Success Criteria for Relationships

So I wrote some new success criteria for my relationships moving forward:

  • What is my relationship with myself?  How kind and compassionate am I with myself?  On a scale of 1-10 how would I rate the relationship I have with myself?
  • What is my relationship with spirit / God / Higher power?  On a scale of 1-10 how would I rate that?
  • Is my capacity to love increasing or decreasing? 
  • Who have I let go of trying to please?  Who have I stopped looking for validation from?
  • What have I learned from all the relationships I have (or have had) in the past?  How are these experiences helping me to grow?

I’m going to keep revisiting and adding to this list. It’s a work in process as I redefine what relationship success looks like for me. And I find the more I can redefine what success looks like in this space, the more willing I am to lean into the spaces that scare me.

Shelley Pernot is a career and leadership coach who is passionate about helping her clients develop clarity, confidence, and compassion for self.  She is particularly adept at working with high performing women who are hard on themselves.  Reach out to me here for a free consultation to learn more about the coaching process and how it may benefit you!