Nurturing Bridges in Work and Life

Alex Cullimore: Are they actually incentivized to do that, are they incentivized to work together, are your measures of success team based or are they individually based to where you know, push comes to shove, and you need to try and make yourself safe for the next round of layoffs or a performance review, you default to pointing to things that are individually based.

[INTRO]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, coworkers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: This is Alex Cullimore. 

Both: Let's dive in.

"Authenticity means freedom."

"Authenticity means going with your gut."

"Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you."

"Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself."

"It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true."

"Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be."

"It's transparency, relatability. No frills. No makeup. Just being."

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Here we are with just Cristina and I, it’s another just-host episode. You know, we need to come up with a snappy name for it.

Cristina Amigoni: It doesn’t use the word “Just” since it is one of our change traps.

Alex Cullimore: And we’re not changing anything, we’re just identifying that this is how it is, we are limited to exclusively us. I think it’s a justified just.

Cristina Amigoni: Justified just. It was actually our friend Gale that once told me like, “Take “Just” out of that sentence.” I think I can’t remember what I said, like I go, “I just do this.” And she’s like, “It’s not “Just” You do that and you do it very well. So, take “Just” out of the sentence.”

Alex Cullimore: That’s fair. Instead of our “Just” host episodes, this is our host exclusives.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly.

Alex Cullimore: Hundred percent hosts.

Cristina Amigoni: I know. Oh, we’re just – it’s back and it’s the two of us.

Alex Cullimore: Yes, back with our special guests, each other.

Cristina Amigoni: And baby Groot.

Alex Cullimore: And baby Groot. This actually kind of dovetails right into what we wanted to talk about today, which is relationships. The fact that relationships are a superpower, both for workplace and for life in general. It’s something that is just necessary for us as a social species, as the fact that we are just needing community and reliant on it, and that is just something that powers us for what we want to do or how we are.

Cristina Amigoni: I wonder if we should make it a drinking game where every time we use –

Alex Cullimore: Every time we say “Just?”

Cristina Amigoni: The word “Just.”

Alex Cullimore: Because I used it three times in that sentence? Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Oh, maybe we just “Tea” for now. “Just tea.”

Alex Cullimore: Oh, you got to sip.

Cristina Amigoni: I get to drink.

Alex Cullimore: Or, assuming that’s tea. That is a very opaque mug, we’ll never know.

Cristina Amigoni: It’s tea for now.

Alex Cullimore: Tea for now but as we approach the noon hour, we’re going to see what else gets poured into this.

Cristina Amigoni: So yes, relationships. It is a very, very large topic, clearly, that we’re going to narrow down to 20 minutes or less.

Alex Cullimore: Let’s frame this in one other reasons that we thought about this is that last week, we got to do in-person with a whole bunch of people that we’ve worked with on and off throughout the last couple of years but we’ve mostly seen them remote, which is understandable. This is company that is dispersed over a couple of different offices, it’s not like they see each other in person often, but they had a chance to bring one of the teams together and we were there in attendance for that. 

So, it’s very exciting to kind of get to do something in person, which we haven’t done too much of this year at all, and so we get to just do that and kind of see – see what happened and one of the interesting things was just the first 15 minutes of the day, we’re suddenly – I said it.

Cristina Amigoni: Sorry, I got to drink.

Alex Cullimore: I don’t have any tea left, so here we are. You’re going to have to drink for both of us but I think it was a justified “Just” again. I’m going to justify that one because if it was just the first 15 minutes. I think I’m identifying that this is – this was within that very specific timeframe was identifiable how important relationships were and how the fact that everybody got in the room and suddenly, we’re greeting each other. 

They hadn’t seen each other for a bit, there’s been vocational movement between departments of people, and so these people were sometimes meeting their coworkers in person for the first time, and so that was – there was this just moments of people greeting each other even though they’ve worked with each other for all of this year. They got to actually meet in person.

Cristina Amigoni: It was really, really cool to see them in person. Not for us but also see just the, “just” themselves. It is really hard to eliminate “Just” from language.

Alex Cullimore: I think these are not the “just” we’re talking about usually when we’re – 

Cristina Amigoni: No, they’re not, they’re not the just we’re talking about but I remember one of them actually pointed out, first of all, I remember hearing people actually say how they had worked together for seven, eight years and had never been in person before, which to me was just unheard of. I couldn’t even comprehend that other ones that provided the feedback to just – ah, really hard to say – to not say, “just” to realize. 

And it is a filler, that’s the problem, to realize that one of the guys there that said, “Wow, like, now that I’ve seen, that I have met these people in person or this one person, you know, like I can’t be mad at him anymore, now, he’s a human, and so he’s no longer just a screen or he’s no longer an email. He’s no longer a title, he’s no longer, you know, a name that you know, like I assumed there’s a human behind it but I don’t know they’re human.”

“So, it’s easy to kind of disregard and be mad at, and now, it’s a lot more difficult, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to be mad at this person from now on.”

Alex Cullimore: Kind of incredible to see somebody in 3D the first time. When we’re revolving getting used to remote work so much with the pandemic and then getting used to so many Zoom calls. You get so used to seeing people at exactly like, shoulder height framing all the time, and so you never have any idea of how tall these people are, what they look like and side profile, who are they, really, and what do they look like when it’s not just deadpan facing a camera straight on. 

And so, that alone is this physical marker that you noticed that is just different than – I’m just going to keep doing it, it’s all over the place, I can’t get it out, this lasted all three minutes into the episode but there is this physical thing that you notice people differently than you’ve seen them even if you’ve seen them a dozen times on camera, which is not always common either. Some people are not on camera. 

But when you have seen them in this flat 2D space, you suddenly see them as this full human being and then you get to know them, and that was something that was noted many times over the course of doing the leadership classes last year, where people are realizing, “I can pick up the phone and talk to this person, I now know them, I have an idea of who they are.” And it was incredible to see. 

We don’t always plan things like you know, it’s three days of sessions but on the first night, everybody has a scheduled dinner and of course, you know, it can be tiring after a long day to feel like there’s another event, I have to go do more. I’m already traveling, I’m already tired, I’d have to go mix and mingle and it’s fair to be tired by that but it is always incredible how different people show up on the second day for having had the time, just to – and then asks a little bit and talk about things outside of work. 

Like, “How many kids do you have, what are you interested in, what are your hobbies?” Get to know people beyond the scope of work that you share.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that’s so true. There’s so much – just magic that happens. Just – just magic. I remember the first 15, 20 minutes when people were coming into the room and greeting each other and getting to know, especially, each other a little bit more, especially if they hadn’t met before or they hadn’t met in a long time, in person because they talk to each other every week multiple times a day, multiple times a week. It was incredible, you could just feel the human energy.

Alex Cullimore: You just feel it.

Cristina Amigoni: You just feel, you just feel. You could feel the energy of the connections happening and so, if we think about energy as Einstein has proved that we are made of energy, there is an energy exchange and you know, all sorts of scientists have, you know, since then double-downed on that and like, looked for evidence, you know, the energy exchange between humans but you can feel it. 

Like, I could feel that energy even standing on the other side of the room as they were entering and greeting each other, and it was just incredible. It was incredible, not “just.”

Alex Cullimore: It was just incredible.

Cristina Amigoni: It was completely incredible.

Alex Cullimore: It was just exclusively personally no more.

Cristina Amigoni: It was a hundred percent –

Alex Cullimore: No more.

Cristina Amigoni: Whole-heartedly incredible.

Alex Cullimore: You know, it’s funny you mentioned that because there’s definitely lots of studies that have been done on things like, you could – think about brain waves. You stick all of those, you have stickers to your head and then you can actually measure brainwaves of just energy coming out of your head. So, it’s clearly like beyond the visible realm but one interesting thing is that we believe this fairly easily when we hear it about like, plants.

There’s lots of research now and like, trees kind of share information with each other. There’s understanding of when there’s, you know, buyers are dangerous, there’s some kind of ability to note and obviously, we can’t communicate with them but we can notice the changes in behavior, and there are actually kind of an interplay and a communication that goes on between things that are seemingly inanimate or don’t have that capability. 

And we can sometimes, I think, believe that easier than we believe, for some reason, that humans also would have a similar just ability to interact and when we notice it, sometimes we will identify it like as emotional knowledge where we walk in, we’re like, “Oh, this person seems like they’re in a bad place or they seem angry today, they seem happy today, they seem…” whatever it is, you can notice some of the divide.

And that’s obviously somewhat reliant on things like facial expressions and somewhat, we just – we get a feeling that that’s kind of what’s happening and it’s easier to read in person, especially as you start to pay attention to it but we simultaneously know that and don’t always believe it that that can be such an influential piece because I think we fall into that measurability trap where we feel like, “Well, how much does it matter?” 

How do you measure that? You notice that it changes things, you notice that, like we said, people are – will say, “Oh, I can talk to this person now. Oh, I realize that it would be very easy just to reach out to that person.” It’s not just a name on a Teams call. So, there is an impact and because it’s hard to measure, it doesn’t mean there’s not an impact or that is not a huge impact, and I think we fall into that trap a lot of like, “Well, we need to have this be proven.” 

And the proof is in the pudding, everybody feels it, everybody notices it in their own life, and then somehow, because it’s so hard to measure, we don’t feel like we can look for that in other places or assume that it’s happening or trying to encourage it or have that be worthwhile because we’re all spending our time trying to justify, “How do I justify travel expenses for you know, 15 people to get in person?” And I understand the need to justify costs. 

So, you should just willy-nilly throw things everywhere but it is, it does make it harder when there’s something that’s hard to measure but really impactful, like building in-person relationships when we have to justify that and try and get a dollar amount out of it.

Cristina Amigoni: Which is incredible because if you think about anything outside of business, really. I mean, pretty much, anything else outside of business, you will never have to justify the expense of the sports team practicing together and spending time together, ever. You’re not going to have a football team where they live in different places and they all train at home, they’re a little piece, and then they come together just for games. It’s not a thing.

It’s not even a thing that crosses anybody’s mind but for some reason, in business, we’ve lost that. For some reason, in business, that no longer applies. Humans no longer have to actually be physically together to learn how to work with each other, and even if they’re not physically together, there’s such an uphill battle to justify teamwork, to justify teams actually getting to know each other. 

People actually having to build relationships before they can be accountable and dependent on each other and communicate and collaborate. It’s almost as this, “Oh, it’s written on paper that now you’re a team, so start acting like it.” And then, when six months down the line, things are broken. “Well, let’s throw a process in, or let’s change a process, or let’s move people around.” When you’re not actually addressing the core issue. 

And the core issue is the team never became a team. There was never an investment in relationship building, which is literally almost the only thing that matters. If there’s a problem with the bottom line, if there’s a problem with things are not working out, if there’s a problem, a challenge, there’s no innovation or no problem-solving, or anything like that, honestly, like the first thing that we need to look at is collaboration.

What is happening at the relationship level of the human to human? And that’s where the broken pieces are going to be.

Alex Cullimore: That is a brilliant way of describing it. Just think about like, any team, when something eventually goes wrong as it will, or somebody has you know, something they have to take care of in their family and they no longer can be part of the team, for a temporary time, they just can’t do the function they were asked to do. Do you have a team that looks around and says, “Man, I hope somebody picks up the slack,” or do you have a team that all jumps in because they care about that person? 

They would want to be cared about in the same way and they all jump in and make sure that what needs to get done is done, and that person who has to step out for a bit doesn’t feel the stress of leaving the team behind and that they just make sure they’re supporting them. That’s where a team can thrive, or if they don’t have those relationships, then it becomes this game of kind of, hot potato of like, “Okay, who is going to pick that up then? Who is going to do this?”

And it’s obviously kind of the two ends of the spectrum but you can see how there would be shades of gray in that where there’s a little bit of a hot potato but eventually we’ll pick it up or a little bit more like, “Yeah, we want to support you and it’s hard to jump into this.” And I like the team analogy with football as well or with any sports team because you can – you usually have a fairly set roster for at least, a season. 

I mean, there’s changes here and there but most of the time, there’s kind of trades in between the seasons, and then the season’s people tend to stay more or less in the same teams, and that gives you a chance to build that up, and I think the dark side of relationships in the corporate sense is that there isn’t a sense of seasons and there is a sense of precarity, precariousness? 

I’m not sure what the – if that is an adjective, because you can have runs of layoffs. You can have just suddenly a team shift, you can have an executive decide to change the org structure and now you’re working at a different department, even if you aren’t like, moved out of the organization, you’re moved off the team, and it’s not that there aren’t good reasons to do that but that kind of shifting create hesitation in building those strong relationships because you don’t know how long it’s going to last. 

You don’t know if you can, like are you going to invest the time that it will take to create that relationship when in two months, you’re going to be asked to separate in a whole set of new ones, does it matter whether you get to know this person or not? And it can be a real drag on starting those relationships, and so people start to feel like, “Well, does it matter if we team build or not.” And if that starts to permeate the organization, you’re going to have all those collaboration issues you’re talking about.

You start to have the feeling – and it’s perfectly natural to not do that investment but those are the challenges that we have to be aware of in leadership to not create the situation in which we are instilling a kind of malaise towards relationships.

Cristina Amigoni: It’s ironic to me because a lot of times, there’s the after-effect. A team is created on paper, they’re told, “Please come together and collaborate and create consistency across six, nine, 12, one year later,” whatever the time before, you know, the next shift happens, comes around, and like, “Oh, well, they still didn’t come together, they’re still not collaborating, there’s still no consistency across.” 

“But let’s bring in together in person so that they can actually get to know each other and create the bond.” And all it takes is like, “Okay, can we shift those two?” What if you actually invest in creating the bond when you form the team on paper, not 12 months after they didn’t do what they were supposed to and they didn’t come together on their own when there’s really no effort in coming together whatsoever?

Alex Cullimore: And that’s again, one thing that we think about is trying to align incentives with what we’re trying to accomplish. Like, if we want people to work together, where are the incentives asked? Are they actually incentivized to do that? Are they incentivized to work together, are your measures of success team-based or are they individually based to where you know, push comes to shove, and you need to try and make yourself self for the next round of layoffs or a performance review, you default to pointing to things that are individually based?

It’s understandable to try and rate people individually but you’re not going to get the behaviors that are collaborative if that’s what you’re looking for.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, exactly, you know, and if we come back to the in-person, which we’re not advocating for, you know, five days in the office, some sort of streak, “I need to see your butt in the seat and the back of your head,” or, “I don’t believe you’re working” thing. Also because there is a lot of data that shows that just because somebody is in the office that doesn’t actually mean that they’re collaborating or being productive or working. 

And I have witnessed that in many offices where I literally see people not speak to each other for five days and look at Facebook for 40 hours a week. So, that’s not it, it’s not about the peace, it’s really about making the investment and the effort into bringing people together in a way that makes sense and so that they understand the value and also not after the fact, so not after there’s been a one year, you know, of not winning any games. 

And so, “Oh, maybe you know, we should have the team come together in person and practice together.” But let’s go through a whole year of seeing if they can show up for games and win on their own first. You know, that never happens anywhere else except for in business and then we get all, you know, there is a lot of frustration and then there’s a lot of other things that happen to fix those things. 

There’s actual evidence, there’s neuroscience and there’s all sorts of other scientific terms that I don’t really know, evidence that are being studied on how the energy that we bring actually emanates three to five feet outside of us. So, if we go back to everybody’s in the same room, think about how much energy of 20 people is being exchanged in that room if each one of the 22 people is emanating whatever energy they’re feeling three to five feet outside of themselves, that’s what happens. That’s the magic that we can witness when we see it happen. 

Alex Cullimore: And let’s just tie those two points together because I think that absolutely knowing or advocating for like time in the office, it has to be incredibly intentional time spent, like getting together, just an interplay and an exchange of energy with people around and you just kind of feel that. However, that’s a double-edged sword because if you’re just forcing people to come to the office and everybody is resentful about it. 

And they’re all sitting next to each other but just angry that they were asked to be in the office and have to go through a commute and there’s no reason for it because there’s still a bunch of people who are half remote or they still have to communicate with the different office or they’re still just dialing into a teams call that now cost them two hours of their life and a commute there and back and etcetera, etcetera, and those are all absolutely legitimate frustrations. 

Now, you’ve got just a pile of people sitting and exchanging frustration. You can absolutely build some negative energy there for resentment to the organization and resentment to being asked to be doing these things and when it’s not clear why you need to be there other than feeling like exactly what you said, “I need to see the back of your head to see if you’re working,” which is just a weird surveillance that people are going to feel just judged all the time anyway, that’s not going to be a super contusive for great work. 

You could actually exchange the other energy. So, I think there is a real deliberation that needs to be put into these, make these times where people are together something where they do get to have some several times together, where they really are building that bond and is a positive experience, then you could get real full force multiplier of having that in-person effect. If you are just doing it for the hell of it or if you think it’s just what will happen to keep people near each other, you’re missing the value and you’re going to miss the opportunity in front of you. 

Cristina Amigoni: There is something to say with figuring out that frequency because that energy does continue past being in person, so it is carried forward that closeness, that new perspective of the people that you were with and those relationships does carry forward, it’s not infinite so it can be once every ten years or once a year or you know, whatever the cadence that sometimes we run into is because it does run out. 

We’ve been you know, I noticed that when during last week because we specifically informed the people, we’ve been with them in person several times, maybe not several but you know, more than once in the last couple of years separately not necessarily together and then when we had a meeting on Thursday where they were still together and we were remote, the exchange between us and them was very different from the past weeks when we had all been remote, and these were people that we had seen in person in the past. 

It just hadn’t been over a year for most of them and so that renewal needs to happen. I was just trying to connect with a friend of mine, Lauren, we live 20, 30 minutes away from each other and it’s been, you know, between life and sicknesses and normal things. It’s been really hard to get together in person, we ended up having a Facetime call last weekend but part of accepting that this is going to be enough was to actually go through the grieving of the fact that we live 20 minutes away from each other, you know? 

In my mind, it’s so ridiculous that we couldn’t figure out how to get together in person and after that day, we were both really exhausted. It was a way for us to show up better for each other to not have to drive and deal with the rain, it was a dreary grey day. So, for that specific day, it was a necessary thing and it worked out great, and now, I still feel that pressure of like you still only live 20 minutes away and there’s no reason why we can’t see each other more than every three months. 

Alex Cullimore: Now, we have to kind of just admit then where we might be and it’s good that you have that kind of relationship where you can – you have addressed that out loud and say like, “This is kind of ridiculous.” And at that point, it becomes kind of funny when you can acknowledge – 

Cristina Amigoni: It does. 

Alex Cullimore: Then you can both be like, “Okay, this is ridiculous, let’s change how we’re approaching this. 

Cristina Amigoni: And let’s be okay that for today, this is what we’re doing, and it’s better than not having any contact whatsoever, so. 

Alex Cullimore: It is a good example of making the conscious choice and having that intentionality because like yeah, it will be a burden today to for us with given the weeks that we both had, given whatever we’re facing, like it really will be tiring and a lot of extra time that we don’t have a ton of extra energy for right now. It’s not that the intention is to throw the relationship aside but it is that currently, that’s a good acknowledgment. 

That is one thing that I think that is easy to get caught up on when we try and say like, “What’s better, hybrid, remote, or you know, in person?” None of them, all of – it depends on when you need it, what you’re needed. There’s going to be times when it works, times when it doesn’t. If you are not absorbing that nuance if you’re not allowing yourself to be intentional about it, you’re going to get it wrong either way. 

Cristina Amigoni: Surely, it’s not a one-size-fits-all, it’s not a one size fits every situation for every team, for every three people, it really depends on what’s necessary, what’s the best for now. I mean, in the case of Lauren and I, just the fact that we could spend more time talking to each other because we weren’t driving to see each other that was the benefit, you know? 

And we could, you know, and so we added extra time together without having to lose it communing because we had other commitments that we can move around our time together but that acknowledgment I think was huge and I hadn’t even thought about it but the – even like being in a situation when we’re in person is feeling the need to come together in person and the other one is not but there is no acknowledgment of that. 

There is no actually speaking out, I think that also causes distance, it causes resentment, it causes the relationship to start eroding because it doesn’t have to be a reciprocal thought but just being able to say, “Hey, this sucks for me.” And having either the empathy or the compassion or the validation that this sucks for the other person too, that allows to just process that and move past it. 

Alex Cullimore: I agree, there’s just the ability to state that out loud is sometimes enough and that is a huge portion of like listening to people and just letting them have the moment to say what works and doesn’t work about that, A, will give you just some good insights on what you might need to change because there might be something that does need to change, even if it was working for a while it might need to change. 

And B, it just has a big chance for people to listen, which again, builds that relationship so you have to the trust to be able to go through some of the harder times where you have to push through things that are less pleasant or there would be – they are less than ideal. So, if we wanted to leave people with intentional things they could do to create relationship-building, what would you say? What are good things to think about when we want to create intentional relationship-building moments? 

Cristina Amigoni: I would say don’t take it for granted. Don’t take relationships for granted. Relationships, I was just thinking about a metaphor and if I were a sketch artist, I could and I’m not sure they – and maybe I can create this for me, I’ll see. When I find a minute, I’ll see what I’ll create but I was thinking about how relationships are a little bit like a bridge. Well, they are bridges, they’re bridges between people, and just like a bridge, if you maintain it, then you can still use the bridge. 

You can walk on it, you can cross it, you can meet in the middle, whatever is needed but you have to maintain bridges. Any type of bridge, whether it’s a wooden bridge or a concrete bridge, or whatever type of bridge, you have to maintain it because if you let it go, then it starts eroding and if it erodes, what happens, which is what could happen in a relationship if you don’t invest in them and you don’t maintain them when it erodes then the next time you try to walk on it, you could be falling all the way down to you know, the bottom of the canyon. 

Or, it could be you know, like an Indiana Jones type of bridge, where you know, it’s like now you’re swinging because all the pieces of wood have fallen out and the rope is breaking. Oh, you know, and then we all know the analogy of burning bridges, now those are where you intentionally burn the bridges and you’re like, “Yep, nope, don’t want to walk across anymore, so I’m going to set this on fire.” 

There’s that third option too but that’s intentional. So, the first two are intentional, you can intentionally burn bridges or accidentally and then go figure it out and you know, figure out if it’s a bridge that you want to rebuild. You can intentionally maintain it. The middle ground of just expecting the bridge to still be there without – with neglect, without investment, without the effort, well, that is where, unfortunately, it’s probably where the loneliness pandemic comes from right now globally. 

It’s because of that assumption that we don’t have to make the investment, that the bridge is there, and I can walk on it whenever I feel like it and right now, I don’t feel like walking on it, and the problem is that the effort to actually maintain the bridge just like anything else is way lower than the effort to have to rebuild a bridge when it has eroded and so, that’s kind of the shift to do. I’m not sure I came up with any type, kind of tips for people. 

But it’s one of those things like maybe do an inventory. I mean, we have our podcast guest, Chris, who you know, has started this moment on conversations. You know, maybe look at an inventory and figure out like which bridges am I letting erode and what can I do there to maintain them? Which bridges are completely gone because I can’t even walk on them anymore? Do I want them to be gone or is there some rebuilding there? 

And then, really look into those pieces of work relationships, life relationships, anything in between, what bridges do I still want to be able to cross on and what can I do there? And then, be open and be vulnerable and say like, “Hey, if they maintenance is hey, we need to get together more often than once every blue moon when the stars align and you know, it’s Capricorn is on retrograde and we have a blue or red and orange moon all at the same time, and somebody else told us to come and be in the same room.”

So, you know, communicate that and make the effort, and then, not take it for granted. I think that’s probably the biggest piece, is like, you can’t take it for granted, the bridge is going to go away. 

Alex Cullimore: I think that’s a really good metaphor for it. I love the bridge metaphor, bridges erode over time, whether they’re used or not, it’s just going to get weathered away, so you decide what you want to do. I think intentionality is a huge thing I heard in all of that is, are you going to be intentional about making sure that it is maintained or you can be intentional about crossing it a few times to make sure it’s there? 

To make sure that’s reinforced, you have to keep it alive, keep it well, and I think that last piece really stands out, the taking risks, it will feel like a risk, perhaps to go do that reaching out, to be honest about what you need to be, to venture out into the vulnerable space of saying, “This isn’t working for me.” Or, “Hey, I’d like to try this” Or, “Hey, can we do – can we meet up a little bit more often?” 

It’s not easy, but it’s definitely necessary on, you know, personal relationships, and it reminds me of the risk that we feel like it work so much but we’re not talking about work right now. Are we using, are we poorly using time, or hey, should we be talking about this? And it’s very – that we are very incentivized to look at the work problem. Being able to take a step back and see the relationship building as part of that solution, takes a risk of you internally. 

To go jump in and say, “No, this is more important right now.” Or, “No, I’m going to reach out and just have a social call” Or, “We’re going to have a happy hour just because that feels necessary.” And being willing to take a please of faith on that and say, “Yeah, even though, we might be looked at, like why are you having a fun lunch right now, this is in the middle of the workday.”

Whatever other leftover corporate gremlins we have that would tell us not to do this, being able to step past that and take the risk of, “You know, I think this is going to be a worthwhile investment, even if we can’t immediately see the outcome,” which if you’re looking for it, you generally will see some immediate outcome, I think but even if you don’t see it, and even if you don’t know exactly what builds from what, trusting that that is helpful.

And looking back on our own relationships and seeing where that has been helpful might give us the boost to go jump into that and say, “Hey, when I had this, and when I took that risk, that actually really turned out well. Maybe I need to lean into that.” So, maybe there’s some historical inventory, present inventory, and continual vulnerability to go step into relationships intentionally.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, those are excellent point, and that inventory and that vulnerability may actually give you insight on the bridges that you want to let erode. If you put yourself out there and you say like, “Hey, this is not working for me and you’re not getting back,” somebody that is willing to maintain the bridge and walk on it, then, you know, let it go. Let the bridge go but now you know. Now, it’s not – it’s not this, “Maybe if I had done more” moment.

Alex Cullimore: That’s true, it’ll give you some comfort, give you some acceptance. It reminds me of kind of like juggling, you can try and juggle attempts, more and more difficult the more balls you have in the air, and you’re going to spend less and less time on each one because you don’t have the time. If you have like 50 balls in the air, you got to throw them pretty high, you got to get a really long distance. 

The same with like 50 bridges, how much time do you realistically have, and energy do you have to keep up 50 bridges? Likely, you won’t, they won’t all be deep and they can’t be deep just because we’re physically constrained by time and energy and how much we have to put into that. So, where do you really want to put that? Get intentional with that?

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly, and make sure you’ve got those bridges. I mean, it’s – you need at least a few.

Alex Cullimore: Oh yeah, oh yeah, you definitely to –

Cristina Amigoni: You need 50.

Alex Cullimore: Just know which ones that you can invest the time in. You’ll have 50 bridges, but which ones are the ones to really upkeep? Which ones need the most attention and should have the most attention that will help you? 

Cristina Amigoni: Get your two, get your three, get your four, five, whatever it is then. Don’t isolate you into an island because now they’ve all – they’re all eroding, and now, you got to wait for Harrison Ford to come over and hope to rescue you.

Alex Cullimore: So, go forth, have some intentional relationships.

Cristina Amigoni: Good luck.

Alex Cullimore: Good luck.

Cristina Amigoni: And use the word “Just.”

Alex Cullimore: Always, repeatedly, until you are floating away with how much tea you’ve drank.

Cristina Amigoni: Just listen to this. Thanks for listening. 

[OUTRO]

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo podcast. 

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Lara; and our score creator, Raechel Sherwood. 

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review, and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com, or at our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook. We Are Siamo is spelled W-E A-R-E S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others, and always Uncover the human.

[END]