I learnt what professional courtesy really means the hard way.
My team and I were on a location shoot. It was a full-day affair involving 20 men from different walks of life. As the editor, my main job that day was to make sure everything was running smoothly, be there to cover anyone who needed to take a break, head out to buy lunch for the crew, anything.
My art director was also present because shooting 20 people who weren’t professional models required a whole new level of directing.
With my team in the zone, I pretty much had nothing to do except make small talk with the men waiting to get their hair/makeup done. After a while, I wandered into the photoshoot area.
As I peered over my art director’s shoulder, I made a comment about how to get the guy to relax, to pose, to smile; thinking my feedback would be helpful.
Then she stopped the photographer and turned to me. I was her boss, but she did not let this stop her. She stood up taller, looked at me, and said, “Debs, do you want to do my job? Because if you don’t, leave me to run the shoot because I know what I’m doing. I don’t tell you how to run a magazine, you don’t tell me how to do a shoot.”
Five seconds. That was all it took to learn a valuable leadership lesson that I still carry with me today.
What is professional courtesy?
At the very heart of it are two things: respect and boundaries.
At the workplace, everyone has been hired to do a job that the company believed them to be good at. If I were hired as the in-house barista, it means you don’t tell me how to do latte art. You need to respect that I know my beans and how to work the coffee machine.
And so, if you were hired to be the data scientist, I would never claim to build a better dashboard than you.
Boundaries add another dimension to the idea of professional courtesy. It means recognising who you can boss around and who really needs to take your s**t. This is especially important for cross-team collaboration where it’s hard to tell who’s the “boss”.
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It’s fine to tell your own team members what to do, but it isn’t fine to expect someone from another team to take orders from you, even if you are ranked higher within the organisation.
So here’s the analogy of how these two elements work together
The barista asks the data scientist to build a dashboard to track which coffee works best for post-lunch productivity.
The data scientist then finds out what metrics the barista is after, maybe a number of lattes ordered vs long blacks, maybe pulling results from a survey about how people felt one, two, and three hours after drinking what kind of coffee.
After a few days, the data scientist comes back with a dashboard, and the barista takes it to his boss (let’s call her the Pantry Godmother).
Instead of saying thank you, the Pantry Godmother tells the barista that she feels the colours aren’t attractive enough and doesn’t think the dashboard is right. She then sends the barista to tell the data scientist how to build a dashboard.
How should the data scientist react? How would you react if you were the data scientist in this story?
What’s the deal, really?
There’s nothing wrong with collaboration and feedback. But remember: the data scientist is well within his rights to tell the Pantry Godmother, “No. I won’t make your changes because you do not understand how data science actually works.”
If the data scientist accommodates her feedback and makes some changes to his dashboard, he’s doing her a favour — not obeying her.
If the data scientist makes the changes but includes more insights into how the dashboard could work better, he shouldn’t have to justify his decisions to the Pantry Godmother.
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Please understand that this analogy illustrates two very distinct job areas interacting with each other in the workplace. By no means am I saying that pantry staff should shut up and take whatever is given to them.
Why is it important to practice professional courtesy at the workplace?
Can you imagine the angst the data scientist must feel every time the Pantry Godmother tries to be a data scientist?
Once a colleague of mine wrote “Be My Valentine!” as a cover line for her February issue and was told by a senior person of the ad team that it should have read “Be My Valentine’s” because “Valentine’s Day”.
We spent a good hour on the phone discussing how to tell this person she was wrong. The stress we went through was unnecessary because how do you say to a person who believed she was intelligent that she was actually obtuse?
Contrary to popular belief, telling someone, they are wrong or that you’re not going to give in to their requests takes an immense amount of mental and emotional energy.
Like the data scientist, many of us would like to think that our decisions when it comes to our work are for the best— not necessarily the best but for the best. To have someone second-guess us every step of the way is not just frustrating, it damages relationships at work.
The data scientist doesn’t tell the Pantry Godmother how to manage the barista, how to arrange the teabags, and when to change the kitchen sponge. Why? Because he recognises that it isn’t his space.
Mental wellbeing at work goes beyond promoting work-life balance or improving the employee experience.
It’s also about people treating each other with professional courtesy, knowing the difference between feedback and instruction, knowing who is obliged to follow your orders, and knowing who really doesn’t need to give a hoot about what you think about their work.
If you wish to give your two cents’ worth during a cross-team collaboration,
- Do it in person: Do not ever send someone to play messenger. If it’s your feedback, you should be the one to tell the other party.
- Know that the other party is allowed to reject your feedback: If that person doesn’t report to you and works in a different function/team, they are not obliged to go with everything you say.
- Take what you are given: The other party is allowed to take what makes sense and do what they think is best. They can add their own touches to the project and do not have to justify why to you.
It is frustrating enough that work-from-home has made cross-team collaboration harder, so let’s be mindful about where your involvement begins and where it really ends.
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