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Better Relationship Tips For Task Oriented People: Redefine Your Task

By Guy Harris

This week, I was on the road conducting Bud To Boss training. As I called home on Sunday evening, I found myself unable to listen to my wife telling me about her day.

Try as I might, I could not get my mind to focus on what she was saying. I could only think about what I still had to do to prepare for the next day before going to bed. Sadly, this is not the first time I have struggled to have a fruitful conversation with my wife while I am traveling for business.

After we ended our phone call and I hung-up the phone, I finally realized the cause for this problem. My wife was not the problem. The topic of conversation was not the problem. My desire to engage in the conversation was not the problem.

I really wanted to engage, and I couldn't because of the way I had defined the task of calling home. (Since I am a pretty task-oriented person, even relationship issues become tasks in my mind.)

Here's the way my mental task list looked:

  • Check my course notes.
  • Confirm I have all training resources ready to go.
  • Call home.
  • Press my clothes.
  • Read to relax.
  • Go to bed.

Notice that the way I defined the task of calling home did not include listening to my wife and engaging in a conversation. And therein lies the problem. As soon as she answered the phone, my task was complete.  I had called home.

When I mentally checked “call home” off my list, my task-oriented mind immediately shifted to the next task – press my clothes. As a result, I couldn't force myself to listen despite my desire to do so.

Now I realize that in order to keep myself under control, I have to redefine the task to include listening and engaging in conversation.

If you're as task-oriented as I am and you want to build strong relationships at work and at home, you might consider looking at how you define your relationship related “tasks.” Make sure that you include the relationship parts of the task in your definition.

If you're more people-oriented than me, my struggle may not make any sense to you at all. I totally understand. You may, though, have the opposite challenge. You might define task issues by their relationship impact and that definition just might get in your way at times.

Here's the bottom-line: if you encounter situations that frequently cause you to trip up in your relationships, take a close look at how you're defining the situation. Your definition might be the source of your problem.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tylerdurden/ / CC BY 2.0

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Filed Under: DISC Model, Leadership Skills Tagged With: better relationships, emotional control, emotional intelligence, get over yourself, self control, task-oriented people

Comments

  1. Morag Barrett says

    June 10, 2012 at 9:32 pm

    Guy

    A great post! I have the same challenge, always rushing to action and from one thing to the next, usually multitasking and not paying enough attention to the family. I will try your approach of redefining how I think of that responsibility on my to-do list.

    • Guy Harris says

      June 12, 2012 at 11:02 am

      Hi Morag,

      Thanks for the comment, and I’m glad the perspective helps. This is an ongoing struggle for me. I hope I’m getting better. 🙂 It’s good to have you with me in the effort to improve.

      Guy

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  3. Task-Oriented vs People-Oriented: A Common Source of Conflict | Guy Harris: The Recovering Engineer says:
    July 18, 2010 at 3:27 pm

    […] a previous post, I shared the story about calling home while I was traveling. That story illustrated my task nature and how I made a relational effort (calling home) into a […]

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