Make Relationships Work by Giving 200%

Relationships! I just love relationships! Whether they’re business, friendship, romantic, or, well, you know, relationships make the world go ’round. Well, relationships and angular momentum.

There’s only one teensy-tiny problem with relationships: they force you to put up with other people. Other people expect us to do things for them, even if they don’t tell us. Project manager Leslie once gave me a tongue lashing for not getting sign-off on a project. Of course, no one—including Leslie—had told me that I needed to get sign-off on the project. But there we were. Mind reading was apparently part of my job description.

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Of course, everything’s different when I’m the one expecting them to deliver. Then, of course, they should know exactly what I want, when I want it, and they should deliver it on time. And the moment it’s late, my blood begins to boil. I sent along innocent little text messages. “Hey there. You’re a special, unique human being with high intrinsic worth. If you could just zip that marketing report over to me right now, I’ll be your friend forever.” They don’t send it and I want to kill them.

The 100% Relationship

The problem, of course, is that we’re each doing 50% of the work. Together, we should get 100% of the project done. Unfortunately, far too often we each do our 50% and together, we only get 75% done. That’s because we’re aiming too low.

Just shooting for doing your 50% perfectly isn’t good enough. Consider golf, a sport I might recognize if it were on TV with the title GOLF in big letters across the top of the screen. It’s common wisdom in golf that you don’t aim your club at the ball. If you do, you unconsciously slow down at the last minute and screw up your swing. Then the ball plops off the little wooden thingee and rolls gently into the sand trap, embarrassing you publicly.

Likewise, if you go through life shooting for doing the 50% of the work that’s your job, you risk having the golf ball of your life plop off the little thingee. No good can come of that.

In golf, you aim past the ball and you hit it with full power. It goes far, far away and you retire to the club house for tasty, fruit-flavored drinks, while someone else runs out to retrieve the ball.

Take 200% Responsibility

If you’re taking 100% responsibility, it means you act as the other person’s manager.

In relationships, you should also swing past the 50% mark. My coach Michael Neill taught me about the “200% relationship.” Each relationship member takes 100% responsibility for making things work. With 200% effort going into the relationship, hitting your 100% goals should be easy. But what does it mean for you each to take 100% responsibility?

You Discuss Agreements and Manage Each Other

Don’t assume you’ll each magically do what the other expects. Sit down and discuss it. Make your mutual expectations clear. I’m sure you already do that with any relationship, right? So negotiating agreement is just your normal 50%. To get to 100%, you have to go one step further.

Ask the other person what you can do to help them get their part done better, stronger, faster. Do they need you to prioritize your part in certain ways? Do they need you to do things in a certain order? Do they need you to run an errand for them while they work on something time-sensitive? Take on what you can to help them, without expecting anything in return.

This works whether you’re dividing up tasks to open a new retail store or dividing up chores to make a household work.

If you’re taking 100% responsibility, it means you act as their manager. You aren’t their official manager, of course, but you take it upon yourself to do what it takes to make sure you can get the job done. If that means helping them structure their time and work, you do it. You check in with them regularly, find out how they’re doing, help them get the resources they need to succeed, and so on. All those things a good manager is supposed to do but never does in real life. If you end up having to do some of the work yourself, you do it. You take 100% responsibility.

What if They Only Give 50%?

If you both do this, you’ve got two people taking 100% responsibility. That’s 200% responsibility, which will knock that golf ball of life right out of the park, or at least to the outfield.

But what if you take 100% responsibility and they stay at 50%, not lifting a finger to help you? Well, that’s still 150% worth of responsibility, which is a hard-enough swing to make sure the golf ball reaches the end zone.

It’s possible your colleague, friend, spousal equivalent, or relationship companion is a lazy taker. You do a joint project, you take 100% responsibility, and they continue to do just their 50%, or even less. You manage them, you help them, but they do nothing in return. Of course, talk to them and try to work things out. But sometimes, even that fails.

In that case, you have to assume they’ll never change. If you feel taken advantage of and you can’t resolve it through agreements, it’s time to change the relationship. Ask to transfer to a different work group, spend time with a different polyamorous family unit, or find a different catcher for your trapeze act.

It sure doesn’t seem fair that you should take 100% responsibility, even if the other person doesn’t. And you’re right, it isn’t fair, it’s effective. If only you do it, you’ll still accomplish your joint goals. But if both of you take 100% responsibility, you’ll find you both work less, do more, and have a great life.

Check out more of Stever’s awesome productivity tips at quickanddirtytips.com/get-it-done-guy. 

100% and coworker images courtesy of Shutterstock.