Managing Yourself in Relationships: Part 4 – Making the Ask with Respect: The Key To A Healthy Relationship
In this four part series, leadership and relationship expert Susan MacKenty Brady offers some hard-won advice about how best to manage yourself for optimal relationship success – at home and at work.
Now you have 1) paused to sort out what you’re thinking and feeling and why (link to Blog 1), 2) returned to a place of compassion where your criticism of self for wanting what you want (or harshness toward another for not giving you what you want) is quieted (link to blog 2), and 3) you’re clear about a request you wish to make (link to blog 3).
Timing is just about everything. Other than staying in compassionate respect for yourself and others while making a request, the essential element is to be sure it's ok timing for the other person when you do. So, you’re the first action for making your ask respectfully is to ask, “when would be a good time to chat?”
Look, you might not get what you want from the other person. It’s sad but true. For a myriad of reasons, they might agree and not deliver or agree and inconsistently meet your request or turn you down by saying they can’t honor your request. What you do in this case is for future blogs – but if any of this happens, you start again at step 1 – take pause. If you have a “whoosh” while making your request, take a time out and return to your center as if your life depends on it. Your healthy relationship sure does.
This, my friends, is a practice of self-love. It’s the practice of intentionally managing yourself to get more of what you need and want. You being able to do these four steps requires only YOU. And that is the best news about LOVE. It starts with you. It starts because you are grounded in managing yourself and your own words, actions and behaviors. In action, (when we turn from the inner “prep work” of the first three parts required for managing self) we are ready to make an ask from a place of respect for self and other.
Making the Ask From Respect for Self and Other
My version of this with my kids the day I was confronted with a messy kitchen (and after taking a time out pause and returning to compassionate center) was sending the following text: “kitchen a bit upside down. Please come home by 5 and clean it so your mother is delighted and doesn’t need to lose her cool. Thank you.”
I find humor also goes a long way. It’s much better than finding yourself on the receiving end of anger or anxiety or – in the eye of another person’s storm – where they blame you for the catastrophic weather they are creating. It’s also much better than the guilty “hangover” that comes after you’re the one who behaves badly. I hate that feeling. I know better!
In addition to the text (and yes, kids retuned, and cleaned the kitchen) I took two final steps that are essential: I 1) thanked them and 2) I reiterated my general need (please clean up after yourself – when you don’t I let myself feel pretty agitated and disrespected by you.) Have I been confronted with a teen-produced mess since? Yep. Have I imperfectly practiced managing myself? Yep.
Managing yourself in relationship to other won’t result in a perfect scorecard. But I assure you, we all have room for improvement and can be intentional about practicing the essentials steps!
Your turn: what healthy relationship requests might you need to make of someone you live with?
Susan MacKenty Brady is the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Chair for Women and Leadership at Simmons University in Boston and the CEO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. She was previously president of the Relational Life Institute, where she worked closely with some of the brightest and most innovative minds in relationship and behavioral science. She currently serves as emeritus board member for Strong Women, Strong Girls and as board chair for Our.Love Company. The author of two well received books, Susan is the mother of two awesome teenage daughters who are learning about love and relationships just like she is.
