Why? No - Why not?!

One of the most terrible phrases I know is "toxic relationships". The worst thing about it is that the phrase covers something that is at least as terrible as the expression itself. That is, people involved in relationships with other people without any positive contribution. Rather, it is the opposite; they only drain each other for energy in a non-constructive way. At worst, it is directly harmful to those involved because it harms their mental well-being.
Ideally, when we relate to other people, we do it to make a contribution to each other. To make each other better, as they say in the world of sports. We bring our diversity, enjoy the fact that others are not identical to ourselves, and together we form a unity larger than the parts that it consists of. As in the world of sports, thus also in workplaces and in relationships.
But sometimes things go wrong. Typically, it is in relationships that were originally good, but where the parties forgot what it was that back in the day made their relationship better than the parts it consisted of. Where people have found (as we say in Danish) the holes in the cheese, focused on them and let them grow so big that it is impossible to see what one once saw. Colleagues, who once worked well together, are now stuck in a psychologically bad work environment that they basically created together. Married couples who promised each other to love and to cherish each other until death did them part, but now live together as cat and dog, where people around them hardly remember when the fighting parties recently exchanged a loving word.
And you can ask yourself: why? Why do colleagues insist on ignoring that the salary they earn is expensive money to pay for the lack of psychological welfare that the get in return? Why do couples stay together for the sake of their children, but do the children no good by letting them experience Mum and Dad treat each other in a way that has nothing to do with loving relationships?
But maybe you should rather ask yourself: why not? Why do they not get together, look at each other and one self and consider what in the world they are doing? And start getting back to what initially made them know the other party as someone who could contribute to a relationship that was larger than its individual parts?
See, "why not" is probably the better question. And it should not be harder to ask yourself or others than "why?"
(Translated from Hvorfor? Nej, hvorfor ikke?!, originally published February 22nd, 2018)

In praise of good colleagues

In previous blog posts, I have written about how important elements like good leadership, good corporate culture and corporate values ​​are as means to retain people in a workplace - but when discussing with Janice Kobelsky in continuation of my post about the tower that did not lean, it dawned on me that to my experience, one factor is even more significant. Good colleagues. Well, it does not have to be much more than just a single good colleague.
Now I have never been cast in such a way (or rather, my eyesight is not sufficiently good) allow me to spend time on any kind of military service, so I can not comment on the relationships that are formed among brothers in arms - but on a slightly less serious level, among people who remain my very close friends, I count a handful of excellent people who are all former colleagues of a quite exceptional nature.
They are the kind of people that I have always been able to get along with, without any of us having any kind of hidden agendas; where we have never been in doubt that no matter how dire straits we would end up in, we could trust that we would always have each other's back - this even went so far that when some of these people became former colleagues, they told me about their considerations long before they left their position.
Such people are rare. But there is no doubt that when you meet them you should stick to them. Also long after you are no longer colleagues - because they are not only unusually good colleagues; they also have the potential to form unusually good, lifelong friendships.
(Translated from Til den gode kollegas pris, originally published February 14th, 2018)