This may sound extremely corny, but I’m going to say it anyway. I think interpersonal relationships are a huge part of the meaning of life. That little quote about “can’t we all just get along?”, is running through my head as I say that…but I think it’s a real truth. I happen to be of the opinion that all of the people in our lives are here for a reason, and that every one of them has something (or many somethings) to teach us.

On my personal blog this is one of my favorite topics. About how so and so is teaching me this or that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always roses and sunshine. For me it’s about tough self reflection. What is this difficult situation teaching me? Is my job to tackle a problem head on? Or is it someone else’s problem?

My father sent me a fascinating article this morning from The Student Operated Press called Triangulation: When Work Culture Saps Productivity. I’ll let you read the article for yourself because I don’t think I could do it justice in a summary. However, the main concept is that Triangulation (the act of talking to a non-involved party about a problem that we have with someone else…namely…gossip), is extremely counterproductive. Okay, that sounds pretty obvious when put like that, but at least in the relatioships that surround me, this is pretty much how people handle conflict.

I witnessed something related to this happen in the blogosphere recently. The incident was a mixture of harmful triangulation and direct communication. One of my favorite bloggers had a post written about her on another blog. It was on a rather controversial topic, and the comments got rather nasty. At this point, my  blogger idol went directly to the source to voice that she wasn’t okay with this kind of talking “behind her back”. However, as the article states, the problem with triagulation is that it can actually result in more distance between the two people than there was before. The other person had already spoken about aforementioned blogger in a derogatory way and gotten reinforcement for that through multiple comments, and very probably also from private communication that “the audience” couldn’t see. In other words, he/she was entrenched. At that point, it became all out blog warfare with comments flying from both camps….and I’m sure they both got quite a bit of hate mail as a result.

I just love this whole internet communication thing, it just makes things so transparent in a way. Anyway, the section of the article that really hit home for me was the part about the so-called “listener”. The listener may think that they are actually helping the person that is venting to them, but they can actually be reinforcing the distance by saying things like “I don’t blame you for not talking to her”, or suggesting avoidance, etc.

As women, the social beasts that we are, I think we have a harder time not falling into this trap. I loved the advice at the end of the article for being able to collect yourself and let out some anger without turning it into triangulation “If you choose to let off steam to a third person, do so without tearing down [the other person], and with the intent of understanding your own reactions and gathering yourself to talk directly with [them].”

The article is all about communication in the work place, but I can see so much application for other types of relationships. In fact, while I was reading it, I thought of a few of my own relationships that have gone south because of triangulation (sometimes from my end, and sometimes from the other end). Sadly, I’ll admit that the whole thing made me a little bit glad that my office environment consists of me and my dog. It’s pretty hard to have difficult office politics with a canine.

Do you feel that politics in your office are direct or gossipy? Have you found a way to break a gossip pattern at work or in other relationships