Lessons On Candid Communications From The ‘Tennis Twins’

In Tom Perrotta’s article about the perennial doubles tennis champions, “Tennis’s Bryan Brothers: The Secret Power of Twins” in the Wall Street Journal, he identifies a previously-overlooked element that may be the secret ingredient of their powerful teamwork: “The key to the most dominant doubles team of all time is the Bryans’ ability to get angry with each other—and get over it.”

Now, I understand they’re biological twins, with presumably a bedrock of unconditional regard for each other that’s not likely to get damaged by some harsh words uttered by one to the other in the heat of battle. But can’t we borrow a little of that candid communication for our interactions in the workplace?

Granted, rules of civility have to exist for engagement in the work environment. We’re thrown together with other people — they’re not our twins or even related to us — and we have to get along to get things done.

But somehow in the zealous implementation of these rules, the increase in politeness can come at the cost of loss of candor and of important, useful and job-critical feedback.  And it takes multiple forms:

1. Flatlining: Any expression of high emotion is avoided for fear it might be interpreted as an expression of bad feelings toward the other person.
2. “Team talk:”  Opinions expressed seem to depend more on “team affiliation” than the speaker’s independent evaluation of the subject matter.
3. Camouflage: Concern that an expression might sound too harsh leads to dressing it up so completely that nobody can tell what it means.

What if we could export a bit of Tom’s insight about the Bryan twins into the workplace — the part that recognizes the possibility of co-existence of displeasure about merits of the action with positive regard for the person?  Some obvious benefits might be:

1. You’d get honest feedback on what you did, and how it really landed with co-workers.
2. You’d see more about the kind and extent of adjustment needed to close the gap.  Will minor adjustments do it, or are we looking at a do-over?
3. The door would be open to reciprocate, perhaps leading to an environment of more candid expression, which might lead to better actions, yielding better results.

I’m not suggesting we can or should behave toward each other at work as though we were biological twins. Or that we should feel free to throw a fit when we feel like it. But we might start with the idea that we ought to focus on the merits and shortcomings of actions and results, whoever does them.  There’s got to be a way for a person to express displeasure about some-thing done by another without it being viewed as unacceptable workplace behavior.