I’ve worked in software engineering for more than 20 years and for as long as I remember I have used the term Technical Debt to convey the dilemmas that engineers and departments face. For a few months I have been seeing similarities between that familiar metaphor and how we interact with each other.
I have struggled with coming up with a name, so if you have a better name then please add to the comments, but the name isn’t as important as this message: understanding Relational Debt is as important to our personal and professional happiness and productivity as Technical Debt is to ensuring the longevity of our teams’ and applications’ health.
Technical Debt is a useful way of describing choices that software engineering teams make. Coined by Ward Cunningham in 1992, the analogy demonstrates how a sub-optimal choice now — “yes, this isn’t perfect, but we have a deadline to make” — accrues like debt: the actions needed to change the code later on take more time and therefore they are more expensive than dealing with the problem right now.
Just like in financial debt, the more debt you accrue and the longer you keep it, the harder it is to pay back. It’s better to pay the debt back as soon as you can and it’s best not to have any at all.
I think that this same metaphor could be used as a tool for describing the imperfections in relationships. When I talk about relationships here that could be sexual relationships, life partners, friends, colleagues, bosses, organisational dynamics, in fact any relationship at all. We all make choices and we all make bad choices. Over time, these bad choices can build up and ruin relationships (👋 my divorce, 👋 your nemesis in Accounts).
When I talk about bad choices here, I don’t mean big events like the time I was working in a restaurant and threw a £1 coin (the customers’ tip on a £120 bill) on the floor in the general direction of exiting guests. Those kind of mistakes lead to large and immediate loss — a job, a marriage, a friendship. The bad choices I will describe are almost imperceptible and happen regularly.
Consider the following scenarios:
- someone introduces you with the wrong job title — “are they trying to belittle me in front of the board?”.
- your partner asks you to do something differently — “this doesn’t feel right to me, but they feel strongly about it, so I can let it slide”.
- someone corrects you for getting their job title wrong — “why are they bringing this up in front of the board — this makes them look small and I feel attacked”.
- You asked your partner to do something differently, but they’re not doing it how you wanted and you decide just to do it yourself.
Often the bad choice we make in these situations and the beginning of our relational debt is saying to ourselves “I’m not going to do anything about how I just felt, it’s too trivial” or “if I talk about this I’m going to look like an arsehole”. The thing is though, our feelings are never trivial. If you don’t deal with them you are going to leak that negativity into the relationship.
I’d be surprised if none of your relationships fall into this pattern and that there are words unsaid from either party. If you have an argument about the washing up, or turning up 5 minutes late then we can assume that The Iranian yoghurt is not the issue here — your debt has started to build to uncomfortable levels for one or both of you.
Organisations’ Behavioural Debt
When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he asked all of his executives to read a book. He wanted to overturn what he saw as a toxic environment and brought Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication into his first board meeting.
“The company was sick. Employees were tired. They were frustrated. They were fed up with losing and falling behind despite their grand plans and great ideas. They came to Microsoft with big dreams, but it felt like all they really did was deal with upper management, execute taxing processes and bicker in meetings.”
Sounds familiar?
Anjuan Simmons recently wrote on Twitter that “Behavior debt can include the micro-aggressions regularly committed by an executive leader, or the toxic positivity that makes it almost impossible for your organization to have clear conversations and address tough issues.”
The debt accrues when collectively and individually we do nothing about what irks us, what doesn’t seem right, what goes against our core beliefs. Often we do this by saying “it’s just the way it is around here” or “ok, that’s not perfect, but everything else is pretty good”.
This could just as easily be describing a toxic or abusive relationship. Things need to change.
Bankruptcy
Different people and organisations will also have different tolerance levels for what level of debt is too much and the terms of the repayment.
During the early phases of a relationship the interest rates are normally exorbitantly high and repayment needs to happen almost immediately — “I can’t stand the way they eat their cereal, this isn’t going to work”.
In contrast, a 20 year marriage will have much more lenient terms and we make allowances for the other person that we think don’t need paying back because there is so much more the relationship than leaving socks on the floor. But this is where Relational Debt is so pervasive — it starts to shape what you think of the other person: they have become a person who doesn’t care how you feel.
If you put off paying down that debt then there will come a point where you become bankrupt: the bank are going to ask for their money back and no amount of promises to change or scheduled payments are going to change their mind.
How do we pay back the debt?
How should the other person be able to care how you feel if you don’t tell them? How will the colleague who asks “why are you getting so emotional?” learn to correct their behaviour if we don’t call it out?
There are a few good frameworks for having these conversations. You may have heard of COIN, which is good for workplace conversations. Rosenberg has a similar way of conveying emotional hurt — observation, feeling, need, request.
“When I see socks under the coffee table (observation) I feel irritated (feeling) because I need more order in the room that we share in common (human need). Would you be willing to put your socks in your room or in the washing machine? (request)”
Which is a very different approach from “Why do you always leave your socks under the table?”. A very different approach that will get very different results.
The important thing is that your feelings matter. If it’s making you uncomfortable then the chances are it’s not right. Even if everyone thinks differently, it will be a valuable learning experience to have the conversations.
I was taking an unconscious bias course a few years ago. We had covered gender bias, HiPPO, and group think and were given a task to do with stickers. One man in our group pointed to a woman opposite: “You can be sticker girl and the rest of us will come up with the ideas” he said as he popped a biscuit in his mouth and leant back on his chair.
I looked around the group, open-mouthed at the irony and looking for supporters: anyone else who had noticed it. No one had, so I said nothing, but after the course had finished I caught up with “sticker girl” and told her what I had observed and asked her how it had felt. She said that far from being offended she had been happy to have something to do, but thanked me for asking her.
I am a different person now than I was then and I’d like to think that I would now call it out as bad behaviour, but it’s still not easy. If I feel that there was something unspoken in a meeting, I’ll arrange a follow up 1–2–1 and ask specifically awkward questions. By speaking openly and honestly about what we were feeling at the time, what assumptions we made, what our hopes were for the situation then we can rewire our memories — our partner isn’t that person who has stopped caring for us, our nemesis in Accounts was just feeling insecure.
The key to repaying our relational debt is more communication and more empathy. I like the idea of using Agile in your personal relationships, as this gives both parties an easy time each day and each week to bring up grievances kindly and to have the other partner listen. At work I put emotions front and centre of our Retros, which has been really valuable and I’ll write a piece on that when I am able.
Above all, it’s really important to make any conversations non-judgemental. If the other person feels like their core beliefs are being attacked, they will stop listening and your conversation will be counter productive.
It’s down to you
Summer 2020 seemed a moment where real change was possible. Through unbelievably awful experiences, America and, subsequently, the world looked like they had reached Institutional Bankruptcy — the People had tolerated enough and it was time to say “no more”.
Then it all seemed to fizzle out: the Buffalo police had their charges dismissed and the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act is still in gridlock, Big change is hard, big change needs extreme energy to keep up the momentum, but small change is achievable and far reaching.
We can’t individually and collectively shrug when we experience something disagreeable. We can’t look around for supporters to double check our interpretation of events. We all need to show leadership in our relationships. This doesn’t mean control, this means emotional intelligence, active listening and empathy — being kind to each other.
The sooner we start doing this the better. As @anjuan said:
“Like most debt, behavior debt usually isn’t addressed until it keeps you from doing something you really want to do.
Or, it has blown up in your face.”
Don’t let it blow up — deal with it today.
