Office Romance Problem: You're Love Life Eclipses Your Professional Life!
The Fix:
Shift – Communicate – Manage 2/3

Office Romance Problems Effects & Etiquette (DOs & DON’Ts)

Office Romance Problem: You’re Love Life Eclipses Your Professional Life!
The Fix: Shift – Communicate – Manage 2/3

Now to Part 2 of this Fix: Shift – Communicate – Manage: Communicate

Communicate the nature of your relationship, to your teammates, and boss.

What will hinder this part of the Fix?
Thinking you can hide it. You cannot.

What will help with this part of the Fix?
Realizing you are not good enough actors. Sorry to potentially dampen your artistic sensibilities, guys, but you’re not. Everybody knows something is going on with you two! There are four issues here [finally something exists in the world, that does not come in three-s. What a relief]

The four issues are:

a. Why you need to communicate the nature of your relationship, to your teammates, and boss
b. The strategy for this communication
c. The exact timing and
d. Communicate the end, as well.

Let’s check each issue out.

a. Why do you need to communicate the nature of your relationship, to your teammates, and boss? Because, well, two reasons: Control and Pragmatism. You want to take control over any bit of information, that has to do with you. As an individual, and now, as a couple too. If you don’t, people will project their ideas, onto you. Why would you let this happen? It is never good! People will – wittingly and unwittingly – twist and distort who you really are. And that would drive you mad!

You want that promotion and pay raise – you cannot afford not being in control of your image, and the Brand that stems from it (we expand on fixing your Brand here). And in regards to Pragmatism: If you can’t beat them – join them.

From the moment you and Schmoopie were on each other’s radar, everybody knew something was going on. And those who didn’t know suspected. (i.e. the coworkers and colleagues whom don’t work as closely with you)

How could they possibly know? Well, people who spend the better part of the day with you, every day, sometimes for years, have you all figured out. They know your gaze, and they know your patterns of speech (like tone of voice, or degree of matter-of-factness, for example). They know all that through your interactions with them, as dispassionate coworkers. Therefore, it is easy for them to detect the difference, when you gaze at, or speak with, Schmoopie. Even when the difference is subtle, because you are trying to hide it.

It might be embarrassing for you two, to acknowledge this fact, because it’s always unsettling to realize, you are exposed, when you think you are being discrete.

Nevertheless, this is the truth. Simply realize it. That’s it. You should consider the same type of communication, to clients and vendors, and for the same reasons. Here are the three [three of course…] considerations for making this call:

I. Both you and Schmoopie are working closely with these clients and vendors, on a regular basis
II. There is a camaraderie between all of you, that has expanded from the strictly professional, to the personal
And III. They are working closely with other members of your team as well, so they are bound, at some point, to be expose to, or even intentionally included, in the Grapevine loop.

If all these considerations apply, communicate your relationship to them as well. I will give you exact step-by-step actions on this topic as well, but because of time constraints we’ll do so the next video.