Working As A Team

What do you get when you mix two people who both have strong opinions and strong personalities? You often get a very fun dating life characterized by high energy and creativity.

What do you get when those same two people settle down and have kids? Well–if you are lucky those personality traits will help the two of you work together to create an active and organized home-life.  If you aren’t so lucky you enter into a battle for who is going to be the boss.

Running a home (and raising kids) is more than a little like creating a small business.  If you and your best friend opened an ice-cream shop, you would have to figure out who did what, how it was done, and how decisions would be made.  Not only would you have little day to day processes (like how big should “a scoop” actually be, when do the counters get cleaned, and who cleans the tables and bathroom) you would also have big issues to face around how much money to charge, how much to reinvest, and how each of you could draw money from the income coming in (and in what proportion).

Now, when you imagine the ideal business partner it may or may not match up with your idea of your ideal love partner.  But when we add kids into our home life WHAM we have a home business that operates round the clock.  Someone is on duty all the time.  Tasks are always remaining to be done.  Assignments need to be negotiated. And in the midst of the dishes and work and yard and laundry somehow we are supposed to be feeling lovey and warm.

To further complicate the issue in research on men and women there are large gender differences about how we perceive the adjustment (a great read is John Gottman’s And Baby Makes Three.) So we feel often like our new business partner is throwing us under the bus.

What works? Couples that figure out how to be a team physically and emotionally fare better. If one of you is the “boss” of the “right way” trouble is often brewing. Consider: if your partner in the ice cream shop suddenly started dictating the flavors and the prices and telling you how to scoop better you’d get cranky, right? But equally bad would be your ice-cream partner not engaging or helping with the day to day tasks or not giving opinions.  It would threaten the friendship that made you start the business in the first place.  Couples, likewise, have to figure out how to think like a team, and work like a team, so that they can continue to love like a team.

Take a look at the small business you are running in your home.  How is your teamwork going?

For an interesting video about puppeteers who need to work as a team check out the youtube video Handspring Puppet Company: the genius puppetry behind war horse. Three people have to work together to make a large horse “come to life” and without talking navigate how and when to whinny, stomp, or move.  Talk about teamwork!