Whilst on holiday last week in Malta, we met up with some new friends who live on the island. Over dinner, they told me that they’ve been together for five years and soon after getting married, they enrolled on a course of marriage lessons.

Now, I really wasn’t sure what to make of this. He’s American, and so it’s fine. But I mean, a Yorkshireman is never going to enrol on marriage lessons is he? He just isn’t. For one thing, it would be an admission that he may be slightly less than perfect. Obviously ridiculous. And for another, he’d feel a bit daft. It just isn’t in our genes.

But as they told me a bit more about it, I could see that there were some interesting underlying ideas – ones that have implications beyond the environment of the ball and chain. (Yes, I know ~ the political correctness lessons aren’t really kicking in either yet.)

One of the things they teach on the course is that there are five different ways of showing love ~ and obviously by definition, receiving love. These are (from memory) kind words, kind deeds, gifts, physical affection, and spending quality time. The theory goes that problems occur in a relationship when the parties’ needs are not compatible ~ when one partner’s natural pattern of behaviour is to show love in ways that the other partner doesn’t readily appreciate.

It may be, for example, that the husband enjoys receiving presents. He thinks his wife will feel the same way and showers her with gifts. But the wife isn’t receptive to this at all. You see, in her past, she’s been in relationships with people who have used gifts as a substitute for attention (or maybe as an apology) and therefore to her, the giving of presents has a negative connotation.

Or it may be that the wife likes to hear kind loving words from her husband, and so expresses her love for him in that way. She doesn’t get the response she’s hoping for, and that’s because in past relationships, kind words have been used as a precursor to the delivery of unpleasant news, an unreasonable request or as a set up for an insult or put down. The words create discomfort in the husband – maybe even on a subliminal level – when their intention is quite the opposite.

There’s a lot more to it, but hopefully you get the idea. Two people can interpret seemingly positive words, gestures and actions in completely different ways – so different in fact, that it creates conflict. Why? Because, the reaction of one party can be so radically opposed to what the other expects.

It’s a fairly small step to realise that if this is true for marriages, it’s true for all relationships – including business ones. Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that you want to express love for your customers – or indeed that physical affection and spending quality time together would be appropriate ways of doing it – but most businesses want to express appreciation to their customers. And it’s certainly true that words, deeds and gifts may be ways to do that.

Most of us would naturally show appreciation in a way that would appeal to us personally, but the message from marriage lessons suggests that this could be ineffective – even counter-productive. I can see two possible solutions…

Where you’re dealing with customers on a one-to-one basis, it would be worth taking some time to find out the type of person they are, and what sort of appreciation would receive the best reception from them. If that’s not possible (and it won’t be if you’re dealing with groups of customers who have divergent responses) make efforts to counter any misunderstandings or misinterpretation at the time of delivery.

So if you’re sending your customer a gift, be at pains to stress that it’s simply a thank you for their business, and that nothing is expected in return. If you’re sending them a message of thanks, make it just that – not a disguised sales letter or a set up for a notification of price increase. That way, at least you minimise the risk of any damage to people who are unreceptive to these sorts of communications in the first place.

In most communications, the best approach (and certainly the one to use in the absence of other information) is ‘treat others as you’d like to be treated yourself’. But there are times when this clearly doesn’t work as you might expect.

I’ll be more aware of this in the future, and I’m sure you will be too.

Postscript

After I heard about this, I suggested to my wife that she enrol on the marriage lessons first, and then I’d judge whether she’d improved before deciding whether to go myself.

For some reason, that was another communication that wasn’t well received!

Kind Regards

John Harrison 

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