“I Try to Care About You, but It Would Help If You Were a Little More Interesting.”

“I Try to Care About You, but It Would Help If You Were a Little More Interesting.”

Have you ever met a person completely without feelings? No, I thought so. Once again—Reds are not typical relational people. Nothing wrong with that, as long as the person you are communicating with has the same focus as you. But if a Red speaks to a pronounced relational person, like a Yellow or a Green, he can be perceived as very coldhearted or inhuman.

Let me illustrate this with an example from my own personal experience.

I had a colleague, whom I always appreciated very much (notice that I start with the positives, to avoid ruffling feathers—very Swedish of me) and still have great respect for as a professional but also as a good friend. Okay, it’s the infamous Bj ö rn again.

A few years ago, we were having a tough period in the company. Fall had been a difficult and strenuous time: long days, late nights, and frequent weekend work. We had worn ourselves out, we had worn one another out, and we had worn out our respective families. We were on our knees. We really deserved a quiet and restful holiday season.

For the company holiday party we went to a Japanese restaurant. We had taken our shoes off and were sitting on cushions, each holding a glass of sake in his hands. In typical Swedish fashion, we looked at the menus while, at the same time, keeping an eye on what the others were thinking of ordering. Of course, most of us didn’t want to order something that no one else chose.

Except for Bj ö rn. He glanced quickly through the menu and declared what he had in mind. He was ready now and quickly grew weary of those of us who hadn’t decided yet. Needing something to do, he started a conversation. At the time, my daughter had just changed schools, and Bj ö rn was inquisitive.

“How did everything go with the new school? How’s the little lassie doing?” Pleasantly surprised by his concern for my daughter, I started to tell him. After about twenty seconds I noted that Bj ö rn’s eyes began to wander. He looked around the restaurant with a facial expression that said: Why is he telling me this?

He looked at me with a smile I interpreted as You know me. You know how I function. I don’t actually want to talk any more about that! And he quickly began talking about something completely different.

Ordinarily, I should have been a little bit offended, maybe even insulted. How can anyone be so insensitive? Especially when the other person is talking about something that he himself inquired about?

Does this mean that Bj ö rn is coldhearted or that he cares nothing for other people? Not at all. He cares just as much as anyone else, but when he realized that everything was fine with my daughter he simply lost interest. In usual fashion, he announced that the channel of communication was closed. Instead of sitting there hemming and hawing, pretending to be interested in more or less meaningless details, he said exactly what he felt.

Remember that we’re talking about interpretations and perceptions here. The intention behind a particular behavior is one thing; how we as recipients perceive it is another. Personally, I just wanted to laugh the whole thing off, because I knew Bj ö rn very well. I knew that he would never dream of hurting anyone deliberately. When he tramples on people’s toes from time to time it’s never intentional—it just happens. In reality, he is one of the warmest and most generous people I have ever met. It’s just that you have to know him to understand this.

What would have been the correct answer to Bjorn’s question about my daughter?

“Great.”

It would have been enough.