Do people who work with you feel "used?"
Many years ago, I worked on an intense project with a colleague. We met almost daily, and spent countless hours discussing behind closed doors.
Yet by the end of the project, I didn't feel like I had much of a working relationship with this colleague. Camaraderie was minimal.
Something just felt off. But I didn't know how to articulate it at the time.
It wasn't until many years later that I finally realized why, and found the words for it.
It was because I was on the receiving end of a highly transactional working relationship.
On transactional behavior at work
When we think about what makes someone enjoyable to work with, we tend to think of the obvious things. Sharp, hard-working, friendly... the list goes on.
But one of the most underrated traits? It's the ability to NOT be transactional.
Because while few people intentionally set out to be transactional – actions speak louder than words. Unfortunately, there are little things we do unknowingly that rub people the wrong way.
And we end up silently sabotaging ourselves without knowing.
While there are many examples of transactional behavior at work, they tend to boil down to 3 buckets:
- Treating interactions as one-off games
- Never offering unsolicited value
- Failing to close the loop
And in today's issue, we'll talk about specific examples – and what we can do to watch out for these pitfalls.
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Pitfall #1: Treating interactions as one-off games
Few people are transactional in a deliberate sense, i.e. they don't just show up to work trying to identify who they can take advantage of.
Instead, being transactional is often simply a result of forgetting that your track record matters. You forget that you're playing repeated games, and you end up only optimizing for the here and now.
So while rarely malicious, this transactional mentality can then manifest itself in many ways. For instance...
...Overselling
Overselling occurs when you exaggerate the upside or urgency of something in order to get your way ("We need to invest in XYZ right away, because there is incredible upside!!!").
It may not seem transactional in the moment – but it is. You forget that you're gambling with your future credibility,
It's not that you can never push the envelope or advocate with conviction. But you just need to think about what's at stake.
...Withholding information
Being transactional isn't just about exaggerating. The sin of omission – e.g. withholding context and not being transparent – is equally damning.
For example, imagine that you're preparing a strategy document for leadership, and you're looking to sharpen your work by including a specific datapoint. So you turn to a certain data analyst for help.
You could simply state the facts, e.g. –
"I'm working on a document for our leadership, and it is intended to influence their go/no-go decision on Project X. This datapoint will help prove the argument, and I'd deeply appreciate your support."
While everything you've said is factual, you've missed an opportunity to be fully transparent.
Because perhaps all you really needed was a directional, good-to-have piece of evidence – yet you've led the analyst to believe that this is the crux of your work.
(And they might end up spending hours and hours on your ask.)
But consider how much more considerate you could be, if you also supplied the following context:
