Tame the Primitive Brain: 28 Ways in 28 Days to Manage the Most Impulsive Behaviors at Work

Day 14

The Four Stages of Relationship

From Captivate to Cooperate

The hottest love has the coldest end.

—Socrates

Today you’ll tame:

• The natural cycle of friendship at work

The two of you started out so well.

The interview was fantastic. You both had the same views on the industry and where the company needed to go.

The first six months were a dream. The new hire was giving you exactly what you needed, exactly when you needed it. It was as if she intuitively understood everything that needed to be done.

Yet slowly but surely, the honeymoon period came to an end, and this individual morphed into yet another one of your disengaged employees: she became standoffish, belligerent, and sometimes aggressively argumentative.

Now you have the feeling that either she has “flipped her lid” or is purposely working against you—she is either “mad” or “bad.”

Whatever the case, you know one thing: You’re going to have to let her go!

When you first met, it was dynamite, but now it is as if she is pouring cold water onto everything, and a new type of spark is flying.

Inevitably, relationships change. Sometimes for the better, but just as often for the worse. As in the rest of life, whether at work or at home, family members, best friends, partners, and coworkers, over time, often “come to blows.” What happens after the fallout? How do you continue to work with someone you really hit it off with from day one but have since cooled to, so much that an icy indifference now exists between you; ...