Breaking Out of 'Groundhog Day'

Just like Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day (1993), many of us find ourselves reliving the same negative relationship patterns over and over again with our colleagues. Perhaps this story sounds familiar: You assume John is not going to turn in his deliverable on time because he was late last week. You don’t want to worry about having to wait, so you do the task yourself. John is frustrated you didn’t use his work. The next time that you ask John to do something, he puts it off, thinking that you will just do it anyway. Next thing you know, you don’t even ask for his help, and then he is offended even more. And round and round we go.

In his forthcoming book, Experiential Intelligence (2023), Soren Kaplan explains how negative relationship loops in our life get reinforced and perpetuated over time, often resulting in us feeling “stuck” in our relationships. These relationship loops are versions of classic self-fulfilling prophecies or the Pygmalion Effect. As Rosenthal and Babad summarize, this dynamic refers to our natural tendency that “when we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur” (1985).

This dynamic is all too common, and it is easy to fall into the trap of what the Arbinger Institute’s book Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box refers to as collusion cycles (2000). We find evidence to justify our perceptions (including misperceptions) of others and create feedback loops with our behavior that reinforce our existing worldviews. We put people in a (metaphorical) box, and we keep them there. We view them a certain way (i.e., lazy, grumpy, disengaged, etc.), so we treat them a certain way, which, in turn, impacts how they interact with us, which only perpetuates our preconceived view of them. When we are in these negative loops, our possibilities for collaboration are severely limited. We begin to only see what is not possible with someone else rather than what is.

Negative relationship loops can arise in all areas of life, especially at work, given our video-conference-mediated lives, where we sometimes only see each other for short periods of time, often literally in little boxes on our screens. How many times have you made assumptions about what a seemingly distracted colleague is really doing while in a Zoom meeting?

While Bill Murray had a team of Hollywood producers to help him break free from the negative patterns he found himself replaying over and over again in Groundhog Day, we must find our own way to rewrite the broken scripts we have with others in our lives. Fortunately, there are some specific tricks that can help you and your team hack those negative relationship loops and begin to create positive loops instead. The shift into positive loops helps to open up and expand the possibilities you see with others, making not only yourself but your entire team more productive.

The next time you find your team stuck in a negative rinse-and-repeat mode, try one of these tactics:

1. Don’t get mad. Get curious.

One of the most effective ways to interrupt those negative relationship loops we get stuck in is to get curious. First, get curious about yourself. Ask questions like, “Why do I think that about this person? What, in my own past experiences, might be coloring how I am interpreting their behaviors?” Kaplan’s work in Experiential Intelligence (2023) reminds us that sometimes our past experiences can create self-limiting beliefs that can become a lens through which we engage with others. Examining our own role in a negative loop can help us interrupt it.

In addition to getting curious about yourself, also work to get curious about your teammates. When you find a teammate engaging in a behavior that makes you want to roll your eyes, ask yourself, “What else might be going on with them?” This simple question can expand your mindset, allowing you to reinvent a new loop with your colleague. At a minimum, getting curious will help you shift out of a negative affective state, as research shows that when we are curious, we are rewarded with a feel-good rush of dopamine that helps us move toward a positive affective state.

And the good news about feeling better? Thanks to work from positive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson and others, we also know that when we are in positive affective states, we are more creative, better decision-makers, and more collaborative. All ingredients for effective teams who can create new possibilities!

2. Climb down the ladder of inference.

While curiosity is a great anecdote for beginning to unpack our assumptions, the ladder of inference is a specific tool to help you further interrupt the negative loops in which you might be stuck. First introduced by organizational psychologist Chris Argyris and further popularized by Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, the ladder helps you “get back to the facts and use your beliefs and experiences to positive effect, rather than allowing them to narrow your field of judgment” (2006). To help yourself and your team climb back down the ladder of inference and get back into a space of possibility, you can ask yourselves:

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• Why are we doing what we are doing?
• What beliefs led us to our current actions?
• What from our past experiences led us to this conclusion?
• Why are we assuming this?
• What information are we paying attention to? What information have we ignored?
• Are there other facts or data we should consider?

3. Share stories of success.

In addition to in-the-moment interventions like the ladder of inference, working to build a team culture where you share your personal stories—specifically, stories of success—with each other is a pathway for building positive relationship loops. When we share with each other the root causes of success from our past, we paint a positive picture of ourselves in our teammates’ minds and plant the seeds for collaborative possibilities with each other. They see us as capable of success and interact with us accordingly. Sharing these stories also helps the team better understand the factors and conditions that help create success so they can replicate them. Suddenly we are not stuck in negative loops, and instead, we have begun to create positive loops and new possibilities with each other.

So, the next time you find your team stuck in a scene from Groundhog Day, try one of these interventions to break the negative relationship loops that perpetuate unproductive dynamics. Learning to see yourself and your team members in fresh ways will open up new possibilities for everyone.