The Peter Principle

When I focus on caring, my self-consciousness stills.

The metaphor:

I grew up loving to watch a bonfire’s refracting light or a shoreline’s rolling tides. Then my friends started having babies, and it struck me that these little beings were just as hypnotic. Though I loved them, I was thrown by the learning curve for taking care of them, until I remembered a story that’s helped me at work, too.

The story:

When I moved to DC in 2008, I spent a lot of time at happy hours, splitting fries for dinner and comparing first job stories. I was trying hard to keep up in a fast-paced office, to figure out if I was doing well without the structure of grades, and to sort out if my job was unusually stressful or if this was just what working felt like. I reveled in my friends’ accomplishments, like planning a black tie gala. I confess to also taking comfort from their mistakes, like misprinting a shipping label and sending important boxes to a building in California instead of the one next door.

During this era, one of my rowhouse roommates told a work story that I’ve thought of frequently throughout my 20s and 30s. My roommate was reporting to two supervisors, only one of whom was well-liked. After working there for a while, he overheard the bad boss address this directly, asking the good boss, “How do you get the staff to feel like you care about them?”

The good boss replied, exasperated, “Because I DO care about them, Peter!”

At the time, the story was cathartic. It was so satisfying to hear about a righteous leader rebuking a bad boss. At the time, it felt obvious how to be a good boss. I remember musing during the first five years of my career that maybe I should write down all my thoughts on how to lead well, so that I wouldn’t be afflicted by the total amnesia that seemed to have struck my superiors about what being entry-level felt like. I didn’t do that, though, so all I remember now is having that feeling, not the opinions I’d developed.

As I rose through the ranks in my twenties, I continued to recall the Peter story, but for a shifting reason. Where originally, the story was a source of satisfaction, almost an office job revenge fantasy, it became a source of guidance over time. As I became a manager and then a director, making decisions about people and policies, it stopped seeming obvious how to do right by staff. I couldn’t remember everything about being entry level, but the story reminded me how much it had mattered to feel like leaders cared.

Whenever I felt myself starting to think about how I wanted staff to perceive me – as smart, say, or capable; as deserving of my role – I used the Peter story to snap myself out of it. If I could only convince staff of one thing, I wanted it to be that I cared about them, without needing anything in return. I would work hard to try and do my job well, and I would consult them about how it was going: I would be accountable for the outcome, and I would explain the approach so they knew what I wanted to achieve and could help me if I got off course. I would work to make space for their opinions, and ownership, and humanity.

When I turned 30, a few of my friends from those DC days had babies, including my old roommate who’d overheard Peter’s fateful question. Suddenly, I was entry level at something important again: I was clueless about kids. My partner and I went to visit my friend and his wife, both now beloved friends. I remember sitting in a circle around the baby, staring at him like he was a campfire. I was totally transfixed, watching every expression cross the baby’s face.

Alongside the awe, I felt awkward. I didn’t know how to be polite with a baby: not like the baby would judge me, but the whole dynamic was new. I remember feeling like I should offer him something, or look away when his diaper got changed, or maybe offer to change the diaper myself? Partly, I wanted to learn how to be useful, which I could do, just like I had learned so many things before. Partly, though, I realized I wanted to be seen as capable by my new-parent friends, to be just as much at ease as we’d been a few months earlier, back in the same life stage together.

Just like when I got too focused on how people perceived me at work, I thought about the Peter story. It helped me draw the focus off myself and back to my friends, the people I cared about: asking them questions about their new phase of life, staying attuned for clues about what would be nice for them. Stop worrying about being polite, start being kind. Trust the kindness will come through in what I did, even if I was wrong about what’s helpful.

For the next six years, as the babies grew up, they became people I cared about, too, though I only saw them occasionally. Then I moved back near my hometown the year of my sister’s first pregnancy, and babies became a central fact of life. My sister went into labor early, just hours after her baby shower. Presumably, my nephew knew there was a party in his honor and he wanted to attend. He was okay, no NICU time needed, but he was small: less than six pounds. He came home dark red and a little wrinkly, like a human kidney bean.

There’s a picture of me holding him in his first week where you can see my nervousness, gingerly cradling the premie like an uncapped grenade. By the time his brother came along, I felt comfortable enough supporting a newborn’s neck to enjoy holding him, touching his brand new skin. But even before that confidence came, the Peter story helped me jump in anyway. Instead of worrying what others would think about me, I remembered how I felt about them, and it lighted the way.

It’s been great to have a guide like this, because it’s true what they say about kids: as soon as you learn a stage, they’re on to the next. For my former roommate, every time I see his kid, that’s the oldest kid I know. He turns nine this summer, and I have no idea what nine-year-olds are like yet. At each reunion, I hang back, learning about the new age group like an anthropologist with a new tribe. Ah, this three-year-old thinks fart jokes are funny! Wow, this five-year-old makes jokes that are actually funny! This seven-year-old can employ irony for dramatic effect!

It’s tempting, every time, to want them to like me, or even be impressed by me. I can feel the pull, and the Peter story helps me resist: to stop worrying how to make them feel cared about, and instead, just to care about them. I remember so clearly from when I was a kid that some adults made me feel cared for and others made me feel out of place. I was always worried whether I was answering adult questions correctly. I remember hating when adults asked me where I lived. I knew the answer, but didn’t know which level of answer to give. If we were out of town, naming my city was a good answer; if the adult was trying to drive me home, it was not. The Peter story has helped me to adopt a very improv-style approach, “yes-and” approach to asking kid questions: there’s no right answer I need to hear, and I get on board with whatever they say. I’m not asking to find out if I like them. I already know that I do.

That means I give kids birthday gifts without expecting appreciation, skip books that look interesting and read their requests even if they look boring, listen to stories that don’t make sense and accept redirection in fantasy games (“No, you’re a bad dragon! My dragon kills your dragon!”). I can look into the eyes of my nephew, now three and a half, while he tells me facts about trains, and his younger brother, soon to be two and just getting words, and get genuinely psyched about whatever they’re into, just because they’re into it.

I was channeling this mode last year, when a childhood friend’s husband got a teaching job at a college just a couple hours away. My partner Steve and I were thrilled to have them and their two kids so close by, and when they had a housewarming party, we went. We spent the day with the kids, then approaching ages two and four, who seemed so much older than the last time we’d seen them, just a few months earlier. After the kids went to bed, I found myself getting nervous. I’d been so caught up in the excitement of being able to attend the housewarming, I hadn’t processed that I was going to a party where I only knew three people.

Standing there in the kitchen, I took a deep breath and resolved to keep my Peter-perspective going. Adults were just big kids, I reasoned, and this wasn’t my town: I wasn’t setting up my social life, I was supporting the way my friends were building theirs. I could just keep being curious and accepting the guests as they were – giving them space to be themselves and not needing anything from them.

I had so much fun at that party! I mean, my friends have great taste in people, if I do say so myself, so their discernment played a role, but I had so much fun completely abandoning my investment in how I was coming off, and just trying to see what each person was about. I asked more questions than I normally would, about their hometowns and experience with upstate New York and what they liked to do outside of work. Over and over, I had the sense that behind the learned presentation of adulthood, I could see the child they had been, all the wonder and weirdness of each person not far under the surface. And when I looked like that, even more than ever, do you know what I found, Peter? It was easy to care.

The question: Do you have any tips for building relationships with kids?...Or adults?

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