In the course of my browsing the other day, I came across a curious thing. It's called FISH! Maybe you've heard of it and I'm just rehashing old information, but maybe, like me, you're a little curious.

 From their website:

The FISH! Philosophy includes four simple, interconnected practices:

Be There is being emotionally present for people. It's a powerful message of respect that improves communication and strengthens relationships.

Play taps into your natural way of being creative, enthusiastic and having fun. Play is the spirit that drives the curious mind, as in "Let's play with that idea!" It's a mindset you can bring to everything you do.

Make Their Day is finding simple ways to serve or delight people in a meaningful, memorable way. It's about contributing to someone else's life, not because you want something out of it, but because that's the person you want to be.

Choose Your Attitude means taking responsibility for how you respond to what life throws at you. Once you are aware that your choice impacts everyone around you, you can ask yourself, "Is my attitude helping my team or my customers? Is it helping me to be the person I want to be?"

 I swear I am not being paid to promote these folks, nor do I work for them, disclaimer et al etc. But I personally found this to be a very powerful message and a very neat, precise way of packaging it. In many ways it's just the basic principles of establishing relationships and growing them, although the commonsenability of these precepts may have diminshed over time.

But think about it, think about the way we act toward people we genuinely care for and appreciate: our friends, our family, our partner(s). We probably keep in touch, through Facebook or postcards or telephone calls, we invest ourselves in their lives and their well-being. We find ways to let them know how much we appreciate them, by sharing jokes, small gifts, shared meals, or other little things. If they hurt us, we give them the benefit of the doubt and try to make amends. We play, we laugh, we invent new memories. 

We can translate that into everything we do. I'm not necessarily advocating that you start having sleepovers and pillowfights with your coworkers, but think of how much team spirit you can build simply by investing in each other as people. I love that my coworkers ask after my son and my husband, and that we can keep up with each other's lives - that I can invite them over to dinner and not feel awkward about it - it coheres us as a team and helps mitigate our many (many) working hours together. 

And even beyond coworkers - think of how this translates to our relationships with our residents, with our vendors (or, if we're vendors, with our clients)! When we put the other first and relate to them as people with wants and needs that we try to satisfy, we fall into these patterns naturally. But it starts with choice, with choosing the attitude that views one another as people, not dollars. 

Let's make that choice!