At a dinner party I attended recently, Kris said to Suzanne, "You remind me of Helen Hunt." I looked at Suzanne, and sure enough, she did look like Helen Hunt. Later, I noticed that I was seeing Suzanne a little differently. These are the effects of hat hanging. At work, it can damage careers and even businesses.
Hat hanging is a phenomenon identified by Virginia Satir, a pioneer of family therapy. The name comes from the idea that we hang the hat of someone from our past on someone in our present. Back at the dinner party, I was probably seeing Suzanne through the characters I've seen Helen Hunt play — perhaps the "you" Paul Reiser's character was so mad about. That evening ended harmlessly, but in important relationships, hat hanging can lead to serious trouble, especially when we're unaware of it, because it distorts our perceptions.
At work, we tend to hang the parental hat on the supervisor. Supervisors are usually older, and they have the power to give us the toys we want, or to take them away. With our perceptions so distorted, we have difficulty seeing our supervisors as colleagues, working with them as colleagues, or understanding them as colleagues. Since they are colleagues, trouble is inevitable when we see them as parents.
How can we detect hat hanging? And what can we do about it?
- Sometimes it's obvious
- When someone closely resembles someone else you knew well — especially someone who was important in your life — be alert to hat hanging. The resemblance needn't be physical. It can be in age, size, profession…almost anything.
- Tune in to strong feelings
- With our perceptions distorted
by mistaken identification,
we have difficulty seeing
things as they are - When you're angry or when you have strong feelings about some issue at work, ask yourself: "If this were someone else's story, would I be so upset?" If not, your feelings might be connected to the there-and-then, rather than the here-and-now, and you might be hanging a hat.
- Focus on differences
- If you think you might have hung a hat on someone, notice the differences between that person and the hat's owner. If you've hung a hat, shifting your focus is often enough to bring you back to the here and now.
- Keep a Hat Journal
- When you notice yourself hanging a hat, enter the incident in one of those pocket notebooks — your Hat Journal. After a few months, scan the journal for patterns. Knowing your own patterns can help you find pathways around them.
- You probably can't see others hanging hats
- Others might hang hats, but you don't know enough about their inner processes to decide. Suggesting that someone else might be hat hanging is therefore risky. It can seem blaming or defensive, especially when you haven't been asked for your insight.
Take care, though. Saying to your boss, "You remind me of Helen Hunt" isn't hat hanging if your boss really is Helen Hunt. Top Next Issue
The article you've been reading is an archived issue of Point Lookout, my weekly newsletter. I've been publishing it since January, 2001, free to all subscribers, over the Web, and via RSS. You can help keep it free by donating either as an individual or as an organization. You'll receive in return my sincere thanks — and the comfort of knowing that you've helped to propagate insights and perspectives that can help make our workplaces a little more human-friendly. More
For more on the relationship between hat hanging and how we make meaning out of our observations, see "Making Meaning," Point Lookout for January 16, 2008.
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Related articles
More articles on Emotions at Work:
- What's So Good About Being Laid Off?
- Layoffs during the holiday period of November 15 through January 15 are far more common than you might
think. Losing your job, or fearing that you might, is always difficult, but at this time of year it's
especially helpful to keep in mind that the experience does have a bright side.
- Coping with Problems
- How we cope with problems is a choice. When we choose our coping style, we help determine our ability
to address the problems we face. Of eight styles we can identify, only one is universally constructive,
and we rarely use it.
- The Uses of Empathy
- Even though empathy skills are somewhat undervalued in the workplace context, we do use them, for good
and for ill. What is empathy? How is it relevant at work?
- What We Don't Know About Each Other
- We know a lot about our co-workers, but we don't know everything. And since we don't know what we don't
know, we sometimes forget that we don't know it. And then the trouble begins.
- Make Suggestions Privately
- Suggesting a better way of doing things can sometimes backfire surprisingly and intensely. Making suggestions
privately reduces that risk, but introduces a different risk.
See also Emotions at Work and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
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- And on December 18: Subgrouping and Conway's Law
- When task-oriented work groups address complex tasks, they might form subgroups to address subtasks. The structure of the subgroups and the order in which they form depend on the structure of the group's task and the sequencing of the subtasks. Available here and by RSS on December 18.
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