Michael Schluter and John Ashcroft write from Cambridge, UK. They are the Founder (Michael) and current Director (John) of the Relationships Foundation; Michael is also currently Chairman of Relational Research and CEO of Relational Peacebuilding Initiatives. Between them they have authored and co-authored numerous books on the significance of relationships, including being two of the four co-authors of the seminal The Relational Lens.
We looked in a previous post at the importance of time for relationships, and why relationists should be concerned about time. In this post, we go on to explore the interactions between time and relationships in more detail.
The fixed division of time (into days, hours, seconds), and the increasingly uniform ordering of societies in accordance with these constructs, is comparatively recent within the full scope of human history. One result is that our experience of time has changed. Natural and seasonal rhythms, and a focus on task, have become displaced by ‘mathematised’ or ‘economic’ time: time spent at work, and the availability of goods and services at all times.
Time is also now seen in highly individualised terms, around the satisfaction of our desires rather than the fulfilment of family or community obligations; whereas family and community are characterised precisely by the shared experience of time.
Relationships can be distinguished from interactions in that they are informed by past interactions and have the expectation of influencing future interactions. Relationships give access to other people’s pasts and futures, and locate us in their experience of time. Moreover, relationships bring with them obligations and responsibilities, and these require accepting curtailments to freedom in the use of our own time in exchange for some claim upon the time of others, now or in the future.
Improvements in travel and communication have created opportunities for more relationships, but that in turn makes it harder to choose which relationships to invest time in. Increasing the number of relationships can lead to greater churn and superficiality as they are dropped or neglected to focus on new relationships, in some cases becoming little more than a series of interactions with limited development of trust, understanding or commitment. Perhaps there is now a need to develop an understanding of ‘relational load factors’. How many relationships can be sustained? How will additional relational commitments impact on existing commitments?
Love, trust and understanding take time. This is reflected in the fact that time is linked to all the ‘Drivers’ in the Relational Proximity® model.
(a) Directness
Physical face to face encounters are highly beneficial in terms of communication (e.g. facial expression and body language), but take more time (since travel is almost always required) and require shared time and place. However, the resulting quality of communication may save time in the future, for example through avoiding misunderstanding.
(b) Continuity
Time allocation influences the degree of continuity in a relationship. But continuity in one relationship may be at the expense of continuity in other relationships. Because our time is fixed, the more people we are in touch with, the less time each relationship gets on average. Hence most people now perceive themselves as ‘time poor’. The personal and organisational history or memory of a relationship also impacts the use and value of time where less value or knowledge is lost between interactions.
(c) Multiplexity
Time is one of the factors influencing the extent to which breadth of knowledge is gained and shared. Taking time to share personal information, to meet socially, to eat together as a team, or to talk more widely than the task in hand are all important in increasing multiplexity. Time pressure may result in conversations which are narrowly focused on achieving goals at the expense of building relationships. This leads to more limited mutual understanding, missed opportunities, and reduced ability to address the needs and interests of others.
(d) Parity
Time pressure can result in power being less sensitively used, or in avoiding the perceived time costs of consultation and involvement (even if these are time-efficient in the longer-term). The control over your own time and that of others is a key form of power. Respect for others’ time is an important element of courtesy and a precondition for trust and openness in communication.
(e) Commonality
Time pressure can also restrict the development of, or the discerning of, commonality. But where there is a sense of shared values, shared experience and shared goals, more is likely to be achieved from a given unit of time.
Time is required to build relational proximity, but this in turn increases the potential value of time. Higher levels of relational proximity lead to greater trust and greater willingness to hear and receive communication, so enhancing the value of time used. The next post will try to apply such a ‘relationally rich’ understanding of time to the ways in which time is accounted for.
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