I was replaying professional war stories over drinks, and a friend had an insight that left everyone speechless. She said, “I wish someone had told me early on that every interaction I had with our leadership needed to put me in a good light. Not just cross-team projects. I mean, making a good impression in the cafeteria or when we crossed paths in the parking lot.”
Her comment made me remember how Logan Roy in Succession got so exasperated that he told his kids they simply weren’t serious people. Suddenly, the lights went on. The sweet spot between relationships and skills boils down to this: Every meeting, interaction, conversation, and communication is either building or breaking your reputation as a serious person.
No one gains the reputation of being a serious person by accident. Successful partnerships require intention and consistency, like exercising self-control when you want to shut someone down with a clever comeback. Leaning in to work through differences rather than checking out and hoping things go your way. And knowing that behaving as poorly as someone else may feel good in the moment, but it probably won’t increase your long-run earning power.
The qualities I just described—like taking control of your thought life, developing grit, and applying emotional intelligence—are all essential work skills. So, we’ll explore easy ways to use these competencies to sidestep relationship errors in the February series, Serious Skills for Serious Relationships.
First, let’s discuss the reckless choices and aftermath at Kyte Baby.
The facts of the Kyte Baby incident are straightforward. Marissa Hughes and her partner tried and failed multiple times to conceive. Hughes was able to adopt, and a baby born after 22 weeks gestation became available. However, she did not qualify for the Family and Medical Leave Act since she hadn’t worked at Kyte Baby for more than a year. That meant she was limited to the company-allocated two weeks off to be with her new son.
Marissa proposed working remotely while her son recuperated in Neonatal Intensive Care. But Kyte Baby’s CEO, Ying Liu, also the mother of a child with health problems, rejected Marissa’s idea.
That’s where things got ugly. Marissa went public, claiming she was ready to work, yet Kyte Baby refused flexibility.
Ying Liu countered on social media, apologizing for any misunderstanding. But the video fell flat with commenters who found it heavily scripted and inauthentic. The CEO rushed out a second, more personal attempt. But her rambling, panicked explanation was equally ineffective, with many viewers vowing to stop buying Kyte Baby merchandise.
The online consensus to the CEO’s damage control attempts was swift and uniform: Liu was not a serious person.
You might listen to the case study and think, This is too easy—case closed. However, take a second look. We’ve all had situations where we believed we had a straight-line problem: See it, deal with it, done! But as you zoom out, you can see the complexities for both sides.
Conflicting facts that co-exist happen all the time. The presence of those facts—like the need to balance corporate policy with compassion—is why you need to replace a rush to judgment with a serious approach.
Let’s replay the case study so you can get a feel for all the turning points where there were opportunities to apply people skills. And bear in mind that Kyte Baby was struggling with multiple reputational issues: They had to address their present and future employees as well as their customer base.
Here’s what could have happened instead:
People skills aren’t limited to the boardroom. They work everywhere, and you’ll need them for the people and situations that matter the most, like extended family, neighbors, and community groups. So, the next time you face a serious problem, use serious skills.