Podcast: What Rom-coms Can Teach Business Leaders

“When we open our mouths, there really is a divide between my mouth and your ears,” says Eli J. Finkel, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School. He cohosts a podcast that uses relationship science to discuss what romcoms get right and wrong about human connection.

In this episode of The Insightful Leader: What can romcoms teach leaders about miscommunication? Finkel joins the podcast to discuss some dos and don’ts for the workplace.

Podcast Transcript

Laura PAVIN: ​ You’re listening to The Insightful Leader. I’m Laura Pavin.

Workplace relationships are a unique animal, aren’t they? In most cases, they’re not family, not romantic partners or friends you’ve had since childhood. But they are a type of relationship, right? You work together to solve common problems. Maybe you break bread with them from time to time. You have conflicts with them.

Eli Finkel is a Psychologist at Kellogg who thinks a whole lot about conflict. The romantic sort, actually. He hosts a podcast about it that draws from some ... unconventional source material.

[“LOVE FACTUALLY” PODCAST INTRO]

Paul Eastwick: This is Love Factually, the podcast that analyzes romcoms and romantic films using the science of close relationships. I’m Paul Eastwick, professor at UC Davis.

Eli Finkel: And I’m Eli Finkel, professor at Northwestern University. We teach classes about how people get into and flourish within romantic relationships.

PAVIN: Finkel looks at rom-coms—and interrogates what they get right and wrong about real-life relationships. We talked to him because—and, hear me out, here—we suspected we could graft some of the same lessons from these romantic-type films onto our professional relationships.

And you know what? We were right.

Eli FINKEL: In terms of communication at the office, lessons from rom-coms is it’s sometimes hard to know what it is that we’re thinking and feeling.

PAVIN: Professor Eli Finkel.

FINKEL: When we open our mouths, there really is a divide between my mouth and your ears.

PAVIN: Surface level arguments are so often about something much deeper. So today, we’re going to look at some of the science-backed forces behind these tensions—and the movies that depict them well ... albeit, in a very dramatized way.

We’ll see how power can warp a dynamic, what pitfalls to avoid in an argument, and whether serenading someone in front of an audience is the best way to win them over.

All that, next.

…

PAVIN: Power is an important and necessary tool that leaders have to get everyone on a team rowing in the same direction, so to speak. But your power can affect people in other ways, and it can be helpful to know how when you’re making decisions on their behalf.

Let’s turn to romance now, shall we?

The effect that power has on these relationships kind of ends up sounding a whole lot like the dynamic between a leader and a team member.

FINKEL: There’s a phenomenon called goal contagion. I’m literally likely to catch your goal. So if we get some measure of what goals I have right now and what goals you have right now, and then track three years from now, what goals do we both have, if you have more power than I do, I have adopted more of your goals over time than you have adopted of mine over time.

PAVIN: When one person in the romantic relationship has more power, whether it be in the form of money or social status, the other person kind of ends up taking up their causes because, presumably, they need the person with power more than the reverse.

FINKEL: And the films sometimes do a good job of this. “Challengers” is a great example.

PAVIN: If you haven’t seen it, well, this is your fair warning. There are spoilers ahead. And this actually goes for all of the movies you’ll be hearing about. Anyway, “Challengers” is a movie from 2024 about a love triangle between three tennis players. Two of them, Tashi and Art, get married.

FINKEL: So, what we see in that movie is the Zendaya character.

PAVIN: Zendaya is the actress who plays Tashi.

FINKEL: She is absolutely obsessed with tennis excellence. I think it’s the essence of what she cares about more than anything else. And she tears her ACL, and her career is over. And so what is she going to do? She then marries this sort of more malleable man.

PAVIN: That more malleable man is Art.

FINKEL: He is very much in love with her. She’s staggeringly ambitious and gorgeous and impressive, and he is happy to, dare I say, do her bidding.

PAVIN: Tashi becomes Art’s coach and drives every aspect of his professional tennis career. Their relationship and his career go well for a while. Then, he starts losing more. There’s this moment in the movie where he’s trying to read the subtext of what this means for their relationship.

[“CHALLENGERS” CLIP]

Art: Tell me it doesn’t matter. Tell me it doesn’t matter if I win tomorrow.

Tashi: No.

PAVIN: It’s all very toxic, and Art falls into a depression because he doesn’t seem to know who he is anymore because he was so singularly focused on Tashi’s goals for him and for them. And all of this is to say that, if you water it down—a lot—the lesson for leaders here is not that you shouldn’t set goals for your teams. You should still do that. But it would probably behoove you to check in with them and make sure that they’re getting what they want out of the job, too—whether it be professional development or something else. Maybe see if you can find a way to work their goals into the bigger ones you set for them. Because what you don’t want is for them to wake up one day and wonder: What am I doing here?

So, be aware of the power dynamics at play in your team, and make sure you’re wielding it responsibly.

…

PAVIN: As much as we try to avoid it, conflict and disagreement are part of any office culture. People have different priorities and perspectives that don’t always align. But there are a few different flavors of arguments that you should really try to avoid, Finkel says.

FINKEL: In the relationships world, in the study of marriage, one of the more famous ideas in that space is the idea of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There are four communication styles that are especially corrosive when handling conflict.

PAVIN: Those Four Horsemen, by the way? Criticism, contempt, withdrawal, and defensiveness. We’re not going to go through each and every one of them, but know that they are all tactics that essentially dodge handling the real issues at the heart of a conflict.

Finkel says there’s a fight in one film that showcases this kind of barb-throwing well. It’s in the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” It’s a 2004 movie starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as Joel and Clementine. And the fight starts when Clementine comes home drunk and tells Joel she wrecked his car.

[“ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND” CLIP]

Joel: You’re driving drunk. Pathetic.

Clementine: I was a little tipsy. Don’t call me pathetic!

Joel: Well, it is pathetic. And it’s irresponsible. Could’ve killed somebody. Oh, God. I don’t know, maybe you did kill somebody. Should we turn on the news and see? Oh, Christ. Should I check the grill to see if there’s children or small animals?

PAVIN: They go on. She calls him an old lady. He calls her a wino. There are deeper issues they aren’t touching on because they’re so focused on making the other feel bad and protecting themselves from criticism.

The lesson here, in work and in life, is to cut away all of that noise so you can isolate and address the real problem you’re both having. Whatever it is.

Here’s how Finkel sees that working at work.

FINKEL: The organization and the relationship will benefit to the degree that we try to give the benefit of the doubt. And when we’re upset or offended, give the person an opportunity without an accusation to clarify: “Boy, it sounds like you’re saying something that is like really critical of me. Did I hear that right?” Give them a second chance.

…

PAVIN: And now for our final act: accepting “no” for an answer at work.

There is this general belief in business that you need to fight and persist for something you really believe in. But you do need some wisdom to know the difference between someone being open to accepting your overtures and someone who is ready for you to pump the brakes.

The message in many rom-coms is, unmistakably, to do the overtures.

That’s definitely the case in the movie “10 Things I Hate About You.” It’s a 90s rom-com that really boils down to two guys trying to win over the affection of two sisters. Patrick pursues Kat, and Cameron pursues Bianca.

And the message, throughout, feels a lot like “don’t accept no for an answer, fellas.” For example, there’s this one moment where Cameron is feeling rejected by Bianca and vents to Patrick about it.

[“10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU” CLIP]

Cameron: She never wanted me. She wanted Joey the whole time.

Patrick: Cameron, do you like the girl?

Cameron: Yeah.

Patrick: Yeah. And is she worth all this trouble?

Cameron: Well, I thought she was, but you know I—

Patrick: Well, she is or she isn’t. See, first of all, Joey is not half the man you are. Secondly, don’t let anyone ever make you feel like you don’t deserve what you want. Go for it.

PAVIN: Patrick’s message, it seems, is to ignore the rejection and keep pursuing.

That’s certainly been Patrick’s strategy with Kat. Throughout most of the film, actually, Kat rebuffs his advances. But then, towards the end of the movie, Patrick takes over the football field PA system and serinades Kat.

[“10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU” CLIP]

Patrick: Can’t take my eyes off of you. You’d be like heaven to touch. I wanna hold you so much. At long last love has arrived …

PAVIN: Despite all of the messages she’s sent him expressing the contrary, Kat agrees to go to prom with Patrick.

FINKEL: What’s interesting about them is that these gestures come from men, are aimed toward women, and they follow a situation where she’s not been that interested. And so, this is a complicated situation: surely she should be able to reject him and have him internalize the idea that maybe she’s not interested, but certainly men of a certain age—heterosexual men of a certain age—were raised to think that when she says “no,” like a really grand romantic gesture is the right way to win her heart.

PAVIN: To put this into a work context: Imagine a sales representative tries to build rapport with a client by dropping off treats and business cards. But the client has made it clear that they are too busy to meet. The client gets uncomfortable, complains to the boss, and the sales rep is officially off that account. You can see that happening. There is also a world where this could have gone the other way, where the client found it very thoughtful and go-gettery.

FINKEL: And this is an interesting tension, right? The tension between risking overtures that might not be welcome, versus trying to avoid making an overture that is unwelcome but that will necessarily come with missing some opportunities for connection that could exist.

PAVIN: Finkel admits that there probably isn’t a perfect answer here, because everyone is different. But here’s what he thinks we should keep in mind.

FINKEL: I think rom-coms, basically to the degree that we internalize those lessons, get it severely wrong in terms of focusing always on being bold and risk-seeking and never really careful enough to say, “I don’t want to be intrusive.”

PAVIN: So, what did we learn today? First, as a leader, you have the power—but it’s important to wield it responsibly and make sure your teams are getting something out of your dynamic, too.

Second, in arguments, focus on the issue and try not to make it personal.

Third, and finally, before you decide whether to push a matter with someone, remember that “no” is an answer worth considering.

[CREDITS]

PAVIN: That’s our show for this week!

This episode of The Insightful Leader was produced by Laura Pavin, Andrew Meriwether, Fred Schmaltz, Abraham Kim, Maja Kos, and Blake Goble. It was mixed by Andrew Meriwether. Special thanks to Eli Finkel. As a reminder, you can find us on our website, on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another episode of The Insightful Leader.