Always be the one to hold a door open for a co-worker. It’s the perfect power play.”
I heard this on a self-improvement podcast. The advice went something like this: hold a door open for a co-worker and you step into a position of authority, in the guise of generosity. You, the gatekeeper, enable the exiting or entering person to pass. It’s the perfect play for power, or a way to seem capable and trustworthy, while you strive for authority and status.
I bristled at the self-serving attitude behind this advice. It did make me think twice, however, about the doors in the places I’ve worked, their design, and how those doors fit each organization’s function and culture. After some thought, my reflection led me to try my own experiment in opening doors for my co-workers, which yielded a helpful realization.
When I was an associate producer, the news station’s main entrance featured a door to one side of a glass-encased reception desk. To enable my access to the newsroom, the receptionist looked up, nodded at my badge, buzzed me in, and then returned to what she was doing. The receptionist, and my colleagues in the newsroom, had little time to get up from their desks to open the door for a co-worker.
The bank where I worked had two entrances positioned directly opposite each other on either end of the bank teller row. Visiting customers navigated a narrow channel between teller-windows and bankers’ desks, and if a banker didn’t hook a customer into opening an account at their desk, the doors’ design efficiently ushered the customer out. We bankers had rival sales quotas to fill and so if we had the opportunity to open a door, we opened it first for our customers, and then for our manager. We rarely opened doors for each other.
As a public information specialist for the water authority in Las Vegas, I worked in a building over 25 stories high. I parked in the garage at the building’s foot, then used the elevator to rise above The Strip and Southern Nevada. I enjoyed the view from the window near my desk, but I sat in an open-plan office located at the end of a long hallway far from the building’s center, doors, and everyone else. I experienced few daily interactions with my officemates, and as a result I felt like I did little to contribute.
I lived in Southern Nevada for five years and I’m still not sure if Las Vegas is a design-enthusiast’s dream, or nightmare. Before my first visit to the Luxor hotel and casino, The Strip’s colossal black pyramid, I expected the Luxor’s interior to match its showy yet sleek exterior. When I walked into the Luxor’s lobby, I entered a dark inverted-pyramid, with a design not unlike a surreal staircase drawing by M.C. Escher. I observed the harried lobby attendants and felt a tense performance-centered energy which was nowhere near the regal purpose-driven atmosphere I imagined Egyptian pyramid-designers intended.
However, ancient Egyptian architects and Luxor’s designers did have something in common — the intent to keep their pyramid’s “valuables” forever contained. Several levels up, in a space that felt like a greenhouse, I gazed down at the lobby floor and the tiny out-of-the-way entrance. From my viewpoint, Luxor’s numerous escalators appeared to go one way – up. An elevator provided a way down, but its doors were obscured by potted palms and a kitschy glyph-laden awning. I don’t remember any doors beyond the lobby, which I guessed meant they were all tucked away, and for employees only. The more time I spent inside Las Vegas casinos, the more grateful I was that I didn’t work for one. Almost without exception, the casinos’ interiors featured no windows, no clocks, and one apparent door to the outside world.
I pull open or push past nine doors in an average day, five of them at my office, which I’m happy to say is a sunlit and airy space. Still bristling from the door-opening-as-a-power-play advice, I wondered how I would feel if, one day, each of my doors were opened for me. Then I wondered what would happen if, for one week, I opened doors for as many of my co-workers as possible. I began the experiment right away.
I work with a young woman, close to my age, who is smart, stylish, and two times a mom. We went through our pregnancies and divorces together. She is good at what she does, and I admire her for many reasons, and not just because she does well in a male-dominated field. So, when she complained about me to my supervisor about my reluctance to help her at the last minute before a client-meeting, and though her complaints were valid, it stung. It meant we weren’t as close as I thought.
After I discovered her complaints, I was not as friendly or as relaxed around her as I had been before. Months of polite but strained interactions passed, and then on a morning during my week of opening doors, she asked me to set up her new laptop and dual 28-inch monitors on her desk. The task would involve bending and stooping, and crawling under her desk. Plus, new systems are tricky and often involve complex IT-problem solving. I didn’t want to do it.
But with my intention for the week in my mind, and instead of making her wait until later or showing my reluctance, I set up her new system and cleared out and organized under her desk. I could have completed the task quickly and with minimal effort, while asking myself why I would do anything well for her, given the likelihood of her future complaints. Instead, I made sure the desk looked better than it did before I began. When her new system was up and running, she said thank you and my first name… and a new door opened between us.
A few hours after I crawled and cleaned under my co-worker’s desk, another co-worker followed a few yards behind me as I walked out from our office. She walked with an uneasy gait, due to bad knees. When I reached the hallway and the heavy office door shut behind me, I turned around. I went back and held the door open, waited, and smiled. She walked past, smiled, and offered her thanks. She will soon be four times a grandma.
Opening a door for a co-worker can be a power play, a performance-centered action with ambition behind its purpose. It can also be a way to reconcile with a co-worker or to show another co-worker that you appreciate them for who they are. After my week of opening doors for my co-workers, I was left with the feeling that I should do it all the time. I felt honored to do it, and from what I could tell, my co-workers felt equally honored by it. Now I know, by opening doors at work, I can build bridges between me and my co-workers, which is a far better purpose than building a monument to myself.