What putting the toilet seat down can teach us about leading people

There’s no telling when the first complaint about someone else failing to put the toilet seat down after using the restroom was registered, but the first hinged toilet seat was patented in 1885, so it probably wasn’t long after.

Modern history is rife with tiny moments of conflict between romantic partners, roommates, and small-office coworkers about the position of the toilet seat.

Stereotypically, women might complain to, or about, men leaving the seat up after using a shared bathroom. And a common retort from those men might be one of minimization, dismissiveness, or defensiveness. Because, their thinking goes, putting the seat down isn’t hard. After all, they put it up. Putting it back down requires the same effort, which is hardly any. What are they even complaining about?, they think. I don’t complain about having to put it up!

I spend a lot of time working with individuals and couples in their romantic relationships, and I like to make connections between the lessons from successful personal relationships and successful workplace relationships.

And the reason these conversations around seemingly minor things like the position of a toilet seat, or perhaps a dish left next to the sink, are not as petty as they might appear is because they directly correlate with trust. 

They correlate with trust in our marriages and romantic partnerships. And they correlate with trust with our coworkers and on the teams we manage.

It’s hard to have team success without trust, and impossible to have healthy personal relationships without it. 

Leaders who want successful workplace outcomes should be optimizing for the same thing as people who are trying to have the best relationships at home: trust.

The neurobiology of trust

The science at the root of this conversation revolves around the brain chemical oxytocin. Oxytocin is sometimes called “the love hormone” or “the bonding hormone.” In controlled experiments, participants given oxytocin were more willing to accept social risk. Follow-up fMRI (or functional MRI) studies revealed that oxytocin affects trust by modulating key brain regions. 

In a study published by the National Institute of Health, participants receiving oxytocin did not decrease their trust even after repeated betrayals, while placebo recipients did.

Higher oxytocin levels correlate with more trust and more trustworthy behavior, which means workplace leaders and people who value being trusted or followed should be thinking about how to increase oxytocin in their loved ones and in their teams.

That is done by creating conditions that result in others feeling safe, connected, and valued. It’s done by helping to foster the psychological safety that Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson researches and teaches about.

Behaviors that trigger oxytocin, according to research, include:

• Consensual physical touch such as hugging, handshakes, or pats on the back
• Positive eye contact, reinforcing feelings in another person that they are understood or “seen”
• Active listening and empathy, which involve giving someone your full attention, nodding, mirroring emotions, and validating others’ perspectives and experiences
• Acts of generosity and support without the expectation of reciprocity. When someone perceives that they are the recipient of genuine care from another, oxytocin is stimulated.
• Shared positive experiences. Studies show group activities that involve synchrony or working together, such as rowing a boat, or even singing increase oxytocin. To state the obvious, this is why many companies or teams have corporate retreats.
• Verbal affirmation and praise — acknowledging another person or team member’s contributions and expressing genuine gratitude for their efforts. To put the finest point on this idea, workers who feel invisible to the people they report to often seek other jobs, just as romantic partners who feel invisible to the people they share a life with and sacrifice for inevitably seek out a healthier, less-painful living situation.

What all of these have in common is that they require you to physically be there to do these things in real time with another person — and the final piece of this critical trust work is the evidence we leave behind. What we do or don’t do when other people might not be around, like leaving a dish by the sink or leaving the toilet seat up after using a bathroom, are the types of things trusted leaders and trusted relationship partners consider during the busyness of their daily lives.

When, for example, a man leaves the toilet seat up after leaving a bathroom for a female colleague or romantic partner to find when she goes to use that room, she encounters evidence.

That toilet seat in the upright position can only mean one of two things. 

Either he thought about it and deliberately left it up because that’s what he wanted to do regardless of how others felt about it or experienced it. He chose his way over what others might want. That’s a choice a person is allowed to make, but there are going to be trust consequences.

The only other explanation for the evidence she finds is that the man didn’t consider her at all. He didn’t think about it. She was completely invisible to him.

That type of thing — leaving the other partner feeling invisible — will destroy a romantic relationship over a long period of time.

At work, it sabotages the effort to stimulate oxytocin in our valued team members and coworkers. It signals the opposite of them being “seen.” It signals, albeit in a very small way, the opposite of showing genuine care. It won’t destroy trust and relationships quickly or dramatically. It does so very slowly, which is why it can be so hard to notice.

Noticing is a decision.