Who gets your beer … and who gets your puppy?

By Sandra Oliver, Impact Founder

I’ve mentioned the “beer and puppy” concept a lot lately when talking to people about relationships. It’s a thought experiment introduced by Ross McCammon in his book, Works Well With Others, about two ways we can think about the people in our lives:

• Would we enjoy having a beer with the person?
• Would we trust them to look after our puppy?

In some cases, the answer is both. Because the best people are fun AND trustworthy. They’re the people who we always enjoy spending time with and who will always help us. They’ll be the tightest part of our network.

We might not talk to them for months or even years and the next time we see them, we pick up right where we left off.

And we know all their help and advice is well intentioned and meant to help us. 

They’re gold and we should treat them as such.

There’s nothing wrong with beer or puppy people

Other people in our lives fall into just the beer or puppy category:

• The beer person is fun and great to spend time with socially, but we wouldn’t trust them to look after our puppy.
• The puppy person is honest, consistent, and trustworthy, but aren’t that much fun to go out with over a beer.

There’s nothing wrong with the beer or puppy people – we just need to be clear and not mistake fun for trust – and vice versa.

We may have a fun and easy friendship with a beer person, but if we give them our puppy (or our trust), they may abuse it, use it in some way, or neglect it because it doesn’t matter to them. We can go out with them, but we should keep our puppy.

Equally, we may trust someone, but the person isn’t the best choice to invite out for a beer when we need to relax and recharge. When we want to be socially comfortable, informal, talk about work, or vent. We can give them our puppy (or our trust), but we should choose someone else to have fun with.

Hold onto the standouts

Think about it. I bet you’re already slotting people into beer or puppy categories. And identifying the stand outs in your life – the beer AND puppy people – you want to hold onto.