Stop Pissing Me Off What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazy (10 page)

“We tried hiring a man but it didn’t work out.” It’s not fair; it’s not legal; but it does still happen.

My colleague Rita Risser tells the story of the time she was brought into a well-known Silicon Valley company by the CEO, who wanted to fire the highest-ranking and only woman on his executive team. “Why do you want to fire her?” she asked.

“Because she gets emotional in staff meetings.”

“What do you mean, emotional? Does she sob and disrupt the meeting?”

“No, she just sits there and little tears come down, but I feel manipulated.”

“Well, is anyone else being emotional in staff meetings?”

He said no, but the HR director, who happened to be a woman, said yes, “Joe Schmoe—he gets emotional.”

“What does he do?” asked Rita.

“He screams and yells and when he really gets upset, he throws his shoe across the room.”

Rita advised the CEO that if he was going to fire the woman on his senior team for “being emotional,” he also needed to fire Joe for “being emotional.”

Despite the historic numbers of women in the workplace, these kinds of gender stereotypes persist, creating epic battles.

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The key is to try to avoid stereotypes, yet acknowledge differences. It’s a tricky paradox. Recognize that some clashes
may
be the result of differences in gender communication styles, but do not assume or stereotype someone because of his or her gender. Because gender differences may sometimes show up as cultural differences, it can be helpful to try the technique outlined in the next section for communicating effectively with someone from a different culture. There are many other diversity clashes in the workplace these days: ethnic, racial, sexual orientation, language, to name a few more. There is so much latent power in diversity. If you can learn to respect the diversity of your talent pool and bring together the unique gems that each person offers, your team and your company will profit.

how to keep differences from turning into difficulties
Coco Chanel captured an enduring truth in one sentence: “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.” Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court, also captured the importance of uniqueness when he said, “America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.”

If differences make us a better nation, a more relevant organization, a more innovative and successful company, we’re going to have to learn to cope with differences while also putting them to good use. Of course people are going to disagree!

Sometimes people are going to misunderstand each other. They’re going to have values and priorities that are so intense, there’s spontaneous combustion when they collide. Welcome

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 Pissing Me Off!

to the real world. The key is to figure out how to deal with the differences and maximize every individual best practice. Sometimes a festering conflict with a coworker is actually a clash of cultures, fueled by sex, race, or generational differences. We need to realize that as varied as cultures are, so too are their approaches to conflict and communications. Although diverse work groups produce more creative results, they also require more sophisticated communication skills as well as training. Working successfully with people who are very different from you requires skill.

If you’re trying to creatively manage a conflict with someone who pisses you off, you need to recognize when it’s actually a cultural clash; otherwise, communication will stall. For example, the dominant culture in this country values a conflict resolution model that is rather confrontational. As a culture, we see ourselves like twenty-first-century John Waynes. This is especially true in organizations where there is a maledominant culture. We talk straight and we shoot straight. Yet this model is different from that used in many cultures, in which direct confrontation is considered rude. Instead, those cultures value the use of mediators. Conflict management is accomplished through a third party—a trusted family friend, a priest, or an adviser.

One way to find out if a conflict is culture-related is to ask the following questions:

n Have attempts at creatively managing this conflict failed?

n Is the present conflict one of a series?

n Does the conflict seem emotional beyond what you would predict based upon the immediate problem?

n Are the people involved in the conflict from different cultures? Are there obvious differences in race, gender, education, age, or work groups?

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If you determine you have a clash of cultures, try the following:

n Gain Agreement: Work with those involved to help them understand:

• There is a conflict.

• We share a common goal to creatively manage it.

• What we’ve tried so far hasn’t worked.

n Identify Hot Buttons

•
Say something like,
“There seems to be something that ‘X’

says, or that I say, that always sets you off. What is it?”

•
Clarify back to the person:
“It seems that what sets you
off is . . .”

n Look for a Cultural Source

• Ask something like, “Is this an important concern for you?”

Caution:
Do not say, “With your background as an African American (or woman, Generation X’er, and so on.), is this an important concern?” There are many different aspects of our background that create our culture. Allow the coworker (if he or she chooses) to bring up exactly what factors in his or her background drive the reaction.

if you really loved Me you would

It’s sort of a no-brainer that good communication is essential to working with people who are different and in dealing with people who piss us off. As the workplace becomes more diverse, good communication is even more important. What we miss, however, is an understanding that our perception about the

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 Pissing Me Off!

amount of power we hold in any interaction influences our communication style. This is a critical point; the amount of power you think you have influences how you communicate.
rapport versus report talk

Linguists tell us that if we perceive we have less power than the person or group that we’re communicating with, we will engage in what linguist Deborah Tannen calls “rapport talk.”

This is talk designed to improve and build relationships. It is conciliatory, polite, and friendly. When using rapport talk, we say things such as, “You might be unaware that . . .” before delivering a nasty blow. We may also say things such as, “I’m not sure if this is right, but maybe we should . . .” We ask permission before we do things: “Would you mind if I . . . ?” We tend to ask for the other person’s advice and approval. If we believe that we have more or equal power with the person we’re talking to, we tend to use what Tannen calls “report talk.” This is communication that focuses on delivering information and accomplishing tasks. This talk tends to sound like orders. When we use this talk we tend to start our sentences with “I (or we) need to do X.” “I want or need X.”

In her book
You Just Don’t Understand
, Tannen suggests that women tend to use more rapport talk, while men favor report talk
.
Some linguists agree with Tannen, while others point to the difference in power as the key differentiator. Because women have tended to have less power in most workplaces, they tend to use rapport talk. Studies have found that other groups that historically have had less power, such as African Americans, also use rapport talk. Significantly, people may use one kind of talk in the workplace and another kind of talk at home, where they believe they have a different amount of power.

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This difference in the use of rapport talk or report talk also applies to groups in the workplace. Teams can tend to use one style or another, based on perceived power. Groups that tend to use report talk may view other groups as weak, ineffectual, or wasting time because they use so much rapport talk. Conversely, the group that tends to use communication to develop rapport may view the group that uses report talk as brusque, cold, angry, or rude. Members of either group are likely to be frustrated with the other, and this can cause escalating tensions between teams, departments, or divisions. Countless conflicts result from this difference of perception.

It’s worthwhile to examine this more closely. Ask yourself the following questions:

n Which of the two styles do you find yourself using at work?

n With whom do you use a different style?

n What is the primary style used by the people in power at work?

n What would the benefits be to you of using a different style?

n What benefits to the organization would there be if you used different styles, as appropriate, for different situations?

n Is your style the one most likely to create what you want at work?

There is no right or wrong style in all situations. The key to managing diversity issues with people who piss you off is to stop and think before you speak (or IM!) in order to determine which communication style is most appropriate in any given situation. In addition, listening carefully will also help you slow down and welcome the opinions of others—especially those who piss us off!

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 Pissing Me Off!

While some of you may wonder whether organizations will ever learn to take advantage of the rich mosaic of today’s work force, we can look to the many smart companies that have learned to harness the power of differences. The wildly successful Chipotle Mexican Grill, for example, engages a diverse cast of workers by paying Spanish speakers to learn English and English speakers to learn Spanish. Their teams sling their fresh, tasty, burritos made only from the meat of free-range animals with a camaraderie that’s palpable as soon as you enter their restaurants. The company is one of the stock market’s darlings while paying its workers way above average for the industry. It also has one of the lowest turnover rates in the fast-food business.

Here are some concrete ways that you can improve communication with people who are different from you: 1. Get to know new people. Reveal a bit about your background. Invite, but do not insist, that they share theirs. 2. Be honest. Reveal that you are trying to improve your own communication style. Ask for suggestions. Ask what kind of communication works for them.

3. Learn about other cultures. Be open to learning about differences. There are many resources in Appendix A

of this book to help.

4. Apologize if you think you’ve offended someone. Ask what you could do differently next time.

why do they do that?

That’s the ultimate question, isn’t it? Why do people do things that piss us off, annoy us, and leave us frothing at the mouth?

Are they just doing it to annoy us? Are they oblivious to how

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they come across to others? Couldn’t they stop if they really wanted to?

My own view is that people are hardwired with certain personality characteristics, some of which can be extremely annoying. The brain is genetically loaded to a certain extent (psychologists currently estimate at least 50 percent) to be focused or distracted, gregarious or withdrawn, good at reading social cues or terrible. While good or bad parenting, cultural influences, education, spiritual work, and therapy can change and influence this, we all arrive on the planet with certain inherent tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses. Understanding how other people’s brains might be hardwired can help us cope with their seemingly bizarre (to us) behavior. You may be surprised to be learning so much about serious mental health issues in a book about working with difficult people. Here’s the reason: In my consulting practice, when I’m called in to mediate a group conflict, coach a problem executive, or rebuild a team, I uncover one of these issues at least 80

percent of the time.

Mental health problems at work

Let me give you a couple of examples. One involved a claim of sexual discrimination by the female employees in the legal department of a high-tech company. They believed that they were being treated differently than were the men in the department, who were allowed to work flexible hours and were held to different (lower) standards of productivity.

The main example of the different treatment was an attorney I’ll call Bob. When I dug under the surface, it turned out that while working at the office late at night, Bob terrified one of the women (“Mary”) by having a complete breakdown:

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throwing things, screaming, talking about suicide. She was understandably terrified. She left the office and complained to the company’s general counsel the next day.

Mary knew that Bob had been given time off to recuperate, a decision with which she agreed; clearly he needed a time-out!

Yet when he returned to work, he was also allowed a flexible schedule and permitted to work at home even though Mary, who had a new baby, had been denied such perks. Also, she and other women attorneys believed that Bob was not held to the same high performance standards that they were. To top it off, they all chorused in when I interviewed them, he was a lousy attorney.

Discrimination, they claimed.

My investigation revealed that they
were
being treated differently, but not because of sex. Bob had been diagnosed as bipolar and his doctor had suggested the reduced and work-athome schedule. Medical matters and accommodations for mental disabilities such as this must be kept confidential by the employer, so no one could tell the women why Bob was being allowed the flexible schedule. I found no discrimination in this case, even though I did recommend to the general counsel that even with accommodation for disabilities, he needed to make sure Bob was meeting performance standards. The women, of course, were disappointed in my finding, and I regretted that I could not reveal the underlying issue. Unfortunately, examples such as this are incredibly common.