Stop Pissing Me Off What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazy (11 page)

Another situation I mediated involved a large trade association. The head meeting planner was labeled as “difficult”

by many of her coworkers. She’d worked for an authoritarian, structured government agency before being hired by the trade association, which had a relaxed style. Clashes were common.

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Her personality style didn’t help: She tended to have poor people skills, failed to develop rapport with her coworkers, and snapped at them when she was under stress. In fact, she yelled so loudly that one woman filed a claim under the organization’s policy about threats and violence. When I investigated, I found that the meeting planner was being treated for hepatitis C with a new experimental drug. I happened to know from another client investigation that such drugs cause mood swings and temper tantrums, even though they are lifesaving.

Theoretically, I should not have advised my client about this potential issue, but I knew the drug was impacting the meeting planner’s mood and performance. Yet even if they knew why she acted the way she did, they could not discipline or fire her because of the disability issue.

Last but not least, I was brought in to resolve a discrimination complaint among a group of utility construction workers. When I interviewed these large, tough men, they had no interest in talking about the claim. What they wanted to discuss was “Scotty,” a coworker they’d toiled with for years who had undergone a dramatic personality change in the past few months. They were afraid he would “go postal,” but none of their supervisors would listen to them.

Scotty’s wife had left him, and his oldest son was in jail on drunk-driving charges. Not only that; he revealed, when I talked with him, that his much-beloved dog had just died. Talk about a plot for a bad country song!

It turned out that the executive vice president would not listen to me either when I counseled him that he should have a medical evaluation done for Scotty. I had to pull in the outside counsel to convince the EVP, and even then the EVP agreed to the exam grudgingly, since he himself had worked his way up

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through the ranks to his current position, knew “Scotty,” and found him harmless.

A psychologist who specializes in threat evaluations found that Scotty was indeed dangerously depressed, potentially prone to violence, and “unfit for duty.” He was placed on medical leave. I’ve mediated many such cases in my years as an employment attorney. Often, they don’t have easy resolutions—for the “difficult” employee or the colleagues and managers who have to deal with him. However, understanding and compassion do help. Consider the fact that the difficult person in your work group may not be just difficult, but very ill.

the structure of Brain-Based illness

Part of the problem we have is that we’re hovering on the cutting edge of a virtual revolution in brain science. Neurologists have learned more about the brain in the past ten years than in the previous hundred! Yet, most of us are still stuck in a time warp. We live in a culture that largely believes that behavior is a matter of choice and/or good therapy. However, thanks to the latest research in brain science, there is increasing acknowledgment in the scientific community that some people are just born with personalities that are challenging to the norm. What an increasing number of neuropsychologists and psychiatrists will tell you is that in effect, people really are hardwired, and that hardwiring will not be tamed or controlled by any software we might use. To a certain extent, people really can’t help being the way they are.

This doesn’t mean that you should put up with abuse or incompetence in the workplace. However, you need to realize that most of what we think of as annoying is not likely to

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change, nor is it the result of any particular individual resisting change. So, to at least some extent, our task is to (1) increase our
understanding
of why people are they way they are, (2) decrease our own stress level so we’re not so reactive to others’ flaws, and (3) increase our tolerance of others’ differences and annoying eccentricities.

Repeat this mantra often: I can’t change what I can’t change!

no Brain, no gain: knowledge is power

We live in an exciting and wonderful time for understanding how the brain works and how it affects mood and attention. My own experience is that many of the things our coworkers do that we can’t stand are caused by either mood or attention problems. In addition, our own reactivity to these problems may also be caused by our own mood or attention problems. While there are many excellent resources for learning more about this in Appendix A of this book, I will present a vastly oversimplified version of these issues here.

A simple way of thinking about the brain is that it is roughly divided into thirds in terms of function. The feeling part of the brain, or limbic system, is the seat of emotional balance, mood relationship, intimacy, spiritual connection, and all the pleasure drives (or overdrives). The thinking part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex, is the seat of knowledge, insight, planning, and decision-making, while the brain stem or reptilian brain orchestrates bodily processes.

Neuropsychologists have referred to the pre-frontal cortex of the brain as being akin to a conductor of an orchestra. It is also referred to as “executive function.” People who have

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attention and focus problems are said to have executive function problems. These people could possibly have Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD), although many other things can also affect executive function. Many people who may not meet the clinical definition for ADD do have executive function problems, or low levels of executive function.

“Attention problems” or “attention issues” seem like benign terms, and yet such problems can affect every bit of a person’s life. Consider the conductor analogy. A person can have an IQ that is off the charts, a sunny, giving personality, and great musical gifts, but even with these individual superstar performers in the brain, the person will have many challenges if there is no conductor. Imagine, if you will, the Philadelphia Orchestra with Jean-Pierre Rampal as the flutist, the rock-star violinist from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra as the first chair violinist, and a kindergartener conducting. Imagine the chaos!

In the workplace, these people with “attention differences”

can sometimes be brilliant, witty, and charismatic, but you may become frustrated by the fact that sometimes, they appear unable to stay on task.

Even if you are open-minded, compassionate, and bend over backward to educate yourself about your colleagues’

emotional problems or imbalances, it may not be possible to tolerate having them in the workplace. You may need to skillfully confront them about their behavior, complain to HR, and/or fire them if you’re their manager. Before deciding which action to take, it helps to understand why their behavior may be occurring. Sometimes, the reason someone bothers us so much is because we think that they’re purposely behaving the way they are. If we can depersonalize this issue, we can calm down and plan our best options.

If their disorganization, problems with attention or impulse control, or hyperfocus on the wrong things causes problems

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for your business or makes it impossible for you to do your job, something needs to happen. However, it’s not helpful to become an armchair doctor and attempt to diagnose medical problems without an appropriate clinical background. Let the qualified medical professionals provide the diagnosis and recommend treatment. Even if you think you’re sure about a diagnosis, keep your opinions to yourself and your non-work confidants. Certain kinds of mental disabilities may be legally protected in the workplace and if you spout off about them, you could be subjected to defamation or discrimination claims. Further, unless you’re a doctor, there is no way to be sure of someone’s diagnosis.

What you can offer, however, is compassion and understanding. Both will go a long way toward helping you work with such people successfully. In the right job, with the appropriate structure and support (and/or the right medication) these people can be brilliant, creative, and successful.
in the Mood: understanding clinical depression

Have you ever worked with someone who was like Eeyore in
Winnie-the-Pooh
—dour, negative, and depressed, even on the sunniest days? This person may be dealing with chronic and clinical depression. Those dark moods can affect others in the workplace. Modern brain science is validating what many of us know instinctively: Depression is catching.

One reason this is so is because of what neuropsychologists call limbic brain resonance. The limbic part of our brain is the portion that governs mood and feeling. Again, we may be genetically loaded to be happy or sad, optimistic or hopeless. We can work to change these things (and if you want to try, Martin Seligman’s book
Learned Optimism
is a great place to

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start), but if we have clinical depression working against us, either genetic or brought on by trauma, it can be an uphill, frequently impossible challenge.

Our limbic brains are, to some extent, wired to resonate in concert with others. When you work with someone who is suffering from untreated clinical depression, his or her brain can affect yours in ways that you may not consciously imagine. This is because, as explained in Chapter 4, we’re wired to connect. New brain imaging technology shows that when we see, hear, or feel someone else’s emotions, our brains light up in the same areas as those of the person we’re with. The neural pathways in the feeling part of our brains fire the same as if we were experiencing the feeling ourselves. Some people, of course, are even more sensitive to this kind of “emotional contagion,” but most of us experience it to some extent. You will need to work hard to protect yourself from catching another person’s mood.

Unfortunately, today “only 20 percent of people with major depression get even minimally adequate treatment, and 43

percent aren’t being treated at all,” says Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health
(
www.

nimh.nih.gov
). T
he costs are staggering: Mental illness causes more disability cases than any other form of illness in adults in America and accounts for well more than $100 billion in lost productivity each year. Sufferers also have a higher risk of developing illnesses such as heart disease, and an increased risk of substance abuse and suicide. Dr. Insel notes that while the United States has about 18,000 homicides a year, it has more than 31,000 suicides.

In any year, nearly 10 percent of the U.S. population suffers from depression. In my experience, depressives cause workplace disruptions far beyond the statistics.

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what you can do

What do you do about this dilemma? First of all, recognize the symptoms of clinical depression: negativity, irritation, unreasonable outbursts, sadness, and sleep problems. Have compassion for the person who may be suffering from these problems. The Shirley MacLaine character in
Steel Magnolias
nailed depression perfectly when she said, “I’m not crazy, I’ve just been in a very bad mood for the last forty years!” If you know such a person well, as a friend, it may be appropriate to gently and carefully suggest that he or she seek medical attention. However, you should think this through and be very cautious in doing so. You especially need to be careful about talking to the person if you’re his or her supervisor. Employees have a right to keep their medical problems private. If you don’t know for sure that someone is being treated, speaking about it is even more problematic. You especially want to avoid talking about your suspicions to others because that could constitute defamation. At the least, it could be a privacy violation.

If you suspect that someone is suffering from an untreated mental illness, your best course is to offer some version of the following: “If there’s anything going on at work that’s affecting your success, please let me know. If there’s anything going on in your personal life that’s affecting your success, that’s none of my business, but we have employee assistance that you could contact.”

Thus, you open that door but you do not walk through it. If the person volunteers something about his or her condition, you can be compassionate but should avoid giving advice. It is okay to share your own experience if you’ve dealt with a similar situation.

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Bipolar illness in the workplace

People who have bipolar disorder (which used to be called manic-depression) can wreak havoc in any workplace. While experts estimate that only 2 to 3 percent of Americans suffer from this disorder, those who do can have a large impact. Typically, these people can be up, down, or sideways on any given day. They also can run on nothing but air for days and weeks, accomplishing an incredible amount of brilliant work with no sleep or food, dazzling everyone with their success.

Medical researchers are now realizing that many people who are struggling at work or at home oftentimes have a milder form of bipolar disorder. Untreated, this disease gets much worse. Life is difficult for people who suffer from bipolar disorder. They frequently suffer from sleep problems, especially in the spring and summer, and they may have trouble getting out of bed in the winter. At work, performance may be uneven. It may be great one week, or for a month, or a year, and then their performance may flop for an equal amount of time. For a brilliant and compassionate memoir on this problem, read
Unquiet Mind
by Kay Redfield Jamison. Jamison has suffered from bipolar disorder for years and now serves as a psychiatry professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where she specializes in the disorder that plagues her.