Stop Pissing Me Off What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazy (12 page)

Bosses and colleagues will shake their heads, mystified about such people. What can we do about this uneven performance?

How can this individual do so well and then so terribly? In addition, people with mood problems (whether bipolar or unipolar) will frequently be difficult to motivate with external reinforcement. People who suffer from mood disorders can be extremely sensitive to both criticism and blame, frequently having their antennae up for anything that smacks of defamation of their character. Even positive comments can be taken the wrong way.

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  Are They Doing It Just to Piss You Off?

what you can do

Again, diagnosis by amateurs can be dangerous. Don’t try this at home! My experience is, however, that understanding why some people may act in such unpredictable ways can help you calm down your own tendency to blame them and help you strategize more productive interactions.

The best way to handle colleagues like this is to focus on making specific requests for them to change their
behavior
(not their attitude, or their personality), as you’ll learn in the next chapter. The problem is that they may not be able to change their behavior to line up with your request. At that point you’ll need to consider your options: work around them, complain to a higher authority, or move on to another job, which is discussed in later chapters.
Just checking

There are some micromanagers among us. These are the people who lean-in, butt-in, stick their noses in and generally go where no one has invited them to appear. These people may be suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and/or extreme anxiety disorder. Lesser examples of these personality traits—which may not reach the clinical level—are seen in the micromanagers among us, both the bosses and the colleagues in our workplace who have to have their hands in everything. At the extreme levels, they may check and recheck their own work and everyone else’s. They may insist that all details are important and may want you to pay attention to things that don’t add value to the bottom-line result.

Again, many matching problems result from this. If you’re in the don’t-sweat-the-small-stuff camp, you will curse these

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 Pissing Me Off!

people as overbearing nervous ninnies. If you never saw a detail that you didn’t like, you’ll love working with such people. Detail-oriented jobs such as accounting or law may be perfect places for these traits.

If the traits are extreme, however, sufferers may be driven to distraction by their own behavior. Classic examples include returning to the house three times to make sure that the stove is turned off, that the refrigerator door is closed, and the faucet isn’t running. At the more extreme end of the spectrum, people suffering from OCD may wash their hands compulsively, scrub floors that are already spotless, and engage in other extreme behaviors. At that level, of course, they need medical intervention.

More mild forms of anxiety and compulsion abound, however, and working with a micromanager can be painful. Again, once you understand that a person’s behavior is meant not to annoy you but to manage his or her own anxiety, you may find that the behavior doesn’t bother you as much. If you’re still bothered, you can make skillful requests for change in behavior as outlined in the next chapter. Because such people may not be able to change, however, a good tactic is to assign them tasks that are well aligned with their personalities. For example, you could ask them to fact-check your articles. In the right job, all that perfectionism can be a blessing. If that’s not possible, you can still complain to HR or leave, as outlined in later chapters.

all Mixed up

Of course, brain chemistry issues can exist in a variety of forms and combinations. For example, a person can have both a bipolar and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

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diagnosis. The leading psychiatrists and neuropsychologists in this arena will tell you that many of these labels are a requirement for treatment and demanded by insurance companies, but that they don’t really describe the totality of the person and the individual problem. If you’ve ever suffered from the flu, had broken ribs, and needed a root canal all in the same week, you can understand how complex it is to have more than one medical issue at one time. On the flip side, not everyone who’s difficult has a biological mental disorder. You may also work with people who have what are called
character disorders
.
character disorders

“My boss is a psychopath,” a client of mine insists. “She is a pathological liar!” Psychopaths, sociopaths, borderline, and schizoid personalities are what are called character disorders. Generally (although there is some dispute about this among experts), these are parts of our characters that are formed by our life experiences rather than by our genetic makeup. Abuse, neglect, or trauma can each lead to character disorders. Of course, these character defects can be fueled or even driven by the various brain chemistry problems described in the previous sections. You can imagine how hard it would be to work with someone who lies pathologically, without remorse; who hurts people without caring; who is prone to violence or who has a cruel streak. If a person like this is in an authority position over you, you are in a very difficult tight spot with only limited options. Voice your concerns diplomatically to your supervisor’s boss and/or to your HR director. If the situation doesn’t change, quietly hunt for another job and get out of there as fast as you can (see Chapter 16 for more about both of these

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 Pissing Me Off!

options). There truly is no winning if you’re working for one of these people. Be careful, however, about making this diagnosis. Work your way through understanding and compassion first, and then consider the paradigm you’re using—in other words, from what point of view and context are you viewing the situation?

I hope that, a result of reading this chapter, you’ve begun to stop taking other people’s behavior personally. Perhaps they’re acting the way they are because of cultural, gender, or generational differences; perchance they’re suffering from brain-based biological illness or character disorders. No matter. Instead of fretting about
why
they’re doing what they’re doing or whether they’re doing it just to piss you off, you, now enlightened, will concentrate your energies on learning how to respond skillfully, which is the subject of the next few chapters. You’ll stop wasting your energy yelling at their boat for ramming you, and instead learn how to navigate your own craft with speed and style.

your

relationship toolbox

How to Move froM PiSSed off to Powerful

PiSSed off

Powerful

Wasting time wondering why

Quickly understand why, then move on

Wishing people were more like Valuing differences among people you

Assume someone could change Realize most people can’t change who if they wanted to

they are

Asking someone to change their Skil ful y requesting behavior changes nature

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06.

HAvE i TOLD YOu LATELY THAT

YOu BuG ME?

How to have difficult conversations with

difficult people.

Sue is pissed! Her coworker in the next cube clears his throat every ten to twelve seconds, every single work day, without fail. The noise is so loud that callers on her line ask if she is in the car with the motor running. Not one to suffer in silence, Sue has made her feelings known—to her sister, her mother, her girlfriends, even the bartender at her neighborhood pub. Occasionally, she yells “Be quiet!” over the walls in the general direction of the guy who’s driving her insane, but nothing changes. At this rate, she’s going to have to wear earmuffs to work.
learn the art of winning, not whining

Why do we whine? Do we really think that it gets results?

Psychologist Gay Hendricks believes that when the whining involves another person, we’re criticizing that person because we believe that regardless of whether we’ve asked someone to do (or not do) something, there was an implied agreement that was broken—for example, not making a noisy nuisance of

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 Pissing Me Off!

yourself. There is another truth as well, and that is that most of us haven’t learned how to make effective requests in the first place. Instead, we complain.

Consider this common workplace scenario: A team leader wants someone on his team to develop a better attitude, and so has a number of conversations with the employee about the employee’s bad attitude. However, nothing changes. The bad attitude still oozes everywhere. The team leader keeps talking; the employee keeps resisting. No surprise, really. Why?

Because the leader has failed to explain exactly what behavior he does want. Instead, he just keeps complaining about the employee’s
attitude
, a vague term that could mean anything. Isabella, for example, is a bright young director of a hightech company. The company requested coaching from me after she had several run-ins with lower-level staff people who complained constantly about her condescending, harsh attitude. Talks with HR failed to change her behavior. The tech company really wanted to retain Isabella, because she was brilliant at her work. They also feared they’d be slapped with a lawsuit if they canned her. When I met with the senior leaders of the organization, they summed up the problem in the same manner as did the subordinates: Isabella was harsh and condescending in her tone. I listened to numerous examples of

“he said/she said.”

Frustrated, I requested the performance reviews. They were similarly vague and unhelpful. Moreover, they were so loosely done that it’s likely they’d never stand up to legal scrutiny, despite the fact that they had allegedly been reviewed by the firm’s employment attorneys. The reviews were laced with subjective comments, including that her attitude was “condescending,” “brusque,” and “short with staff.”

The problem resides with the word
attitude
: It can have different connotations depending upon context. If you’re a punk

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  Have I Told You Lately that You Bug Me?

rocker or a rap singer, attitude is everything. Labeling someone with attitude can be a compliment. However, when it comes to performance, the word is anemic. It generates confusion, caution, and a whole lot of nothing. It’s not attitude you’re after. It’s behavior. My client needed to learn how to make specific, behavioral requests, and so do you.

a Matter oF approach

In the workplace, you’ve got lions and tyrants and boors who will only respond to behavioral requests. Instead of asking them to change an attitude, you must make it a measurable, objective, observable behavior for which the person is held accountable. Consider Isabella. Instead of talking about being harsh or condescending, I coached her to change the way she interacted. I gave her tools regarding what to say and do. In place of Isabella’s usual approach of dropping a project on a subordinate’s desk and barking orders, I coached her to hand off that project differently. She learned to introduce the issue softly, saying something such as “Do you have a minute to talk about a new project? Is this a good time to talk?” “What’s your work load; do you have time to take on new work?”

Focus on the Behavior

The key is to forget about attitude and deal with behavior. You’ll find that’s actually easier because it’s clear and straightforward as opposed to vague and subjective. If you are judging someone’s work ethic, level of engagement, or attitude negatively, there are concrete, observable behaviors that are leading you to that conclusion. Spell out the expectations

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clearly—whatever the issue. Tell a chronically late employee that she has to come in on time. Demand that a person who is frequently having a good time on the phone to eliminate personal phone calls. Ask the Internet shopper to refrain from surfing. You get the idea. It’s simple. It’s direct. It’s unequivocally clear. Every time you even think about complaining, pause and convert that whining into a specific request. What makes a request specific is that it is actionable. It is something the person can say or do. Anything else is too vague, not measurable, and is unlikely to get the results you need. Whining does nothing except weaken your own mood and the moods of those to whom you speak. Even more important, whining doesn’t work.