Stop Pissing Me Off What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazy (25 page)

One of the reasons we don’t reach that flow state is that we all suffer from modern life-induced ADD. In order to have more flow and less ADD, try the following tips:

Ignore e-mail.
I know this is heresy in our e-mail–obsessed culture but trust me, the “e” in e-mail stands for “endless.” It will be there and you will be able to check it later. I tell all my clients and associates that I only check e-mail twice a day

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and that if it’s an emergency (someone had better be bleeding), the best way to reach me is by phone. Turn off the sound that alerts you to every incoming message and take a deep breath. You can do it. Most messages are not that important. If it’s your boss demanding attention, train him to wait. Trust me, he’s trainable. Try using, for example, the 1-2-3-Go! technique outlined earlier in this book.

Phone less.
Don’t pick up the phone on each ring. Let calls accumulate and then return phone calls twice a day, perhaps as near to 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. as you can. At these hours, people are apt to be in but not as busy as other times. And use your outgoing message strategically: Ask people to leave their number first so you don’t have to listen to endless rumbling.
Gossip on schedule.
While gossip can serve as the invisible glue that binds us to our coworkers and helps make work more fun, it can also be a huge time-sucker. Don’t let people just drop by. Schedule trips to the coffeepot and block off fifteenminute slots for visiting. If you have an office, close the door and hang up a sign. (Remember Lucy in the “Peanuts” cartoon? The doctor is “In” or not.) If you work in a cube, find a cute sign to put up or wear a hat that makes it clear you’re unavailable. Consider red for “stop—don’t bother me,” and green for “okay, come on in.”

One of our neighbors, the mother of three popular kids, despaired about the constant ringing phones and chiming doorbells. After a trip to Switzerland, the family landed on this system: Hanging up the Swiss flag meant that they were in a neutral state: not receiving visitors. No Swiss flag meant come on in! Even the smallest kids learned and respected the system. If kids can do it, your boss can also. As Dr. Phil loves to opine, we train people how to treat us.

Brain dump.
Take fifteen minutes at the end of every day to conduct a “brain dump” and make a to-do list for tomorrow.

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Clean off your desk so that you can walk in with a clear view the next day. When things get bad, I clean off my desk and put everything on the floor in front of it, where I can’t see the piles. Not a great long-term solution, but for bad days, it’s a lifesaver. I get a respite from all the depressing piles on my desk and the mental (and physical) space to tackle what I need to.

If these self-help strategies don’t work, you may need to hire the help of a professional organizer, time-management expert, and/or psychiatrist for your scattered thinking. Call for help whenever the going gets rough. What’s at stake is your very ability to enjoy your life. Work engages such a big chunk of your time that if you hate your work, you will be miserable for every hour you are there, and eventually that unhappiness will even bleed into non-work time.

As Aristotle observed, all humans seek happiness. This hasn’t changed in thousands of years, but you may need to work harder to achieve that flow state than the ancient Greeks did. People today simply have too many choices, too much stuff, and too much to do. Unless you can pare down, you’re unlikely to be happy, and everyone’s likely to annoy you.
deal Me in!

Though you should strive to pare down nonessential tasks, there are benefits of beneficence. That doesn’t mean becoming a workaholic or committing to more than you can reasonably do. What it does mean is engaging in the work that really matters—such as helping colleagues. Unless your workload is crushing, you’ll actually feel better, not worse, the more you agree to take on projects with other people. The feedback from working with them, and the joy it will bring you in terms

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of the helpful brain chemicals of connection (see Chapter 4) will bring you necessary rewards.

The Dalai Lama and other popular Buddhist leaders have brought the world many blessings. One of them is what the Dalai Lama calls the “science of compassion.” As a part of his work with the Mind and Life Institute
(
www.mindandlife.org
), which is a periodic gathering of respected neuroscientists and Buddhist leaders, he has been able to confirm the scientific validity of a standard Buddhist teaching: We should cultivate kindness because it makes us feel good, not just because it blesses the world. At the level of our brain chemistry, we feel good when we help others (even those we don’t like!).

why kindness Matters even in your workplace

But, you may protest, I have no desire to extend beneficence or healing power to my worst workplace enemy! If you need an attitude adjustment, consider the thoughts of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. “I believe you must respect human dignity,” he said. “I have fought all my life for that. I do not believe that the end justifies the means.” Wiesel stated that he himself saw men, women, and children sacrificed on an altar of racists and religious hatred. He nearly died at forced labor. Freed from Auschwitz as a teenager, he wandered Europe as an “undesirable.”

He settled in France, where he went to college and became a journalist—or, as he likes to say, “a witness.” “Suffering confers no privileges,” Wiesel states. As Wiesel paraphrased Nietzsche, “If you fight the devil, you become one.” “Hate,”

Wiesel says, “is an infectious disease.” If Wiesel can embrace beneficence and forgiveness after his experience in hell, surely we can survive our own workplace bullies and boors.

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how to use the Force to control your own anger

Though we know that angry outbursts in the workplace do more harm than good, we may need extra help and an attitude adjustment to control them. If you need more incentive to dial it back a notch, consider this: A new study in the
Annals of
Family Medicine
estimates that about 10 percent of emergency room cases could be avoided if people didn’t take action when they were angry. At three ERs in Missouri, injury patients who’d felt “irritable” before their accidents were 30 percent more likely to get hurt, while “hostile” people had double the injury risk of the normal, non-inquired population. Next time you want to slap a difficult coworker, keep your anger in check and try this one-minute exercise instead.

1. Sit in a chair with your feet on the floor and your eyes closed. Picture a stop sign and say to yourself,

“Stop.” Take three deep breaths, and as you exhale, say,

“Relax.”

2. Clench your fists while inhaling and relax them as you exhale. Clench your toes as you inhale and relax them

while exhaling.

3. Shrug your shoulders while inhaling, and then relax them as you exhale.

4. Inhale while tilting your head to the right, then exhale as you straighten. Repeat to the left. Inhale, and then relax. Open your eyes and reorient yourself.

Adapted from
In Control: No More Snapping at Your Family,
Sulking at Work, Steaming in the Grocery Line, Seething at Meet-
ings, StuffingYour Frustration
by Redford Williams, MD, and Virginia Williams, PhD.

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changing your workplace culture

If all your attempts to convince or cajole your workplace

“problem children” to behave seem to fail, you can still take responsibility for dealing with your own piece of the puzzle. You always retain the power to take unilateral action. Most of the strategies we’ve discussed so far require a certain amount of willingness and cooperation on the part of your coworkers in order to change the organization. Sometimes, however, people may promise to change while dragging their heels on actually doing so. Even then, you have more power than you might expect. You can still incubate positive change. By modeling for others the changes you would like to see in them, you can be effective in increasing your influence on the organization and indeed changing your very workplace DNA.

For example, one of my clients, Bill, was a young vice president of a pharmaceutical corporation. The company had recently merged with a much larger organization, creating layers of bureaucracy that both Bill and his group resisted. At some point, Bill realized that his team’s own actions were undermining its effectiveness, and he decided to persuade his team to abandon their protest. His words fell on deaf ears. They simply refused to budge. He tried again. They dug their heels in further. He circled back for another round. They shunned him. Finally, he briefly flirted with the idea of firing the entire lot. The momentary respite of that fantasy gave him the will to try something else, something more subtle. He stopped talking and just acted. Calmly, without a word, he just changed his own behavior and abandoned the notion of changing the group’s approach.

Bill followed the rules the new ownership demanded. When appropriate, he continued to advise his team of his own decisions to “go with the flow.” He dealt with his employees, as well

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as his supervisors, in a fair and even-handed manner, avoiding the politics and passive-aggressive sabotage that some of his teammates delivered. He stopped lecturing his group on how they needed to follow his example and surrender to the enemy. He remained a calm and cheerful example of leadership. Gradually, his employees adjusted and followed his lead. Although they continued to insist that they liked the old regime better, they slowly adapted to the new ways. Their resistance melted in droplets, but it did melt away.

Today, Bill is an executive vice president and his team leads the organization in sales for their global conglomerate. While people sometimes still talk about the “good old days,” they don’t actively resist the efforts and directives of headquarters. In five years, it’s likely that they’ll end up referring to these times as the good old days, too!

While one individual may not be able to change a whole system, you can always control your own behavior within the system and whether or not you continue to work for the organization. This gives you power. When you give up fighting with the other combatants without expecting that they change, you inspire by example, instead of convincing by argument.
use unilateral action

As you take on the role of leading in this way, it helps to tell your coworkers what you expect and then to be sure that you walk the talk. Use “I” statements and talk only about your own side of the street, instead of their bad behavior. Outline the ways in which you will change, instead of asking for others to change or focusing on their past misdeeds.

For your own sanity, give up hoping that others will appreciate your efforts. Someday they may, but in the meantime, if

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you’re using unilateral action, you need to attend to your own business. If you do notice tiny changes in the direction you want others to move, appreciate their efforts, no matter how small. Last, but certainly not least, spend some time thinking about why the system seems so resistant to change and what kinds of healthier systems you could encourage.

One of my clients, Diana, an HR manager who had a longrunning battle with John, a marketing director, used this technique. John had continually ignored and even sabotaged various HR policies that he considered a waste of his time and energy. Diana, however, had to deal with an indignant parade of employees bullied by John’s “take-no-prisoners” management style. She tried to persuade John that he was violating good management practices, as well as company policy. No matter what approach she tried, he rebuffed her efforts. After talking with me, she devised a new plan. Trapped in a no-win game, Diana found John working late one night and informed him that she was no longer going to harangue him about the problems he was causing employees. She realized that he didn’t want or seem to need her advice, and so she would stop the campaign. Diana told him that she would inform employees that John would be handling his own HR

problems henceforth. (How do we like that for shrewd?) She explained her new policy without anger and advised John that she was open to suggestions about how they could make their relationship work better.

For once, Diana stunned John into silence. While initially not willing to acknowledge her efforts, he started to seek out Diana for advice and counsel over time, as employee complaints started piling up on his desk like planes stacked up for takeoff over O’Hare airport. Today, while Diana still ruefully describes John as one of her “problem children,” the unilateral truce seems to be working.

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While such unilateral disarmament may appear to demonstrate weakness during the throes of battle, it can actually lead to a more lasting peace than would continuing a futile fight. History offers many examples of unilateral action-yielding results. In 1948, for example, several years after the end of World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin blockaded West Berlin, insisting that Allied troops leave the city. The Western Allies considered blasting through the blockade with an armed convoy but feared starting World War III. Instead, they chose the unilateral action of mounting a huge airlift of food and supplies to the isolated Berliners. Frustrated, Stalin called off the blockade and agreed to negotiate.

Sometimes we can use skillful words to turn around a stalled situation. During the American Civil War, for example, President Lincoln spoke sympathetically about the Southern rebels in a public address. Fully aware that he would need to unify the country after the war, he started the process of healing with his own unilateral action. When a staunch Unionist lambasted him for speaking kindly of his enemies when he should be destroying them, Lincoln answered with his classic reply: “Why, madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”