Stop Pissing Me Off What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazy (26 page)

Sometimes you just have to “Walk On,” as U2 reminds us. That’s what schoolteacher Christine Pelton of Piper, Kansas, decided to do. After discovering that nearly a fifth of her biology students had plagiarized their semester projects from the Internet, Pelton sought and received the backing of the district to fail the twenty-eight sophomores. Yet after parents complained, the school board reversed the decision. Her integrity at stake, Pelton resigned when she couldn’t convince the board to change its stance. “The students no longer listened to what I had to say,” she said. “They knew if they didn’t like any|  198  |

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  Take This Job and Love It

thing in my classroom from here on out, they can just go to the school board and complain.”

Pelton didn’t feel that she could compromise her own honest standards if she stayed. In this case, the costs to her own personal integrity would have been too great. When conflict violates our own sense of self and what’s most important to our identity, sometimes the best solution is to just “walk on.”

When all of your other frantic efforts to deal with the liars, tyrants, and boors at work have failed, you may need to walk. You may decide to walk into the office of a higher authority or another job all together, the subjects of the last two chapters. your

relationship toolbox

How to Move froM PiSSed off to Powerful

PiSSed off

Powerful

Working without focus or energy Doing what it takes to work with flow Becoming less and less

Seeking help if you can’t focus

effective at work

Al owing others to interrupt your Managing your time and interruptions energy

Disconnecting from coworkers

Compassion and connection

Exploding in anger

Managing your own moods

Al owing others to control

Taking unilateral actions

conflict

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16.

if ALL ELSE fAiLS,

PuLL THE firE ALArM

How to get their attention.

Jed had a reputation as a “hands on,” caring San Francisco Bay area CEO. He knew his entire staff of one-hundred employees well—in addition to their spouses and children. He’d built a successful construction business, and didn’t hesitate to wade into the trenches with “his guys” and always leave his door open for questions or conversation.

After the dotcom bust, the business tanked. Projects stalled, clients paid late. His foreman and managers started bickering among themselves about who was doing the most work, what resources were available, and even more trivial concerns.

“They’re fighting about every nut and bolt that goes out of the warehouse,” complained Jed. “I don’t have time to mediate; I have my own problems.”

sometimes it needs to Be all about you

If you’ve read this far I hope you’ve tried all the techniques to resolve your workforce dilemma: you’ve learned to identify

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 Pissing Me Off!

when it’s you, not them; you’ve learned to make requests, not complaints; and, you’ve managed your own stress and happiness level. And yet….the issue (and the difficult coworker) remains. This chapter contains some last ditch suggestions to solve the problem.

Recycling conflict—the kind that repeats itself and doesn’t ever get fully resolved—creates many workplaces messes. Einstein once said, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them.” That Einstein quotation holds a key to the successful resolution of recycling conflict. The problem is the human tendency to try to solve a conflict by doing
more
of what already isn’t working. As Einstein also supposedly said, “Insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results.”

If, for example, two managers are locked in a conflict about the budget, they tend to repeat strategies that are not working. One person gets more logical, for example, while the other person gets more emotional. Both people are bent on being right about some issue. As the conflict heats up, both individuals argue more forcefully for the “rightness” of their position. Neither person realizes that it’s the act of needing to be right that’s causing the problem. If you tend to be one of the people who share this need to be right, ask yourself, “Would I rather be right or would I rather be happy?”

Beyond that question, when you notice you’re locked in a repeated conflict with whatever workplace boor or tyrant is driving you batty, try to stop yourself and become conscious of the repetitive nature of the conflict. Add the crucial ingredient of awareness. Notice when you’re stuck in the same conflict, and make a conscious choice to abandon a pattern with no positive payoff. When you catch yourself doing more of what already isn’t working, pause and do something—anything!—

else.

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16.
  If All Else Fails, Pull the Fire Alarm

having a “good” Fight

Take a deep breath and dig down to a different level. Frequently, the way out of a recycling conflict is to fight more, not less! Yes, you read that statement correctly. If a conflict persists, it may be because you’re not discussing the deeper issue. For example, as is frequently the case, Jed’s underlings weren’t fighting enough about the right issues. They actually needed to fight more! When I sat down with them, some basic detective work revealed that they were all incredibly worried about the financial health of the business but no one was talking about that issue. They were all too frightened. Jed—because of his own pressure and worries—was not talking about money either. In fact, his usual available self had gone missing. He’d withdrawn and spent more and more time in the office with the door closed, poring over the financials. His behavior scared everyone.

The solution? Jed needed to come clean. He needed to share the financial reality of the company with his employees and seek their input on how to make things work during the economic downturn. These discussions generated more fights and conflicts, but they created productive conflicts, what I call

“good” fights. Conflict about ideas and about the right issues—

not personality disputes or excuses to torpedo the other guy—

lead to good fights.

Here are some questions and comments that will encourage your coworkers to cough up the real issues, not whatever they’re fussing about on the surface. Once someone has stated his or her position (solution to the problem), try these responses: n I’m wondering why you want X?

n When did you first decide that you wanted X?

n If you can’t get X, what will you do?

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n If you can’t get X, what’s the next best thing?

n What’s important to you about X?

n What’s most important to you about X?

n What’s least important to you about X?

n I’m puzzled about why you want X.

n I’m curious about your reasons for proposing X.

n Explain to me how this solution might work for both of us. n Well, that’s an interesting idea. What other ideas do you have that might work for both of us?

n What do you think will happen if we don’t find a creative solution that meets the needs and interests of both of us?

n What would you suggest I tell my team (group, organization, etc.) if we don’t create a solution that meets everyone’s needs and interests?

n What standards do you think we should use to resolve this issue?

n What might be an innovative idea that would allow us all to get what we want?

You may find, for example, that even though you’ve been locked in an epic battle with Barbara the Bitch in accounting about the way you do your reports, what she really wants is a more reasonable workload—something over which you have no control. Once you learn that this is the issue, however, you can at least commiserate, and conspire with her to win more resources for accounting during the next budget hassle. Identifying the other person’s underlying needs and interests when you’re stuck in a recycled conflict, or when the person is trying to stonewall or win at all costs, requires that you engage in detective work. What’s most important is that you listen and try to understand the other person’s story. When we’re in conflict, we always have a story—a plot line, if you will—usually one that justifies our proposed solution.

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  If All Else Fails, Pull the Fire Alarm

If we focus on listening and ask open-ended questions as outlined in the previous list, eventually the other person or parties will reveal a clue that will lead us to their underlying need or interest—the real issue that they’re withholding and not talking about. For pit bulls intent on winning at all costs, for example, we may discover they need a way to save face. They may need to take a time-out to consider their real options. You may be able to find a small point to give them an unimportant win that will help them save face.

All of this, of course, also requires that we identify our own needs and interests and avoid positions. This is the most important step in so-called interest-based conflict management and negotiation. The premise of this system is that it is possible for people to gain most or all of what the disputants want if they are willing to continue talking until they come up with a creative solution. This is the most powerful tool in your ability to unstick a recurring conflict.

the power oF negotiation

Other kinds of negotiation systems focus on helping you win the most for your side. Those systems tend to focus on short-term gain for one party rather than long-term gains for both parties and for the relationship or the entire organization. In a workplace, you’d best assume that you will be there for the duration, and that therefore, creating a good working relationship remains an important goal. Although you can leave a job in which you can’t creatively manage the conflict, this is an expensive (although popular) solution—both in terms of emotion and money. In addition, even if you exit a job because of destructive conflict, you may meet your nemesis again. This is true in many

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industries; the world is becoming a very small place. You never know when you might run into Barbara the B----again.

A need or interest is the underlying reason why we think we must have our way in any dispute. It is the reason why we think our solution is the best. In this form of conflict management, you must agree—to at least some extent—to be vulnerable, to reveal why you want something and to declare what’s really important to you about an issue. Many people are afraid to do this, especially at work. We’re fearful that if we acknowledge an underlying need or interest, the issue will be used against us. Could this happen? Absolutely! I don’t want to suggest that other people will always play fair or show sympathy. What I do know, however, is that it is difficult to formulate sustainable agreements if we are unwilling to reveal our underlying needs.

What happens instead is that if one party wins and the other feels cheated, the “loser” will exact revenge against the winner at some future point during the implementation of the agreement through foot dragging, sabotage, or other forms of passive-aggressive behavior. If we don’t stop to understand the real needs of the parties, the solution we reach may not be the best or most creative for everyone over the long haul. In addition, we may not be considering the needs of the customers, clients, coworkers, or shareholders that the parties represent, which could lead to a fatal flaw in any suggested solution. The other reason to reveal our own needs and interests is because people at work usually know how we feel even if we don’t tell them. If you asked Barbara, for example, what she thinks her nickname might be in the office, I’ll bet she could tell you!