Early in my career, I worked on this team and I was having trouble dealing with this one guy. It seemed no matter what I said, he had something better to say. Every time I had an idea, he would say something like, “No, that won’t work,” or “You haven’t been here that long, so you wouldn’t understand….” I felt he was condescending and that he never wanted to hear my point of view. I asked someone else I worked with what he thought of him and he said he loved him. He was so smart and a real asset to the company. I pressed on and asked if he thought he was rude or condescending. “No way,” he said. Others seemed to agree
So I started thinking that maybe it was because I was a woman, or because I was young, (back then.) That made me even angrier. How dare he! Now I was more determined to make him see my point of view. But the more I tried, the more he would cut me off. Why did everyone think this guy was so great? I started noticing that he was nice to everyone else, except me. Why were we clashing?
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. The tension between us was killing me. So after the next team meeting, I asked if I could talk to him in private. I felt kind of intimidated because of his position, (way higher than mine,) but too bad. He needed to hear what I had to say. “I feel like when we’re in these meetings, you disregard everything I have to say. It’s like you think what I’m saying has no value, so you just blow me off.”
He looked genuinely shocked. “I have no idea what you are talking about. Can you give me an example,” he asked.
I was prepared. I reminded him, “When I said, why don’t we let the managers be responsible for setting up their own training schedules,’ you said, ‘I know you’ve only been here for a few months, so you wouldn’t understand, but the managers won’t do that.’ And then you just moved on.”
He asked me why I took offense to that.
“I wouldn’t understand? Why, because I’m stupid? Because I’m a woman?”
Again genuinely shocked, he asked, “How did you get there from that comment?”
What was I supposed to think??? Well, here’s what I learned…
Mr. X was really not trying to give me a hard time. The more we talked the more I realized that it was my perception of what he was saying, not his intent. I was so concerned with proving myself, that anytime he didn’t agree with me, or moved on, I took it personally. I reviewed all his statements in my head and realized, that’s exactly what they were, statements. He really did think I wouldn’t understand because he thought his managers could be non-responsive and I probably wouldn’t understand that if I hadn’t experienced it yet. Of course he was wrong. If he would have explained that, I would have gotten it; I had worked with difficult managers before. But the bottom line is, his statements were not personal attacks on me. Actually, they reflected his frustration with the management team. He probably could have put it a little differently, but I was over-reacting. And the deeper I got, the more over-reacting I did. Instead of having this conversation early on, I built up a whole case against him that started with rudeness and morphed all the way into discrimination. He was right, that was a big leap and unfounded.
My new favorite phrase … assume good intent. If you do, you will find you can solve most communication issues with a quick conversation. If you depersonalize, you will be able to communicate much more effectively because you can take the emotion out of it and concentrate on the facts. So stop being so conceited like me. 99 out of 100 times, it really isn’t about you. You’re just making it about you.
Think about it … abbe@TECResourceCenter.com
