Stop Pissing Me Off What to Do When the People You Work with Drive You Crazy (14 page)

This
might
have been useful; perhaps they had the agenda on there or needed to take notes of the meeting. But these clowns constantly e-mailed each other during the meeting

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06.
  Have I Told You Lately that You Bug Me?

with scurrilous e-mail messages. One person would say something aloud in the meeting and three other guys would e-mail things such as, “dog breath, that’s the stupidest comment anyone ever made!”

I stared at their screens in disbelief. Why, I wondered, were they paying me so much to understand the obvious problem?

Of course, we had to confiscate their laptops and force them to actually talk face-to-face with one another. This proved to be an excruciating exercise for this group but eventually, they improved their communication skills.

are you listening to Me?

There may come a time in the whole 1-2-3-Go! process when you must activate that annoying but essential skill of listening. The target of your request may actually want to hold forth on his or her own point of view. If this roadblock occurs, don’t be distracted. All the explanations in the world can’t stop you from delivering your request! Nod, smile, cluck sympathetically, and repeat your request. If they deliver an absolute knockout “no way,” continue to nod, smile, and say, “I understand, but will you do it anyway?” Trust me, if you deliver these responses often enough, they’ll decide that they can’t get around you and will, in all likelihood, conform to your request just to get rid of you.

If that doesn’t work, you really may have to break down and listen. As you do, it can be helpful to consider another of Ron Suskind’s tricks for getting people to talk about things they don’t want to talk about. “First, make apologies. You say,

‘Listen, I’m going to ask you some really stupid questions so bear with me.’ But you also say, ‘Here’s why. . .” Second, you have to be interested in people, no matter what they do. I’m

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 Pissing Me Off!

fascinated by people, and when they see this, they respond. It also helps to consider my ‘good enough reasons’ rule: People do what they do for good enough reasons. They may not be your reasons or mine, but they’re good enough for them. And if they know you’re attentive to their motivations, people will tell you the most astonishing things.”

listen well

Realize that it’s hard to listen well—most people don’t. Part of the problem is that we live in an increasingly visual world with screens everywhere: computers, video games, TV, and movies. We don’t sit around the kitchen table telling stories often enough. We move fast; listening requires that we slow down. We can become passionate in our listening. We can learn to listen with the same energy and enthusiasm that we put into talking. Instead of listening for evidence that confirms our point of view, we can listen for the creative energy in the conflict—both in ourselves and in others. We can listen for what challenges our view in order to understand how others see the world.

When you do decide to listen to find out what the other person’s “good enough reason” might be, follow these tips:
1. remember filters.
We all hear what is said through our own filters. Filters can include our assumptions, biases, our own history, experience, and so forth.

2. Listen as a witness.
Ask, “How would I listen to this person if I knew I was going to be called as an objective witness in court?” “How can I listen well enough to hear the still, small voice inside me?”

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3. Clarify.
Before you speak, make sure you understand what the other person is saying. Ask open-ended, nonleading questions (who, what, where, when) until you do understand.

4. restate.
Ask, “I think you said ‘X’; is that accurate?”

Continue restating until your partner agrees that you

heard him or her accurately.

5. Pause before you speak.
Ask yourself which conflict style you’re using, and why. Is it the style that will serve you best over the long term of this relationship? Is the response you’re considering likely to lead to more satisfaction for you, and more creativity and productivity for your team? What response would be most likely to

lead to those results?

6. at the end of a communication, summarize the conversa-
tion and clarify the original reason for the communica-
tion.
Did the speaker want your advice, feedback, a sympathetic ear, action, or a solution to a problem? Be sure you know why you were asked to listen and what

you’re expected to do—if anything—about the communication. Many of us jump in too quickly to give advice or fix a problem before even bothering to ask if the speaker wants advice.

7. assume 100 percent of the responsibility for the com-
munication.
Assume leadership in your communication. Assume that it is your responsibility to listen until you understand and to speak in a way others can

understand.

8. Check out misunderstandings.
Assume miscommunication before you assume that someone is trying to undermine your efforts. Effective communication is the exception, not the rule.

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 Pissing Me Off!

Before you end the conversation, make sure that you find out when the other person is going to start doing or saying what you’ve requested. Also, if the person has repeatedly failed to meet a reasonable agreed-upon request, remind him or her of the agreement and ask straight out, “What’s in the way of your meeting this request? It seems that we’re both in agreement and that you want to meet the request.”

After all this exhausting listening (and it can be tedious), you may decide to change or eliminate your original request. If so, congratulations! You’ve earned points for flexibility. If not, start over with requests and/or escalate, as described previously. Most of these techniques work well with bosses and customers as well, but in the next few chapters, we’ll add some special ideas for these pesky folks. Meanwhile, remember your new mantra: “I could have made a request!”

your

relationship toolbox

How to Move froM PiSSed off to Powerful

PiSSed off

Powerful

Whining and complaining

Making specific requests

Making vague requests

1-2-3-Go! format

Complaining about others’

Focusing only on behavior that impacts

personality characteristics

performance

Continuing to whine without

Adding consequences to requests and

results

then escalating if you don’t get results

Stuffing feelings until you

Cleaning house; doing emotional

blow up

housecleaning and making frequent

requests

Not listening wel

Becoming a good listener

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07.

THE BOzO BOSS frOM HELL

How to go around that clown.

Think
your
boss is bad? Consider the character of Miranda Priestly in the bestselling book and movie,
The Devil Wears
Prada
. Miranda, editor of
Runway
magazine and grand dame of fashion journalism, devours her assistants like a lion carelessly crunching on baby rabbits. Her latest victim, Andy, has the job millions of girls would kill for—or so she’s told time and time again. Miranda treats Andy as yet another fashion accessory: necessary, but clearly her possession. The entire staff walks around on pins and needles trying to accommodate Miranda’s insane demands. Not only does she expect her assistants to jump when she asks, but they also must ask,

“How high?”

a paycheck or a down payment on your soul?

Miranda is a textbook example of the type of bad boss I call the DI (Devils Incarnate). Yet, all bosses who careen through the workplace like problem children seem to recite the same

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 Pissing Me Off!

mantra when they attempt to corral the troops: “You don’t have to like me, but you do have to respect me.” The worker bees, already cranky and frothing at the mouth from dealing with this clueless prig, respond silently, or among themselves, with furious indignation.

Who is right here? As usual, no one is totally correct. One of life’s painful truths is this: You have to give up certain things in exchange for a paycheck. Among those things is what you might consider the right to disrespect the organization or boss that provides the paycheck. If you don’t respect those two entities, you have three choices: 1. Leave.

2. Diplomatically push back (in other words, try to change their way of behaving or appeal to a higher authority to get rid of them).

3. Adjust your own attitude.

Sorry, but staying around and whining is not an acceptable option. Why? For one very pragmatic reason: It does not work. It will make you miserable and eventually it will boomerang back to the boss.

One of my favorite quotes is from Emerson, who said,

“Who you are speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying.” Unless you’re Robert DeNiro or Meryl Streep, you’re not going to be able to pull off the illusion that you respect someone when you don’t. At some level, they’re going to know it and react. Then it will just become a downward spiral that sucks your job and your mental health into the sewer. Is respect earned? Sometimes, but better to respect everyone than to whine ineffectively.

Perhaps you can take solace from the reality that bum bosses are in ample supply. Thanks to the Web, their victims

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07.
  The Bozo Boss from Hell

no longer have to suffer in silence; they share loudly and long about their nemeses. Check out Working America’s My Bad Boss Contest. This group, affiliated with the AFL-CIO, is collecting anonymous scary workplace stories at its Web site,

www.workingamerica.org/badboss
.
Forced overtime, canceled vacations, and reprimands for taking needed sick leave are just the beginning of some bosses’ insensitivities.

As discussed in Chapter 3, some boss behavior may be over the legal line, such as when it segues into harassment, discrimination, or even improperly denying leave requests. Clearly, if you’re working for this kind of boss you need to file a complaint to HR, your boss’s boss or some outside agency, as outlined in Chapter 16, instead of merely whining.
pick your poison—what Flavor is your Boss from hell?

In my experience, bozo bosses come in four types, each one requiring a slightly different strategy:

1. Micromanagers (MMs)

2. Conflict Avoiders (CAs)

3. Clueless Incompetents (CIs)

4. Devils Incarnate (DIs)

In the following sections, I’ll help you identify what kind you’re dealing with, and give you tips on how to cope.
Micromanagers (MMs)

Micromanagers may or may not suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), but they will drive you batty.

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 Pissing Me Off!

My first boss out of law school was an MM. Brilliant but nerdy, he made our office of twenty-plus attorneys sign in and out for lunch and bathroom breaks. Complaints that we were not wage-and-hour slaves and should not be treated as such were dismissed with shrugs. He tore around the office with a pencil behind his ear so he could attack any meandering dangling participles or misplaced modifiers he happened to find sneaking about in our correspondence or briefs. I will admit that he was the best writer I’ve ever worked with, and we shared a love of modern literature and the hunt for the perfect verb. However, nothing escaped his notice; his relentless pursuit of perfection in the written documents we generated like so many disposable diapers led us to gnash our teeth in frustration. Jerry (not his real name, all bosses’ names have been changed to protect the guilty) had prematurely white hair and the most piercing blue eyes I’ve ever been stared down by. He hovered around the front door, checking his watch with the dedication of a coach tracking sprinters, so he could readily reprimand those who took bathroom breaks longer than ten minutes. He loped around the office, clucking over his progeny as they labored in order to monitor any hapless workers who mistakenly gazed out the window for more than five seconds. Yes, Jerry was a nitpicker extraordinaire, but he never understood the power of prioritizing. He perused cover letters for insignificant errors with the same care that he edited a 10th Circuit brief. Because of his obsessions, the big issues were never addressed, such as which projects we focused on and why, and what we accomplished or didn’t. I lasted about a year and then bailed. I could not continue to work with someone whose skills seemed so misdirected. Jerry would have served well as a
New York Times
copy editor, but managing a federal agency office tasked with addressing big issues created problems for him and for us.