Intellectual Foreplay Question of the Week: What is your part in your experience of others?
Love Tip of the Week: When our arms are full of expectations, we can’t embrace anything else. Let go of your expectations and see if “reality” changes along with you.
Jerk at Work
Dear Eve,
There is this guy who I work with a couple days a week who I just don’t like. He just kind of bugs me, nothing really bad. He doesn’t seem to have common sense so he’ll talk too loud, ask you things that are none of his business and is just generally annoying. He is good at his work though, so he isn’t going anywhere. I dread every time I have to work with him. Any suggestions?
Aloha,
One of the best lessons I ever learned revolves around the concept that you can’t step into the same river twice (meaning that the river is always flowing, so by the time you step into it again entirely new water and creatures are underfoot). The same holds true for people—we never encounter the exact same person twice. This is a good reminder that in any given moment the people in our lives can change, improve, or evolve, if we “allow” them to. Between the last time you worked with this guy and the next time, he could have had new ideas, made new friends, lost old friends, read a book or saw a movie or documentary, fallen in love, fallen out of love…had a life changing experience.
What I mean by “if we allow them to” is that we tend to label people as “bad” or “annoying” or whatever, and then hold them, in part, in a labeled box with our expectations. We expect them to be the way they were last time we saw them and either look for evidence that matches our expectations—or never even give them another chance. Partly, we treat them in a way that evokes what we are expecting to see. This is not to say it is our fault that they show up the way they do; rather to point out that we may have a part in the play without realizing it.
For instance, there is almost no chance that your “dread” doesn’t affect your attitude and the way that you treat him. Maybe it is a withdrawal of energy, a roll of the eyes, a sarcastic “good morning,” but however your dread is manifesting in your behavior, it is likely affecting his behavior, too. When we shift our attitudes and expectations, we open the door for the possibility of the other person changing. We may even find ways to bring out the best in them if we shift our energy in that direction.
When I was teaching, I once had a student that was particularly challenging and I had him several periods of the day. When I dreaded him coming to class, my attitude was not welcoming and he played off my (bad) attitude beautifully; He was obnoxious, disrespectful and annoying. When he came in late, if I gave him a hard time rather than welcoming him for making it at all, I set up his attitude for the rest of the period. When, instead, I welcomed him to class with a smile and acknowledged his effort to get there, we stood a 50-50 chance of the period going well, rather than a 100% chance that it would not. Often, he then revealed his funny, clever side. (That is not to say that consequences shouldn’t be given for coming late, etc., but the attitude with which the consequence is given works much better if it is from a mindset of educating the other person rather than punishing them. It is interesting to note that the term “to punish” stems from the root concept of inflicting pain, while discipline means “to learn.”)
If you make working with him a “game” in which you see if you can bring out the best in him by bringing out the best in yourself around him, you may not succeed, but you will definitely have a lot more fun at work.
