knowing who you must truly please and who you can just smile and nod at
The fifth in a series of posts elaborating on my list of skills to use when dealing with difficult personalities.
This item is sort of related to the famous “Serenity Prayer” by Reinhold Niebuhr:
- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
- courage to change the things I can,
- and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Sometimes you’ve just got to achieve a zen state where you ignore the unpleasant people around you who have no real impact on your life or job. Can these difficult personalities change your salary or your job title? Can they influence the people who can? Are you responsible for them in any way? If not, then just smile and nod and let them go on being the way they are. Don’t let them get under your skin.
- You can lower your own frustration level if you cut through the caustic attitudes and focus in on which opinions really matter. If your boss (and the people with influence on your boss) is happy with your performance, the criticism and snide remarks from other people can roll off your back.
If the difficult person is one who can influence your salary or your job title or determine what projects you get to work on - figure out what it will take to please them. Sometimes, all this requires is asking them flat out. “I realize I’m not measuring up to your standards. What can I do to improve?” or… “We seem to be having some trouble communicating. Can you help me understand what I need to be doing?” Once you know, you can decide if it’s worth it to you to make this person happy (see the later point about cost-benefit analysis… yep, they all work together).
Sometimes difficult personalities give you a moving target, claiming to be happy if you do one thing and then shooting it down when you perform up to that standard. They are a difficult personality, after all. If this happens, it’s time to start getting these standards in writing. Not to try to trick them, just to establish a baseline you both can agree on. (See also the section on what to get in writing.) Then you can remind them occaisionally that this is the measuring stick you’re evaluating your own performance on.
Real life example of how this principle saved my sanity.
At one point in my career I was in a strange situation where it wasn’t really clear who my boss was. The corporate org chart said I reported to the person across the hall, but that person really had little impact on my daily activity. Another person half way across the country was the one who set the agenda and performance requirements.
Other people locally would often feel the need to comment on what my team and I were working on. It was a little wacky sometimes and lots of people didn’t see how it related to what they were working on. Snide remarks and caustic attitude from coworkers would sometimes get me all worked up and I’d want to go on the warpath. Fortunately, I had some good friends who asked me the pointed question - does it matter what those people think?
They didn’t have a clear view of what my job was and they definitely didn’t have an impact on my salary or title. The directive from my “boss” was to keep Mr. U happy. As long as I achieved that goal, she said she would be happy. So I started just ignoring the negative comments, kept my head down and did what it took to keep Mr. U happy. I could handle that.
When my review came up she did start to quibble about a few of the complaints from other local people, but I could say - look, is Mr. U happy? She had to admit both that he was very happy with the work I was doing and that I was achieving the milestone she had set for me. In the end, we agreed on some new objectives I also needed to achieve going forward, but she admited I shouldn’t be held accountable for requirements I wasn’t aware of previously.