Right Attitudes

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How to … Deal with a Colleague Who Talks Too Much

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If a coworker has a habit of talking incessantly—mostly about his personal life—and doesn’t heed when you hint you can’t be distracted from work at the moment, address your frustrations directly and respectfully.

When you think he’s ready to listen, have a chat privately and make him aware of the issue. Say, “I like conversing with you, but sometimes you keep talking even after I tell you I need to get back to work. Often, I feel pinned down. Could you please heed when I say our visit impedes my work?” You may add, “I’d always be happy to talk to you when I’m less busy or over a drink in the evening.”

This talk may be briefly awkward for both of you, but so are most tough conversations. Often, problems are best nipped in the bud.

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  5. Drop the Weasel Words, Stop Dodging Responsibility

Giving Feedback and Depersonalizing It: Summary of Kim Scott’s ‘Radical Candor’

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It takes finesse to tell your boss and colleagues what you really think and address conflicts with urgency. When individuals are hesitant to talk frankly to each other, unresolved conflict can wreak havoc on productivity and culture.

'Radical Candor' by Kim Scott (ISBN 1529038340) Former Google and Apple executive Kim Scott’s bestselling Radical Candor (2017) can help if you struggle with delivering honest feedback with the subtlety that suits the relationship. To avoid turning criticism into a personal attack, Scott suggests phrasing feedback using a “situation-behavior-impact” recipe (identical to the Manager Tools’ Feedback Model I’ve recommended for years): describe the situation where the problem behavior appeared, the other’s specific actions, and their impact. Instead of “You’re sloppy,” tell, “You’ve been working nights and weekends, and it’s taken a toll on your accuracy.” Scott also extends directions on how to educate to deal with conflict, strike positive solutions, and foster a fertile conflict mindset that everybody embraces.

Recommendation: Speedread Radical Candor. If you condone the narrative inconsistencies, excessive name-dropping, and banal Silicon Valley tenor, this text will teach you how tactful conflict and giving honest feedback can be an impetus for positive change. Bruised egos and problems nipped in the bud are better than the alternative—stalled projects, mediocre work, and resentment that festers on.

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  3. Never Skip Those 1-1 Meetings
  4. Employee Surveys: Perceptions Apart
  5. Employee Surveys: Asking for Feedback is Not Enough

Stop Trying to Fix Things, Just Listen!

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In these distraction-packed times, it’s harder than ever to create the mental and physical space necessary to really listen—actively listen—to another person.

A common listening pitfall is trying to have all the answers. Instead of fully hearing out a friend, you’re scrolling through your brain, being all frustrated that this problem has an obvious solution and concocting a hasty fix.

As a listener, your most important job is to listen with curiosity and immerse yourself in the person’s message. Just try to understand the person and listen to their feelings. Validate their suffering, take their perspective, and let them know you understand. That’s often what people want most.

Idea for Impact: To be a better listener, talk with each other about the ways they’d like you to give support. People have different ways in which they prefer to seek and provide support.

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  2. How to … Address Over-Apologizing
  3. Avoid Trigger Words: Own Your Words with Grace and Care
  4. “Are We Fixing, Whinging, or Distracting?”
  5. Silence Speaks Louder in Conversations

You Need a Personal Cheerleader

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Many people credit some of their success to others who believed in them and urged them on when their confidence waned.

A personal cheerleader could be a companion, friend, or family member who believes in you, takes an eager interest and encourages you, and helps lift your self-confidence, even if they raise some practical questions.

This cheerleader could indeed be a mirror through which you can see yourself. Somebody who encourages you to process and think through your experiences and reframe mistakes as opportunities to learn. Somebody who can help you notice things you do well, however small.

Idea for Impact: A personal cheerleader is pivotal to a meaningful, resilient life. Curtailing negative self-talk is difficult when you’re trying to build your self-confidence.

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  3. Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster
  4. Witty Comebacks and Smart Responses for Nosy People
  5. Five Signs of Excessive Confidence

You Always Have to Say ‘Good’

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“How are you?” is usually meant less as an actual question and more a greeting-on-autopilot—a casual call-and-response.

The unwritten rule of conversation is that you’re expected to reply with nothing more than a declaration of utter satisfaction with life.

People aren’t usually interested in hearing the real answer. Responding with a “Well, to be honest, I’ve been kind of down today. Had a bad day at work” could be a faux pas. You aren’t supposed to burden every interlocutor with your situation, particularly with people who aren’t close.

So “how are you?” isn’t a bad thing to say at all—most of the time. But, there’re occasions, readable with empathic awareness, when you shouldn’t ask someone how their day is going unless you’re going to listen to their response with genuine respect and interest.

Idea for Impact: Showing that you care about people can do wonders, but if you don’t care, don’t feign that you do—people can see through it.

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  4. Avoid Trigger Words: Own Your Words with Grace and Care
  5. Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster

Employee Surveys: Asking for Feedback is Not Enough

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Nothing undermines employee trust faster than inviting employees to provide feedback about their work experience and then not following up.

Don’t take the employee satisfaction survey results at face value. Don’t discount the importance of the findings by brushing them off, “the data were what we expected” or “there were no real surprises here.”

Show that you’ve listened to what employees are saying. Initiate strategic conversations with selected employees and explore critical issues in more depth. Establish cross-functional teams to react to the survey’s findings. Let the team consist primarily of non-senior employees. A senior manager could sponsor and support—not manage—the team and see an action plan through.

Idea for Impact: Employee surveys, focus groups, and discussions that don’t change how an organization functions ultimately undermine employees’ faith that their leaders really care what the employees think. Close the communication loop.

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  2. Should Staff Be Allowed to Do ‘Life Admin’ at Work?
  3. Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees
  4. Giving Feedback and Depersonalizing It: Summary of Kim Scott’s ‘Radical Candor’
  5. Can You Be Terminated for Out-of-Work Conduct?

How to Be Better in a Relationship: Assume Positive Intent

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One secret to good relationships is to assume positive intent.

This applies to all sorts of personal and professional relationships—even chance relationships, such as customer service dealings.

Whenever you’re upset—even repulsed—by somebody’s off-putting behavior, try to push yourself to allow for the possibility that the perpetrator’s intent was fair, well-meaning, and wholesome. In other words, seek the least malicious explanation for their behavior.

Instead of getting irritated and judicious, if you pause to reflect and reconsider their actions by stepping into their shoe, you may see if you’re misconstruing what they’re saying or doing.

Assuming Positive Intent Can Herald a More Informed Vantage Point

When you assume positive intent, you get more insight into their actions and choices. Stepping mentally outside of whatever is happening to you right now allows you to assign it some context and mull over its significance. Possibly the other person is having a bad day. Maybe they are culturally or emotionally tuned to think and behave in a particular way. Perhaps the situation harks back at an earlier incident where they’ve been hurt and, therefore, are trying to protect themselves?

Assuming positive intent overcomes the human tendency by which we judge and rationalize our actions versus others’: when we make mistakes, we often blame the situation’s circumstances rather than take responsibility for the error. When others make mistakes, we tend to over-emphasize their role in mistakes—we blame them quickly and challenge their intentions.

You Can’t Change the Past, But You Can Change Your Perspective About It

Giving people the benefit of the doubt helps you identify the details of their situation. Assume the person causing your problem is giving it their best shot. Seek to understand. Empathize. You may be surprised to learn something that you hadn’t expected.

Your whole outlook on a problem transforms when you follow this approach. Becoming aware of your unconscious responses can allow a calmer, kinder response to conflict and frustration. It makes it easier to assimilate information and commiserate with people you’d rather not listen to.

How many misunderstandings, disputes, frustrations, and misgivings could be forestalled this way!

Idea for Impact: Assume Positive Intent. It’s the Foundation of High Trust. It’s a Huge Game-Changer.

Until proven otherwise, assume positive intent as you go about your day—even when somebody cuts you off in traffic. Misunderstandings will happen and can be resolved with reality-testing and understanding, grace, and dignity. Assuming positive intent allows you to retreat from the narrow, restrictive perspective that can aggravate the situation into two negatives fighting one another.

Now, then, assuming positive intent does not mean naïve goodness or unassertive deference to everything that’s happening to you. Beware blind optimism. Don’t overlook patterns of deliberate ill intentions and fundamental incompatibilities with their outlook on life.

Being pleasing and agreeable and wishing the best for everybody could blind you into refusing to accept the bare facts of an unfortunate situation and overlook others’ excesses. A noble view of the world is not always helpful. Sometimes problems are best nipped in the bud.

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  2. The Sensitivity of Politics in Today’s Contentious Climate
  3. A Short Course on: How to Find the Right Relationship
  4. How to … Deal with Less Intelligent People
  5. How Understanding Your Own Fears Makes You More Attuned to Those of Others

A Short Course on: How to Find the Right Relationship

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  1. Know yourself—what you want and what you don’t want. Having clear goals can help save you from being caught up in the moment and disregarding what it is you really want and need.
  2. Have good boundaries—they’re how you should take care of your needs. Identify what’s healthy and what crosses that line.
  3. Appreciate your value, and expect respect. Faults become thick when respect wears away. Assess concord in how you both approach openness, sincerity, and conflict resolution.
  4. Get out there and meet a wide range of people. Be persistent in your search for the right relationship. Give people a fair chance. No one can be perfect. So, think about how you’ll work around their imperfections.
  5. Don’t put people in a box, especially when there isn’t actually a box that characterizes who they are. Let yourself and the other person be who you each are. Don’t deny their individuality; be open to being surprised.

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  3. When One Person is More Interested in a Relationship
  4. The Sensitivity of Politics in Today’s Contentious Climate
  5. What Jeeves Teaches About Passive Voice as a Tool of Tact

What To Do If Your New Hire Is Underperforming

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If a recent hire, particularly one brought into the team with high expectations, isn’t delivering, start by asking the following two questions:

  1. Is the employee in an environment that allows her to perform at her best?
  2. Are you clear on what her personal objectives are?

Only after answering both these questions with a ‘yes’ can you move to consider coaching, reassess the employee’s suitability, and examine if you need to terminate the bad hire quickly and cut your losses.

Idea for Impact: Nothing puts wind beneath a manager’s wings more quickly than asking these two questions when dealing with employee underperformance. Ask, don’t guess, how you can accommodate each employee’s strengths and needs and create an environment that works best for each individual.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to creating a positive culture, empowering employees, and tackling performance problems. Each employee faces individual challenges and has her own goals and preferences.

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  3. Why Hiring Self-Leaders is the Best Strategy
  4. Seven Real Reasons Employees Disengage and Leave
  5. How to Manage Overqualified Employees

Cancel Culture has a Condescension Problem

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Cancel culture and wokism have allowed for overly politicized worldviews where people both on the left and on the right are quick to take offence. There is, at present, a strong instinct to censure, anathematize, ostracize, and insist upon punishment for people or perspectives that are deemed unacceptable. Acceptable expression is being forced into ever-smaller confines.

It’s not enough for each faction to point to the hypocrisy of the other. It’s also crucial for each to defend theirs—and the others’—right to say disagreeable and objectionable statements and subject them to empirical and logical assessment.

While we shouldn’t organize our worlds around the sensibilities of those who’re easily distressed, every person should have the right to decide his beliefs for himself, speak freely, and defend his views during civilized discourse. Intellectual inquiry can’t thrive if people can’t express themselves in good faith.

Idea for Impact: Cancel culture is to be kept within bounds if we are to preserve a free society. If we fail to stand up for the right to speech that we dislike, why retain the right for the speech we do like?

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