Passive-Aggressive Co-Workers?

I received an email from a reader this week:

"I have an issue with one of my co-workers.  She always steps up to the plate when I ask for help or need anything done.  I appreciate that, but every time she does, she goes an extra mile, does more than I would have and does it in a way that makes me feel incompetent or as if I would not have done it as good as she did.  She is always quick with a compliment, but they seem insincere and condescending.  It makes me dread having her on my committees or even being around her.  I am about to explode and say something I shouldn’t.  What is the High Road response to this?" 

Barbie

 
Hi Barbie, what a great question! I know that many of my readers face similar situations, so thanks for bringing it to the High Road for discussion!

It’s important to remember that on the High Road, there are at least three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth. That means we’ll need to look at the situation from two points of view, with the understanding that the truth lies somewhere between them.

• It is quite possible that her efforts are sincere. You’ve portrayed her as a very capable and organized person.  To conclude that she is going above and beyond on any task simply to make you look incompetent is perhaps reactionary.
  
  Maybe she is a compliance personality (an analyzer, a thinker), and to put forth anything less than an exceptional effort is not acceptable to her.  If that’s the case, it has nothing to do with you in the slightest.
  
  I would also take the opportunity for introspection.  I would ask myself why my co-worker’s extra-mile efforts trouble me.  Do I need to step up my game?  Is there anything that I can learn from my co-worker for personal growth?
  
  It is always my recommendation that we follow the advice of St. Francis of Assisi (and Stephen Covey): seek first to understand.  Don’t assume the worst.  You would not want someone assuming that your efforts were ill-intended from the start - give her the same benefit of the doubt that you would want extended to you. 

• On the other side is the possibility that her intention is to make you look or feel bad.  It might be her passive-aggressive way of sniping at you and/or others.
  
  I certainly have met many people in my life that glean their self-esteem by belittling, stepping on or – in this case – “showing up” someone else's efforts.  (The truly sad result of that is the so-called self-esteem they gather is not a true self-esteem and therefore does not benefit them for any length of time.)
  
  Difficult people behave the way they do because it gets them what they want.  If this is the case with your co-worker, then the desired result is a rise out of you, some sort of reaction to attest to the fact that she has gotten under your skin.  If that is so, then you would not benefit from giving her that reaction.

To “explode and say something I shouldn’t,” in this situation would not be my recommendation.

Whether this is a question of misinterpreted intentions, possible insecurity on your part or possible passive-aggressive tendencies on her part, my recommendation is going to be the same.  Take the High Road.  Flush (that is mentally flush away) your assumptions regarding her intentions and accept each and every one of her efforts with grace and gratitude, and praise her for a job well done.

High Road Challenge for the Week:  Are there people in your circle of concern that you are making assumptions about, with regard to their thoughts, ideas or intentions?  Remember, there are three sides to every story.  Assume the best of intentions on their part and act accordingly. 

I am consistently getting interesting feedback from my readers.  What are your thoughts on this situation?  How would you recommend Barbie respond to this situation?

What can we learn from the Amazing Race?

I am an addict – I admit it.  I am addicted to the television show The Amazing Race.  I am not a big fan of most reality shows, but I LOVE The Amazing Race.  I love seeing the different locations they travel to and the tasks teams are required to perform to get the next clue.  The “detours” and “roadblocks” are never degrading and usually tied into the culture of the country or city they are in.  I find it entertaining and educational simultaneously.  As I have watched this show over the last 11 seasons (I didn’t discover it until season 5), I have noticed certain characteristics that separate successful teams from those that fall early in the competition.  Furthermore, I believe these same characteristics are essential in our daily lives.  These are the lessons I have learned from watching The Amazing Race:

Respectful communication is critical – The ability to communicate effectively and respectfully with their partner and others is perhaps the most important characteristic of successful Race teams.  Every season there are a few teams that lack this essential element.  Under the stress of the race (which can be extreme) these teams often spiral into petty bickering (at best) or (at worst) name calling and screaming.  Forward progress usually stops until the bickering and name calling subsides.  Furthermore, teams that snipe at other teams often earn a target on their back which can have calamitous results.  Those teams that choose to communicate respectfully are able to avoid such delays and U-turns, and often end up in the top three, running for a million dollars. 

Maintain emotional control – If you are not in emotional control, you are completely ineffective.  Every season there are some classic emotional meltdowns.  Again, any forward progress stops until the contestant can “pull it together” and focus back on task.  This evening’s episode is a prime example.  While teams were assembling a very large, 96-piece puzzle in Shanghai, China, the wind kicked up and blew puzzle pieces everywhere.  While the model-team’s Brent stormed and fumed about how he had almost completed the puzzle before the wind messed it up – the cowboy-team’s, Cord went to work anchoring the remaining pieces down with folding chairs.  In the “confessional” shot that aired at that moment he said, “Throwing a fit and kicking and screaming wasn’t gonna get my puzzle done.”  That calm demeanor has served this cowboy team very well, as they have arrived first at the pit-stop more than any other team this season – even going from last place to first, which was the only time that has happened thus far in race history.

Pay attention to detail – Every season there are turning points when, in their haste, a team has missed an important part of their clue or instruction.  Maybe they took a taxi to the pit-stop when the clue said to take the bus; or having completed the detour or road-block they have grabbed their clue and ran, forgetting their back-packs and their passports.  Each time one of these teams misses an instruction they are assessed a time penalty that must be waited out before they can be checked in at the pit-stop.  Many times this results in the team being eliminated.  The aforementioned cowboy-team’s last place finish in leg 7 of this season happened for that reason  They missed a key part of the clue and had to go back to complete the task before being checked in.  Luckily for them it was a non-elimination round. The old adage of “haste makes waste” is viable here. Teams that take the time to fully read the clue over to make sure they understand all facets of the instructions do not end up with time penalties.

Maintain a positive attitude and never quit – Rarely do teams know exactly where they stand in relation to other teams during any particular leg of the race.  Even if a team believes they are in last place at the time, there could very possibly be extenuating circumstances are “great equalizers” that they are not aware of.  Therefore being willing to stick-to-it with a positive attitude is essential.  Last season one of the strongest teams was the Harlem Globetrotter team of “Flight Time” and “Big Easy.”  They were fan favorites until one of the last episodes when they made a decision to give up on a roadblock and not complete the task.  This caused them to incur a 4 hour penalty and subsequently be eliminated from the race.  Many times teams have worked long hours to complete a task and been retrieved from the field by the host, Phil Koeghan.  The fact that they did not give up on the task until it was obvious that they were last, and therefore eliminated is admirable.  Just as often teams have run to the finish line, certain that they are the last to arrive, to find out that there are other teams still behind them.  The only certain way to lose the race is to quit.

Keep it all in perspective – Every season has several tasks or moments that my family refers to as “great equalizers.”  Perhaps, regardless of when they leave the pit-stop (the first team to arrive is the first team to leave and therefore has a time advantage), all teams end up on the same flight to their new destination.  This makes it a brand new race when the plane lands.  Maybe the clue is located inside a museum that doesn’t open until 10:00 a.m.  That means that whether teams arrive at the museum at midnight or 9:58 a.m. they all have to wait until the museum opens and again it is a brand new race.  Great equalizers might be tasks that, for whatever reason, are incredibly difficult for the first place team, but the last place team breezes through it and catapults themselves into first.  Sometimes the strongest teams have fallen to a great equalizer and there is nothing that can be done about it.  As each team falls, they lose a chance to race on the final leg for a million dollars.  None-the-less, they got a chance to travel the world and experience things that some of us only dream about – things that perhaps they would never have had an opportunity to experience.  That is a blessing in itself.   It is important to keep all things in perspective.


High Road Challenge for the Week: Our daily lives are not as adrenaline packed as the 12-15 days the teams experience on The Amazing Race.  Still, these characteristics are just as critical to our daily success as they are to the Amazing Race teams.  My challenge to you this week is to communicate respectfully, maintain emotional control, pay attention to detail, maintain a positive attitude, never quit and keep it all in perspective.

There are Three Sides to Every Story

Because of my speaking business, I travel a great deal.  Sometimes it is pleasant and exciting, sometimes it is not.  I have learned over the years to go with the flow and not get too stressed about any “travel hiccups” that may occur.  My traveling actually gives me an incredible opportunity to watch people.

This past week I observed a situation that brought to mind my belief that there are three sides to every story: yours, mine and the truth.  While waiting to board a plane in Philadelphia I struck up a conversation with a man whose flight itinerary was identical to mine.  We were both heading home to Kansas City, through Cleveland.  We exchanged the pleasantries of what we each do for a living and surface level discussions of our favorite (or least favorite) sports teams.  He boarded the plane before I did as I was seated in the very first row.

Once in Cleveland we ended up in step with each other again, heading for our connecting gate and he was eager to get my opinion of the flight attendant on the previous flight.

“Boy, that gal sure could have used some of your communication training, eh?”

I thought I knew what he probably meant, but I wanted to be sure.  “How so?”

“Well she sure wouldn’t get a tip in a restaurant.  In fact, she was a down right (expletive deleted).”

Now, this gal was not in anyway soft and cuddly to begin with.  She had a heavy Brooklyn accent and her speech patterns were fast and clipped.  Being farther back on the plane, though, he did not have the benefit of the knowledge I had. 

Sitting as I was in the very first row, I overheard a telephone conversation the flight attendant had just before closing the cabin door.  Her 16 year old son had called her – it appeared that this was his first faux pas.  The conversation went downhill from there.  He apparently had taken their only car to run an errand that day and something had happened to it.  I am not clear on those details.  The point of the conversation though was that this young man had called a friend to pick him up and left the car on the side of the road from where it was apparently towed.  He had gone back with his friend to retrieve something from the vehicle and it was no longer there.  He had no idea where the car was at that point.

The flight attendant was beside herself.  “Do you have any IDEA what towing in the city costs?  I don’t have that kind of money and neither do you.”  She expressed to him, quite forcefully, that he had better find out where the car had been towed and what it was going to take to get the car back.  She would call him when we landed in Cleveland and he had better have some answers by then.  We commiserated a bit, she and I, about how our kids “just don’t get it” and about how tight finances are for all of us.

I shared this information with the man as we walked to our connecting gate.  I said, “Can you imagine having to focus on taking care of us, while worrying about how much the towing and citation is going to cost her?  I think that may have something to do with her clipped tone.”

“Wow,” he said, “I had no idea.  I’d kill the kid.”  (I’m sure he wasn’t serious.)  “I sure hope it doesn’t cost her an arm and a leg.”

Suddenly the man had empathy for the flight attendant, rather than being so quick to label her derogatorily.

There is an old Hopi adage that my mother used to share with me: “One can’t truly know a man until he has walked a mile in that man’s moccasins.”  My spontaneous traveling partner for the trip simply needed to step into the flight attendant’s shoes for a moment to be able to forgive her seemingly poor customer service.

Several of the blogs I subscribe to have recently been bemoaning poor customer service.  Without a doubt, customer service is important.  I would be eager to share with my colleagues (and indeed have to two of them) that the cause of that customer service may be deeper than a perceived lack of work ethic.  Perhaps walking a mile in their shoes would reveal that.

There are three sides to every story.  The man’s side: he received service on the flight that was surly at best.  The flight attendant’s side: she was totally overwhelmed by the thought of the impending expense and her son’s incredible lack of responsibility.  The truth of the matter during that flight lays somewhere between these two realities.

High Road Challenge for the Day:  The next time you receive poor customer service, ask yourself the question, “What might have happened just before I arrived, that would cause this poor service?”  It may need to be a hypothetical question.  If convenient and appropriate, you might ask, in a respectful manner.  “You know, the service I received today is not up to the standard that I have come to expect from you (this establishment).  Tell me, is there something distracting you today?”  Endeavor to walk a mile in their shoes so you can see the other two sides of the story.

Can you SEE it? Success is between your ears!

Several years ago I had the opportunity to interview a woman who had been crowned the Queen of Recruiting for her division in Mary Kay Cosmetics that year.  That was quite an accomplishment for her – one that she had been working toward for many years.  Part of her recognition at the annual awards convention was concentrated stage time for both her and her family, as well as roughly 15 carats worth of diamond jewelry.  I wanted to pick her brain and find out every secret she had to share with me about achieving one’s goals. 

Before we dug into the details of how she did it, I wanted to know what it felt like to be on stage and sit on that throne with 20,000 people applauding you.  “It actually wasn’t that big a deal that night,” she said, “because I have ‘lived’ it so many times in my head.  For over three years I have visualized every minute detail of the award’s ceremony.  I knew the color of dress I would wear and how I would fix my hair.  I saw myself escorted down the long stairway as a member of the top three.  At the foot of the stairs, I saw myself greeted by my National Sales Director and brought down to center stage.  I knew exactly what it would look like gazing out over the arena as they called the second runner-up’s name (not mine), and then the first runner-up’s name (also not mine).”  She went on to share her visualization with me down to the finest detail.  Then she said, “I believe that is the reason I actually achieved it – because I could see it.  Of course I worked hard to get there, but equally important was the fact that I could believe it, because I could see it.”

Last week I shared with you the need for CLEAR goals.  A second, equally important factor in the process of achieving those goals is the ability to visualize them.  You must be able to see yourself accomplishing them.  I often quote Dr. Stephen Covey, who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  With his habit number two, Covey encourages us to “begin with the end in mind.”  This is so important because if you don’t know where you are going you won’t know how to get there.  Furthermore, if you don’t know where you are going, you won’t know when you’ve arrived!

High Road challenge for the day: As you establish your goals, take the time to dream and conjure up a mental picture of what it will be like when you achieve it.  What will it look like, feel like, sound like, and smell like?  Create a mental movie for yourself, directing it the way you want it to be.  You can begin broadly.  Then each time you play the movie for yourself you can add detail to it.  Take time every day to envision your success.  Play the movie for yourself every morning, so it is the first thing your subconscious focuses on to begin your day.  Play it again for yourself each night before you go to bed, so it is the last thing your subconscious focuses on before you go to sleep.  Visualizing your goals as already achieved is a critical factor in actually achieving them.

Man can only receive what he sees himself receiving.  - Florence Scovel Shinn

Not achieving your goals? Maybe they are not CLEAR

Two weeks ago I wrote about reevaluating and recommitting to your goals as most of the nation “sprang forward” with Daylight Saving Time.  Since then I have had multiple people question me on how to actually do that.  So, I want to focus this week on how to set goals that are energizing and achievable.

There are many methods for establishing and working toward goals.  I have found that setting CLEAR goals works best for me.  CLEAR is an acronym that stands for:

Calculable
Limited time
Exact
Agreed upon
Realistic

Calculable – A goal must be easily broken down into smaller tasks and achievements that combine to create the larger objective.  There have been many times in my life and career that I have established goals for myself that seemed unattainable until I broke them down into smaller, “bite-size” pieces.  Broken down they are less daunting.  This is achieved by taking the whole of the objective and dividing it by the time-frame you have established for achieving it.  That way you create milestones for yourself annually, quarterly, monthly and weekly.  If, for instance, you have a goal to achieve $100,000 in gross revenue in a year – that means you need to target roughly $8,333 per month.  Breaking that down further (utilizing the IRS average of 4.4 weeks per month), you would need to target $1,894 per week.  Furthermore, if you know what your average revenue per sales call is, then you could calculate how many sales calls you would need to make per week to achieve that revenue target.  Break it down and make it calculable.

Limited time – A goal without a set time frame is just a dream.  Determine a time by which you will achieve this objective, otherwise it is a “someday” goal, or a “get around to it” goal.  I have yet to see “someday” on a calendar and “get around to it” goals rarely get gotten around to.  Without a set target date there is no means by which to establish the milestones you need to make it measurable and less daunting.  Often people hesitate to establish target dates for their goals for fear that if they miss the target they will have “failed.”  Not so.  A target is just that, a target.  If you miss the target, the goal does not change – only the time frame does.  Simply reset the target achievement date, recalculate the milestone dates and get back to work on the goal.

Exact – Vague goals are rarely attainable.  Unless they are exact, there is nothing specific to break down into bite-size pieces.  To establish a goal that you will be the “best widget salesman you can be” is setting yourself up for disappointment.  There is no way to measure when you have achieved the goal.  (Furthermore, I find that we never believe we are ever the best that we can be, so it is not an attainable goal.)  Instead, utilizing this scenario, decide that you will exceed last year’s widget sales by X%.  That is exact – something that can be measured and broken down.  Look at the goals you have established for yourself and make sure they are unambiguous and clear-cut.

Agreed upon – Your goals must be in writing and shared with like-minded individuals or associates.  Mary Kay Ash, the late Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Mary Kay Cosmetics often said, “the faintest ink is better than the most retentive memory.”  A goal that is not in writing is too easily adjusted when the road to achieving it becomes rocky.  Make sure they are written down (in ink!).  You also need to share your goals with the balcony people in your life (those people who believe in you and encourage you forward to action), and give them permission to inquire about your progress.  Doing so will make you more accountable for actually doing the work necessary to obtain your objective.

Realistic – I believe a goal that does not make you just a little nauseated about how you are going to get there is not a big enough goal. That having been said, your goal must be realistically obtainable with sufficient effort.  If you have never been on ice skates before, to set a goal of achieving a world championship in figure skating this year is not a realistic goal.  You set yourself up for failure and disappointment.  The goal should not be easy, but it should be realistic.  Establish a realistic goal that you feel comfortable in achieving – then stretch it to half again what you think you can achieve.  That will make it obtainable and a little bit scary at the same time.

High Road challenge for the day:  Examine the goals you have set for yourself.  Are they calculable, limited time, exact, agreed upon, and realistic?  If they fall short in any of these critical areas, tweak them to make them more attainable.  Set time frames so you can break them down into measurable milestone achievements. Write them down and share them with the balcony people in your life.

“What the mind can conceive and truly believe, you can achieve.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

THIS is why they call it "March Madness!"

With an improbably 3-point shot Ali Farokhmanesh secured perhaps the greatest upset in recent NCAA basketball tournament history as Northern Iowa University defeated the number one seeded University of Kansas.  Just that fast, 98 percent of the brackets in America were shattered, including the one projected by President Obama. Maybe this is why they call it “March Madness” – because anything can happen.

I have found it intriguing to read the follow-up stories and see the sports broadcasts that have ensued from that upset.  Here are some thoughts that have come to me through the miasma of press these past couple of days:

This "should have been" the title team.

Several sports writers have said that KU was a team all but assured of another title… Really?  According to whom?  I am sure that the teams still in the tournament would beg to differ.  There has also been discussion of whether or not the Jayhawks were too cocky going in to this round.  After the game senior Sherron Collins is quoted as saying, “We were the better team. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”   Whereas an NIU forward said, “We came into the game looking at it like a basketball game. We were confident we could play our own game. There wasn’t really any special emphasis put on who we were playing.”

A title team is not a title team until they have actually earned the title.  My father, “The Colonel” often said to me, “Coulda, woulda, shoulda… potential doesn’t mean a thing in the end.  The only thing that matters is the score on the board when the clock ticks to zero.”  NIU played better basketball, all the way to the final buzzer.  It’s as simple as that.


How you deal with defeat is just as important as how you deal with success.

This team has been under an incredible microscope this week.  Some of the players handled the defeat with grace, lifting their heads and giving the NIU Panthers credit for playing well and dominating the game.  Others did not. 

Upon being named Sportsman of the Year for 2003 by the NABC, professional bridge player Larry Cohen said in his address, “Being a good [team player] is a big part of sportsmanship.  When top level players demonstrate [sportsmanship], the behavior becomes imitated by other players as well.  Sportsmanship is also how you handle defeat.”  He went on to close with humor, “Perhaps next year I can… give my opponents the opportunity to show how gracious and sportsmanlike they are in defeat!”

That is what the Jayhawks need to focus on right now.  How are they going to get back to the tournament next year?  How are they going give next year's opponents the opportunity to demonstrate sportsmanship in defeat?


If you think you’re cursed, you are.

Much has been made this week about the perceived Oklahoma City curse on the Jayhawks.  Several of the past crushing and unexpected defeats KU has suffered have happened in Oklahoma City.  Is it possible that there was that underlying thought running through Jayhawk brains as they played on Saturday?  Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”  Maybe it will take a solid victory in Oklahoma City for this foolishness about a city curse to go away.  The subconscious perception of such a curse could very well have played a factor in the way the KU team played.


It’s just a game. Keeping perspective is important.

The image of KU sophomore Marcus Morris curled up in tears on the court will become iconic, I am sure.  It was a crushing and surprising defeat, and yet, let’s grab some perspective here.  It is not a life threatening situation. No one suffered career ending injuries. No one will lose their home, a child or a limb because of the outcome of this game. For Morris it isn’t even the last year he’ll play at KU.  There will be other shots at a title for him.  It’s a game.  Let’s keep it in perspective.

Two Die In Bizarre, Fiery Accident - Choices Equal Results

"Two die in bizarre, fiery accident."  That is what the headline said.

On Tuesday of this week, our community was rocked by news of a horrific single car crash involving three high school seniors.  Two of the boys perished in the accident.  The driver was pulled from the wreckage and is hospitalized with life threatening injuries.  His prognosis is hit or miss.  That young man is the youngest son of a family that has lived next door to me for six years.

I am thunderstruck and have been all but paralyzed this week with the hopelessness of a simple question, “What can I do?”  The answer thus far has been to pray.  That is all that can be done at this point.  I will go visit the family at the hospital today and provide some meals for them so they don’t have to think about what they are going to eat.  Such gestures though, seem so small and insignificant in the face of such a life changing calamity.

Over the past 48 hours there has been a great deal of conjecture in this tight-knit community, and on the web, about what happened.  Was alcohol involved?  (The police have yet to make a judgment on that.)  Why were they going so fast?  (Police have specified, based upon skid marks and other factors that excessive speed was a factor.)  How could this happen?  How can we honor their memory in any meaningful way?

Impromptu vigils have popped up and memorial Facebook pages have been created by well-meaning friends. 

For the families of these three young men, recovery from this will be long and hard fought.  Two of those families have lost a son.  The other’s life hangs in the balance and if he recovers he will then have to deal with the emotional trauma of having been the one at the wheel when it happened.  None of these lives will ever be the same.

At Tuesday evening’s vigil one mourner said, "It's hard, thinking ‘that could have been me.’  I know teens do crazy things. It's an eye-opener for everyone."   I certainly hope so.

As I mention in Road Signs on the High Road of Life, choices equal results.  While it will take weeks for the authorities to sort out exactly what happened, each of these boys made a choice.  There will be intense investigation of, repercussions for and potential criminal charges resulting from the driver’s choices – and yet both of the passengers made choices as well.  They made a choice to get into the car and a choice to stay in the car and not call the driver out on his excessive speed. 

Each of us has the opportunity to, and the responsibility for, making good choices in our lives. We have to reap the results of the choices that we make.  One of the truly tragic factors in this whole situation is the butterfly effect (that is the chaos theory that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the globe can create a ripple in the air sufficient to create a tsunami on the other side of the globe).  The choices made by these three boys early Tuesday morning have the potential to destroy three families and will affect much of the community for years to come. 

I can only hope that it IS an eye opener, as that one mourner said – and perhaps there can be a rare positive result from poor choices.  I hope the 150 some odd youth that gathered for the vigil and others who were not there will remember this for a very long time and utilize that memory to make good choices in the future.   

That is the very best way to honor their memory.