How to Make Things Work at Work
There’s no such thing as an ideal workplace or a dream job. Mixing different generations, races, cultures and genders opens the door to all kinds of opportunities for conflicts and misunderstandings. But the worst conflicts and misunderstandings are the ones employees have with their bosses.
“When you’re feeling frustrated by your boss’ behavior, it’s easy to become distracted from the job at hand,” said Tony Deblauwe, workplace expert and author of Tangling With Tyrants: Managing the Balance of Power at Work. “To improve ways of working, you have to focus on solutions not emotional reactions to behavior. For example, if your boss is prone to yelling, you can say ‘When you yell, it’s not as clear as when you ask something of me calmly, and I want to make sure I capture all that you’re asking.'”
Now that’s a tall order for most people. It’s pretty common for a person to become defensive when someone is yelling at him. Learning how to stop and take a deep breath is probably the best thing to do before even attempting to formulate a response. The second thing to do is find a way to detach from the attack by saying, internally, “He’s not angry with me, he’s just angry about the situation.” Whether or not that statement is true is irrelevant. What’s relevant is the fact that saying it makes it easier to focus on the matter at hand and how to resolve it. No one likes to be yelled at, so yelling back – particularly at the boss – isn’t an option.
As did Lynn Taylor in her book, Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior AND Thrive in Your Job, which I discussed in a previous post, Delauwe offers readers advice on how to improve their work environments. In Tangling With Tyrants, Delauwe provides “practical techniques and examples that help readers explore their own (sometimes inaccurate) assumptions, think about concrete solutions, and choose the right approach for responding to any given situation.” He stresses that employees have options and can stop the ‘dead-end’ cycle of hoping, coping and compromise that rob them of power and perpetuate the status quo.”
Deblauwe, again like Taylor, has included useful advice for bosses, too, to help them monitor their behavior and become better bosses. The book could also be used by human resources professionals to help them become better coaches.
It’s important to be able to get along with coworkers, but it’s imperative to get along with the boss, especially in today’s economy and difficult job market where quitting is something that should be used as an absolute last resort. Although there are some extreme cases where quitting is the only option, for most people, patience and creativity are all it takes to turn an unbearable workplace into – at least – a tolerable one.
