There are people in the workplace who try to get along with everyone. They are pleasant and accommodating and their aim is to be accepted and to be a part of the team. They bring you a slice of the cake they baked on Sunday, they get your coffee everyday, they pick up or even buy your lunch regularly, they help you out whenever you need something they can do for you. They sometimes offer.
This type of coworker can be liked but more often than not they are disliked. Why disliked? Sometimes they are disliked because they are perceived as kissing up because of their perceived performance deficiencies. While this may be true in some circumstances, a high need to be accepted could also exist in top performers. Top performers sometimes feel they need to be accepted so they are congenial or they sometimes even dumb down to fit in. The problem with this approach is that your coworkers can through the facade. They know you are a strong performer or making them look bad so they don't trust you.
You sense the lack of trust or feelings of dislike directed toward you so you try even harder to fit in because you believe in the team. You believe in working together and you want to be a part of the solution. This is how you were trained.
We are always taught to "never give up" or to persevere. While perseverance is sometimes a very useful tool, it can sometimes be destructive in cases where we use the same unsuccessful tactics over and over again. Remember the definition of insanity...
There is now a fairly new skill in leadership being taught called knowing when to quit. Knowing when to quit is not about giving up, it is about knowing when you have passed the point of diminishing return and changing your approach or discontinuing your ineffective tactics. It may even mean losing the battle to win the war.
Now let's put this in context. When we are not liked because of our strong results, we sometimes inadvertently feed the dislike by trying harder to be accepted by doing what we feel are the right things instead of identifying the point of diminishing return. We continue to try to be of service to others, to forgive and be generous. While these are commendable traits, when doused healthy dose of a lack of self confidence, the combination is not functional and it causes us not to know when to quit. Here is how this system of behavior can become toxic.
You are performing well and you are helpful and always willing to do whatever it takes (sometimes going overboard) to be a productive member of the team. Your team members can tell that you are a high performer, you get the interesting assignments from the boss, you win awards and you are recognized but you can feel their growing resentment - you beginning to feel ostracized. You want your team to accept you as the "down to earth", helpful and willing team player that you are by doing the things you value, like helping them out with their work. Unfortunately, helping them only pushes them away further because to them, it seems like you are trying too hard and by helping them you may be reinforcing their perception that you think you are better, smarter or more favored. You are not making any headway but you were taught to persevere but all the perseverance is doing is fueling the (no longer latent) fires of jealousy and anger toward you causing that anger to manifest itself in various ways like confrontation or rejection.
Here are a few behaviors I have witnessed in the person being ostracized when trying to fit in:
1. They continue to do the same things like forgiving their coworkers for their transgressions. They continue
to hope their coworkers will see them as a good person . Their coworkers may actually to like them.
2. You adopt a negative attitude toward the people who don't trust or like you and end up avoiding them or
become aggressive toward them, deepening the system of dislike, bitterness and mistrust.
3. You take a step back and get real about the situation. Accept the part you are playing in building the system of
dislike and mistrust and break your patterns.
Here are some tips on how to you can break your patterns:
1. Face the truth. You will not get anyone to like you by continuing to do the things they don't like about you.
Determine which behavior are a based on your need to fit in and weed these behaviors out as they don't serve
you or the team because they don't represent who you truly are.
2. While being yourself, treat your coworkers with dignity and respect, - you will be liked or disliked no matter
what you do because your coworkers have diverse tastes, talents, abilities and perceptions.
3. Learn to love yourself more. Expand your self esteem to the point where your validation is not sought
extrinsically. In other words, develop your self esteem and believe in yourself. Seek a trained counselor or
therapist if you can't do this on your own.
4. One part of building your self esteem is learning and using Emotional Intelligence skills. In Emotional
Intelligence you first have to be able to identify your emotions and your subsequent patterns of behavior
before you can engage the people around you more effectively. If you are not yet proficient with EI , learn to
identify your emotions and patterns of behavior. Once you can see your patterns more clearly, make a
conscious decision to move away from the unfulfilling world of seeking infinite validation from others. It will only
be a distraction.
5. Understand the consequences of your actions. Once you have the courage to see consequences for what
they are and accept your part in them, take the steps to help transform the situation. It may not feel safe
anymore because you can only change yourself but your aim is authenticity.
6. Know when to stop trying and start being who you really are! Recognize when you have you passed the point
of diminishing return.
Many of us focus our energies on building a list of academic accomplishments so that we can equip ourselves with the skills we need to be successful. This is a noble goal but we sometimes overlook investing in developing our interpersonal and leadership skills because we don't realize that in the long run, the person with the well developed leadership and communication skills and average technical skills can sometimes get further ahead than the person with a stronger knowledge of the job and weak leadership skills.
Depending on your work environment, wanting to be accepted can be an "Achilles heel" for you so be aware of your patterns and if it makes sense to you, use these tips to help you to reinvent yourself so that you don't sabotage your career in the long run.
The book, "Influencer" by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler provides
some very useful tips for creating positive influence.
- Influence geniuses focus on behaviours – they carefully identify behaviors or beliefs they want to change
and then create an influence strategy
- They look for positive deviance – They study targeted settings where the problem should exist but doesn't’t.
- They identify recovery behaviors – in case you make a mistake in the process you have a back up plan
Tools of Influence
- Verbal persuasion – works usually but rarely with resistant problems. When you use verbal persuasion with
resistant problems you create more resistance.
- Personal experience – Help people to experience the world as you experience it. – Let them see or witness real
life reality for themselves.
- Create a surrogate for actual experiences – Whatever they are afraid of, let them witness someone else and
then let them try it – a staged approach.
Six Sources of Influence (for building your influence strategy)
- Personal Motivation - How to make the undesirable desirable
- Personal Ability - Help people surpass their limits
- Social Motivation - Harness Peer Pressure
- Social Ability - Use your network to help you succeed
- Structural Motivation - Design rewards for going down the new path
- Structural Ability - Change the environment
Excerpted from the book, "Influencer"
There is an ancient and well-kept secret to happiness which the Great Ones have known for centuries. They rarely talk about it, but they use it all the time, and it is fundamental to good mental health. This secret is called The Fine Art of Not Being Offended. In order to truly be a master of this art, one must be able to see that every statement, action and reaction of another human being is the sum result of their total life experience to date.
In other words, the majority of people in our world say and do what they do from their own set of fears, conclusions, defenses and attempts to survive. Most of it, even when aimed directly at us, has nothing to do with us. Usually, it has more to do with all the other times, and in particular the first few times, that this person experienced a similar situation, usually when they were young.
Yes, this is psychodynamic. But let’s face it, we live in a world where psychodynamics are what make the world go around. An individual who wishes to live successfully in the world as a spiritual person really needs to understand that psychology is as spiritual as prayer. In fact, the word psychology literally means the study of the soul.
All of that said, almost nothing is personal. Even with our closest loved ones, our beloved partners, our children and our friends. We are all swimming in the projections and filters of each other’s life experiences and often we are just the stand-ins, the chess pieces of life to which our loved ones have their own built-in reactions. This is not to dehumanize life or take away the intimacy from our relationships, but mainly for us to know that almost every time we get offended, we are actually just in a misunderstanding.
A true embodiment of this idea actually allows for more intimacy and less suffering throughout all of our relationships. When we know that we are just the one who happens to be standing in the right place at the right psychodynamic time for someone to say or do what they are doing—we don’t have to take life personally. If it weren’t us, it would likely be someone else.
This frees us to be a little more detached from the reactions of people around us. How often do we react to a statement of another by being offended rather than seeing that the other might actually be hurting? In fact, every time we get offended, it is actually an opportunity to extend kindness to one who may be suffering—even if they themselves do not appear that way on the surface. All anger, all acting out, all harshness, all criticism, is in truth a form of suffering. When we provide no Velcro for it to stick, something changes in the world. We do not even have to say a thing. In fact, it is usually better not to say a thing.
People who are suffering on the inside, but not showing it on the outside, are usually not keen on someone pointing out to them that they are suffering. We do not have to be our loved one’s therapist. We need only understand the situation and move on. In the least, we ourselves experience less suffering and at best, we have a chance to make the world a better place.
This is also not to be confused with allowing ourselves to be hurt, neglected or taken advantage of. True compassion does not allow harm to ourselves either. But when we know that nothing is personal, a magical thing happens. Many of the seeming abusers of the world start to leave our lives. Once we are conscious, so-called abuse can only happen if we believe what the other is saying. When we know nothing is personal, we also do not end up feeling abused. We can say, “Thank you for sharing,” and move on. We are not hooked by what another does or says, since we know it is not about us.
When we know that our inherent worth is not determined by what another says, does or believes, we can take the world a little less seriously. And if necessary, we can just walk away without creating more misery for ourselves or having to convince the other person that we are good and worthy people.
The great challenge of our world is to live a life of contentment, regardless of what other people do, say, think or believe. The fine art of not being offended is one of the many skills for being a practical mystic. Though it may take a lifetime of practice, it is truly one of the best kept secrets for living a happy life.
By Dr. Jodi Prinzivalli
"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what people say. I just watch what they do."
- Andrew Carnegie
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If you can keep your head when all about you If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can make one heap of all your winnings If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, |