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Reasonable meaning not being over-reasonable and letting people use you as a doormat. I am talking about completely relying on facts, logic and reason to get around. Here are three incidents.
Incident 1: During my training of my current job, a trainer of a senior position demands I use the computer in a specific kind of way. This involves displaying rudimentary information as my desktop background, using windows sticky notes to save information, and relying on printouts and paper to store information. I explain this makes me uncomfortable, because I prefer learning and remembering rather than using physical and electronic notes. This makes them very frustrated, and they do not reason, insisting this works for them, and is the company style of working. This makes me sad, because although they seem alright, they are trying to force the issue, so I go for my break. On returning I find they have supplied sticky notes by the computer and printouts to my partition. They are promptly removed. They then put me into a room, insist that they are senior, and I must follow their wishes. I tell them that if they do that again, they will be removed again. Outcome: they stop doing it and leave me alone.
Incident 2: The call center makes an error which saves them a very small amount of time and causes me a lot of time to solve. I go downstairs and explain to them carefully and rationally what they have done, and that they have made an error. They make excuses and become infuriated, which attracts the attention of their supervisor. They also make excuses and become infuriated, which attracts the attention of the manager. They also make excuses and I simply repeat over again using facts and logic, remaining calm, paying close attention to what I am saying, eventually adding that just because it saves them time, it must not be made. They refuse to change their ways and threaten to talk to my manager. Outcome: they stop making the error and my relationship improves with the person who made it.
Incident 3: Someone in IT performs an update to my computer which makes it impossible to easily retrieve some files then sends an E-mail out that me and my team will solve this problem without consulting us. These are important files for me and my co-workers and we need to send these to other people. The only option left is to try and search folder-by-folder manually. They used to be easy to find, but are now lost away in many hundreds of folders, some of which I now cannot access. IT also leave no contact details. After two days of many internal phone calls, I reach the responsible team. They respond to search for my files manually. I reply that this is not practical and I can't find them anyway, trying in various ways to reason with them. They do not listen and repeat to search for files manually. After 10 minutes they snap and become aggressive, accusing that I am disobeying company instructions. By 15 minutes, they are very agitated and have clearly lost control. I continue to sternly but calmly explain using reason. By the 20 minute mark they slam the phone down, some senior people rudely drag me into a room and try to BS me, I tell them to their faces that they are ridiculous and need to learn how to deal with things, they storm off irritated. Outcome: next day, my files are back and no-one talks about it again.
Although I get frustrated and agitated, which is clear from my body language and tone, I still allow myself to relax during the confrontation, then invest my strength on being precise about the facts and appealing to reason. When it's obvious they have no answer, I just repeat myself. When their BS and their "I'm the manager" card fails to work, they just flat out lose it and threaten me all kinds of things. Then the next day I've got everything I want and no one talks about it anymore and people like me more.
I'm not sure even what I'm talking about really. I like working in this industry, enjoy being efficient, I'm even on good terms with some senior management (long story) but is this creating a toxic reputation for me? Are people just going to take advantage of all this in the long term?
WOW! Let me rephrase what I got out of your scenarios...
1. You are being trained in accepted company procedures. These procedures create a retrievable record that others can refer to, unlike your personal working memory. You refuse to use these procedures for emotional reasons. You make demands of senior employees. You were just as rigid in your thinking as they were. They leave you alone for the moment, but you just got a label as "uncooperative, controlling", even belligerent.
2. First, its always a bit embarrassing to be found making an error. There could be a basic misunderstanding between what YOUR group needs and what the call center was directed to do. You tried to tell a different work group of which you are not part, what to do. Maybe the more diplomatic method would have been to explain the hiccup to the manager of your group and let them deal with it with someone at the same level from that other group. Again, you thought about what you wanted, not what anyone else needed, and didn't show respect for someone who may well be entitled to it.
3. Someone who's job is to develop, manage, and maintain computer systems makes a change to your computer that means you have to change your routine. You decide you don't like the change, so proceed to tell these subject matter experts what to do to please YOU. When they don't do what you want, you get even more demanding. You refuse to listen. They lose patience. Then pass it off as "they are too rigid". But so are you. You say they don't listen. Neither do you. End result, you are again labeled the belligerent, controlling, and uncooperative employee. At this point, regardless of who is technically correct, you are going to be cast as the aggressor.
Until you earn the right by superior position or seniority to become the decisionmaker about company procedures, you cannot automatically demand anything of others. I'm sure you have useful suggestions to make, but you need to learn to present them as suggestions, back them up, and let your superiors make their own decisions about it, not quarrel with people face to face. There may be good reasons behind these existing procedures that you are not privy to. All you are doing is demonstrating that you won't listen to any other points of view and that you will goad others into a scene because of it.
IMHO this is neither reasonable nor successful. Even if you are technically correct sometimes, you won't be all the time. It won't do you any favors to resist everything someone tries to teach you. People often dismiss an aggressive person by pretending that they agree with them. All they will remember eventually is that you are coldly aggressive and unwilling to consider another point of view. You might be a great technician but unpleasant to work around. Work is more than being correct all the time. It is understanding how to cooperate within a group. Someone too touchy and temperamental eventually gets let go as not worth the trouble.
Last edited by Parnassia; 03-08-2018 at 08:01 PM..
Best I can tell from all that is you are a thinking oriented person working in an organization of process oriented people. You are frustrated because you want to think and use logic to resolve problems and improve processes. They are frustrated because all that matters to them is compliance with process, not results.
This is a mix that just won't last for the long term. For the long term you will be much happier in a thinking/learning type organization rather than a process oriented one.
I learn a secret of happiness from this quote "See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little." by Pope John XXIII. And this quote was re-quoted in the book Monday Mornings by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. You can laugh all the way throughout while reading this book.
Everyone has good points and bad points. If you try to look and find others' bad points and want to be right all the times, you feel unhappy. On the reverse, if you try to overlook their bad and try to see their good points and try to look inside yourself too, then you can find happiness.
These cases do seem unreasonable, but problems happen, and it sounds like the place just isn't ran well.
If anything, most things run smoothly because the processes and software is efficient, and I enjoy that. But yeah the management really sucks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AnOrdinaryCitizen
I learn a secret of happiness from this quote "See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little." by Pope John XXIII. And this quote was re-quoted in the book Monday Mornings by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. You can laugh all the way throughout while reading this book.
That's a nice quote. I enjoy the verse "Render unto Caesar" in times like this because it teaches you to tolerate and co-operate with the world, at least in as much as it is possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AllisonHB
WOW! Let me rephrase what I got out of your scenarios...
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Thanks for your input, it's good to see another person's perspective.
1. Damn right I was rigid, because this was not to do with procedure. The trainer was barely out teenhood, having a fraction of the industry experience as me, insisting on how to use a computer. I don't think any experienced computer user would react too well in those circumstances.
2. If they had been open to discussion instead of making excuses, they would have learned how these intentional errors harmed them in the long run too. But they deflected and excused themselves and I couldn't get a foothold at all. We have a system which audits as you go, and the errors were right in front of them, and they still denied they happened. There's little opportunity for respect when that fails.
3. This is a little more complicated and I've tried to truncate all this. Fair enough sure I would be the aggressor. However it has screwed up our files so much that my team are wondering what is going on with management. We can't see the files we need, and if we can't deal with them, ordinary people DON'T GET PAID. The scary thing is that no one is listening and being reasonable hasn't worked out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AllisonHB
Until you earn the right by superior position or seniority to become the decisionmaker about company procedures, you cannot automatically demand anything of others.
And how does someone earn that right? By demonstrating that they can make decisions and demands comfortably regardless of the situation. Up to now I've been reasonable, and have made no demands of others. If all that leads to is me being the aggressor, why not be the aggressor?
I don't like the connotations of "aggressive" I prefer assertive. There's a difference in both intent and practice. You are not playing rugby, you are conducting business. Creating uproar in an office, pushing others to the point of shouting, having those people call for assistance/backup from other staff, repeatedly starting arguments and letting emotions take over is not going to get your point across. When the people you are confronting are upset, they are no longer listening. They are reacting. The same applies for you. When things settle down again most likely the one thing they will remember about the incident is how they felt....defensive, angry, frustrated, even threatened. Not what you intended. Even if what you say happens to be correct, if this is how you approach discussions like this you could still end up with a conduct complain filed against you by another employee who felt abused.
There is a lot of good guidance on how to work collaboratively with others and how to avoid the emotional confrontation aspects. How to be "right" without being righteous. How to keep others as well as yourself from getting defensive. How to be respectful and empathetic while pointing out the flaws in others. Industry and business magazines are full of various approaches. Here's just one....learning skills like this means you are emotionally intelligent. Something you will need in order to be successful as well as reasonable.
What I did during my 35 year IT career, is simply do the things that I was told to do. If the processes and procedures were stupid and inefficient, I did them anyway. I figured that I was being paid for what I did then I might as well do things management's way. I may have gently suggested better processes and procedures at times, but if there was any pushback from management I would immediately drop it.
I was frequently told that I did my work well and was not a complainer or a malingerer. Thus, being a "yes man" paid off monetarily well for me. Some of my colleagues, who ventured outside of "yes man" territory did not fare too well.
What I did during my 35 year IT career, is simply do the things that I was told to do. If the processes and procedures were stupid and inefficient, I did them anyway. I figured that I was being paid for what I did then I might as well do things management's way. I may have gently suggested better processes and procedures at times, but if there was any pushback from management I would immediately drop it.
I was frequently told that I did my work well and was not a complainer or a malingerer. Thus, being a "yes man" paid off monetarily well for me. Some of my colleagues, who ventured outside of "yes man" territory did not fare too well.
It depends how inefficient the process is. There are times where if it's dysfunctional to the point of where you cannot complete your job description that something has to give. In IT you can be a Yes Man, my Uncle is in a similar boat to you. But on the business operations, Dev work, Marketing, Sales and time sensitive infrastructure builds or mission critical analyses Yes Man isn't going to cut it.
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Being a Yes Man
