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Issue #40: October 6, 2004
To our readers:
It's difficult to practice good soft skills when you're experiencing anger, resentment, and irritation, and those feelings are common by-products of taking things personally. The more adept you are at not taking things personally, the better you'll be at working with others and accomplishing your goals.
Work and business abound with opportunities to feel criticized, unappreciated, and misunderstood. A colleague says he doesn't get sales figures quickly enough: is he criticizing your department's efficiency? Your boss tells your office-mate she really appreciates his getting to the office early each morning: is she slamming you for not coming in earlier? You're leading a departmental meeting when someone complains that meetings take too long: is she saying you're incompetent in running meetings? Your board of directors asks for an assessment of work-place safety: are they questioning your attention to safety in your production facility?
Sometimes statements like these are meant personally and sometimes they're not. Even an action that has nothing to do with you personally might cause you to feel angry. When a customer calls to complain about a bad experience he had with one of your firm's employees, it's clearly not personal if he doesn't know you and you had nothing to do with his experience with the other employee. If, in his anger, he yells at you, there is nothing personal intended. However, for you to feel angry would be human. For you to nurse that feeling and allow it to color your actions would be foolish.
An action may affect you personally and still not be meant as a personal slight. If the president of your firm interviews candidates for a job you want but doesn't interview you, she might be unaware of your interest in the position. In that case you have been personally affected, but unintentionally so. It wouldn't make sense for you to be hurt or angry. What would make sense is for you to let her know you'd like to be considered for such jobs in the future.
If the president is fully aware of your desire for the job, then her failure to interview you is intended, and you could certainly take it personally and feel angry, unappreciated, and resentful. As justified as those feelings may be, they are not the best determinant of your behavior. It is more useful to you to base your behavior on thinking than on your feelings. Realize the president didn't necessarily intend to cause you distress but had more practical reasons for not considering you for the job, such as your level of experience, education, training, and/or performance. Your task is to find out what those reasons are and address them so you can be considered for similar promotions in the future.
Even when an action is meant to offend you, it might be wiser to choose to think than it is to indulge in knee-jerk reactions to your hurt feelings. By limiting the degree to which you take things personally you limit the power of your wounded feelings to dictate how you respond, and you enable yourself to think objectively, to listen to others more fully, to consider your options clearly in light of what you learn, and to act reasonably, using your best interpersonal skills .
As wise as it is to refuse to take things personally, it's not easy.
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Five tips that can help you to not take things personally:
1. First, assume positive intent.
Assess every situation, problem, and interchange as though it is intended in a positive way. For example, if you're discussing how to make meetings more productive and someone says meetings would proceed more quickly if you didn't ask so many questions, take the statement at face value. Recognize the fact that at least one person (and maybe more!) believe you take up too much time with your questions and it could serve you well to do something about it. Don't succumb to the inclination to see the statement as a vicious attack against you and an effort to make you look bad, possibly causing you to lose face with your colleagues and boss and eventually lose your job and be unable to feed your children.
Instead, assume the statement is made in an effort to improve meetings.
2. Next, glean whatever useful information and insights you can from the statement/situation.
If someone says something that seems insulting to you, nonetheless check the statement for any useful information you can glean from it. Force yourself to put your understandable feelings of embarrassment, anger, and/or hurt in the back of your mind while you deal with the statement as though it is not meant to offend you at all. In the example above, you might ask for clarification of the kinds of questions you're asking that are excessive. Force yourself to be open to what you hear. The bottom line is that if you are perceived as wasting your colleagues' time with your questions, you'd better figure out another way to get the information your questions are meant to elicit.
3. Put yourself in the other person's shoes.
"If you can get out of the center of your own orbit, you won't feel so much like a target. And in most instances, whatever was said or done says more about the other person and their fears than it does about you!" according to Elayne Savage, Ph.D., a communications coach, professional speaker, and psychotherapist. This is probably one of the most significant keys to not taking things personally. Don't put yourself in the center of the universe! It's not all about you!
When a colleague makes a remark about your work or comments on your appearance, your training, your background, your car, or your habits, think for a minute about what he is dealing with that might cause him to go on the offensive, or at least to sound like he's on the offensive. While compassion is one good reason to put yourself in the other person's shoes, another good reason is that understanding his struggles, insecurities, and pressures can help you realize you're not really what he's attacking at all. When you can hear such comments as coming from him and not about you, you keep your wounded feelings from engaging, and leave yourself free to think and behave reasonably. Sometimes your reasonable response is one that puts the other guy in his place--which can be very satisfying--but it is best formulated in your head and not from your wounded ego.
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4. Let your feelings of anger, hurt, and embarrassment be a signal you're taking something personally and you need to step back from it.
When you feel the blood rushing to your ears or your skin flushing from embarrassment or any of the other signals that you're feeling angry, hurt, or embarrassed, take a deep breath and tell yourself to think.
5. Make it a game to switch from "feeling" to "thinking" when you need to.
Challenge yourself to take that deep breath, step back from your negative feelings, engage your brain, and think about the situation. Count it as a "win" every time you successfully switch from feeling to thinking and enable yourself to choose behavior that is in your best interest . Enjoy the "feeling" of not taking it personally.
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