April 23, 2024 • 20 mins
In today's episode, Erin explores workplace dynamics through the lens of Brooke Castillo's concept of 'the manual,' a framework for understanding and managing challenging relationships. Erin provides tangible examples of common interactions that often leave us feeling frustrated. She offers clear strategies for how to depersonalize and move on. Tune in to learn how to enhance your professional relationships and optimize workplace communication.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
My single favorite concept that I have ever learned
that had such a big impact onme feeling less frustrated,
annoyed or personally offendedby other people's behavior.
If you want to learn more aboutthis concept and how to apply
it to your life, stay tuned.
Hello, hello, welcome backeveryone.
(00:24):
I hope that you are having agreat week.
I am hopping on to talk to youtoday about truly one of my
absolute favorite concepts thatI use when I am coaching people.
This is a concept I learnedfrom Brooke Castillo many years
ago and I would say this has hadthe most significant impact on
(00:46):
everything in my life myrelationships, my working
relationships, my personalrelationship, my romantic
relationship.
It is a concept that I wish Iknew many, many, many years ago.
So today I'm going to talk toyou about Brooke Castillo's
concept that she calls themanual.
I'm gonna talk to you about howit applies in the workplace and
(01:07):
how you can use this concept toreally dial down the drama, all
the drama that our brain getsinto your frustration with other
people, your frustration withhow your boss or coworkers
function, which can take up aton of energy and a ton of
anxiety that is often reallyunnecessary and will burn you
(01:29):
out in your job.
So I'm going to talk to youtoday about the concept that
Brooke calls the manual.
For some reason, my braininterpreted this to be rule
books.
That's sort of how I've alwaystalked about it.
The manual is equivalent to apersonal rule book or a personal
worldview, and the concept isthat you and I and everyone in
(01:54):
the world is walking around witha manual in their brain for how
people should behave, what'sappropriate, what's not
appropriate, what's respectful,what's not appropriate, what's
respectful, what's notrespectful, what's most
effective, how we should behavewhen we're collaborating, all of
it.
You can like literally thinkabout it as a big, thick book.
(02:17):
We all have one in our brain,and the part that becomes really
tricky is most of us assumethat everyone shares a similar
rulebook or a similar manual,and the truth is people have
very different manuals for many,many, many things in our lives.
(02:42):
Particularly when we all moveinto a workspace where we need
to coordinate to get to variousoutcomes, where we need to
interact professionally andpersonally, it becomes very
nuanced and very messy.
So the issues come into playbecause we tend to assume that
(03:03):
we share similar rule books.
We tend to expect everyone tofollow our rule book because we
assume that it's obvious, right.
So like if we assume behavingin a particular way is
respectful and not behaving inthat way is not respectful, we
assume that most people sharethat with us and then when
(03:24):
someone behaves in a way that'soutside of our rulebook, we
really can evaluate theirintentions in a specific way.
We can start to make it meanthat they're being disrespectful
, et cetera.
So the other thing that tendsto happen when it comes to
rulebooks in the workplace isthat we misinterpret other
people's rule books from a verysimplistic lens, and the lens
(03:49):
tends to also be verypersonalized.
So I'm going to take thisconcept we all have a rule book,
we all have a way of movingthrough the world, we all have a
worldview that we function fromand we tend to assume other
people are functioning from thatsame space.
And I'm going to apply it to asituation and I'm going to show
you how it gets us into troubleand I'm going to talk to you
about what to do instead.
(04:10):
So let's use Sally, because Ilike to use Sally for all
examples for some reason.
So let's assume Sally goes inand gets feedback from her
supervisor.
Her supervisor dives directlyin and tells Sally three things
that she wants her to do toimprove her performance.
(04:30):
Okay, sally has a rule bookthat says you should offer
positive feedback and let peopleknow what they're doing well
before you tell them what theyneed to correct.
This is what's appropriate.
(04:50):
This is what equals goodmanaging.
Her boss, however, has adifferent rule book.
Okay, what's going to happen isSally leaves that encounter.
She's playing this whole thingthrough in her head and she
immediately feels like my bossis disrespectful, she is not a
(05:15):
good manager.
She doesn't think I'mperforming well.
She should not behave this way.
Let's assume that in thisscenario, sally's boss has a
rule book and she believes thesandwich method, which is kind
of a traditional method of liketell someone what they're doing
well, then give them somecritical feedback, then end it
(05:36):
with something they're doingwell.
It's been done for many years.
It's something that used to bekind of taught as how you, you
know, give effective feedback toyour subordinates.
But let's say that Sally's bossbelieves it's condescending.
Everybody knows that.
It is sort of a strategy.
(05:57):
It's superficial.
People can see through it.
Her boss might believe myco-workers don't have time for
that.
They know what they're doingwell.
My job is to give themconstructive feedback so that
they can improve.
So Sally and her boss are now ina room together.
Her boss is functioning fromthis rulebook, where she's like
(06:18):
I'm not going to becondescending, I'm not going to
give her sandwich feedback, I'mnot going to just tell her
things that she's obviouslydoing well, I'm just going to
get down to it, give her thechanges I want her to make and
we're all going to move on fromour day.
And meanwhile Sally's on theother side with her rulebook and
(06:50):
she's thinking this is sodisrespectful.
Why right?
And you could argue both peopleare wrong, but being right or
wrong becomes much lesssignificant than being able to
move through that interactionwithout it creating a lot of
drama or taking up a lot of time.
So what I want you to be ableto see in this setting, which is
often so much easier to seewhen we're outside of the
situation, is that these twopeople are just functioning from
(07:12):
very different worldviews.
But what you can see in theexample I gave you is that both
worldviews are pretty rational,that I've offered two
perspectives on why someonewould behave this way in a way
that can probably make sense tomost of you as listeners.
You might identify with onemore than the other, but you can
(07:35):
see how, from a rationalperspective, it makes sense to
most of you as listeners.
You might identify with onemore than the other, but you can
see how, from a rationalperspective, it makes sense to
both people.
What tends to happen when we'removing through really life in
general but we just see itreally heightened in workspaces
is that we have our rationalrulebook and we are able to
(07:56):
articulate very rationally whywe believe what we believe, why
we think people should behavethis way, why we think what
we're thinking is the mosteffective way to go about this.
When we're interpreting otherpeople's behavior, we tend to
lose all rational thinking ontheir behalf.
So instead of looking at thesituation and asking ourselves
(08:20):
like what could be the reasonfor Sally's boss to function
this way, what rational reasonmight she be applying what our
brain tends to do it's similarto how they describe attribution
theory is it will just take acharacter flaw and slap it on
our boss and assume that ourboss is behaving that way
(08:43):
because they have some majorcharacter flaw.
So people will say things likemy boss is just like a total
narcissist, doesn't care aboutanybody, looks down on everybody
around them and just wants totell us why we're all terrible.
Okay, it's our brain taking ourrational rulebook, using it to
(09:05):
interpret that behavior and thenassuming a bunch of character
flaws of the other person.
And what I get to see incoaching that is so helpful in
my own life and helping me movepeople through theirs, is that
everyone has rationalexplanations in their own brain
(09:25):
for why they're behaving the waythat they're behaving.
And when you can get your brainto empathetically try to
understand someone else'srulebook in a way that is
rational and gives them thebenefit of the doubt, it will
save you so much time spinningin drama about how other people
(09:50):
behave.
I am not saying you can't haveboundaries, you can't have
expectations, you can't decidewhen something's unacceptable to
you.
All of that is fine.
But I am talking about all ofthese nuanced encounters where
two people come in contact witheach other in the workplace and
(10:13):
it creates a ton of mind, drama,exhaustion and frustration.
That can often be easilyavoided when you simply allow
yourself to understand your rulebook and how their rule book
might be different and you tryto interpret it through a
rational lens from bothperspectives.
(10:37):
So what I'm offering here isthat first you get very clear
that you have a rule book.
It's kind of like lovelanguages.
We tend to understand that,like we all have love languages
is like in the zeitgeist now,and people tend to understand
like we all have a differentlove language.
We all want to be loveddifferently.
We all understand what lovelooks like differently and a lot
(10:59):
of people kind of understandthat language in their intimate
relationships.
It's similar in the workplace.
People have very differentinterpretations of what it means
to give feedback, what it meansto be respectful, what it means
to collaborate, how we shouldmost effectively function in a
(11:20):
meeting, and when all of thosepeople get in a room together
and all of those differentassumptions come to the table,
it can get messy.
So what I want you to do is getvery clear that you have a rule
book and to first become veryaware that other peoples are
different.
You need to move through theworkplace knowing on so many
nuanced issues, people aroundyou have different rule books.
Some are the same, like we allprobably agree.
(11:42):
We're not going to like smackeach other at work, right, we
all agree.
We're not going to name call,and certainly the company
creates rule books for theculture that everyone is asked
to buy into or agree on, butthere's so many other nuances
below the surface when it comesto all of these different ways
that we're collaborating,connecting and coming in contact
(12:04):
with each other.
So let's move through anotherexample that I think will be
helpful.
Let's say you walk into work.
You say hello to Bob.
Bob is really short.
He barely looks up from hisdesk.
He says hello to you.
He doesn't really acknowledgeyou very much.
You walk away feeling like Bobis rude, bob doesn't like me for
(12:25):
some reason.
If you're feeling insecure inyour job, your brain's probably
going to tell you something likeBob thinks I'm not competent
enough in this role.
So you have a rule book thatsays you should look at people
when they say hello to you.
You should acknowledge them Atwork.
(12:46):
You should engage in maybe kindof short back and forth how was
your weekend?
How are you?
How are you doing?
Whatever it is, you might justhave an assumption about how
much you should engage withsomeone when you're saying hello
at the beginning of the day.
So if I asked you why Bobbehaved that way, your brain's
(13:11):
going to go into potentially alot of drama.
He's just kind of a jerk.
He's rude to everyone.
He only cares about himself.
He doesn't care about anybodyelse.
He thinks he's better thaneveryone else.
If we take that same situationand we zoom back and I asked you
to give a rational, generousinterpretation of Bob's behavior
(13:31):
you might get to somethingdifferent.
For example, bob might feellike I'm paid to focus on my
work.
My coworkers know this.
Everyone is super busy.
I say hello to everyone whosays hi to me, but I tend to be
very sucked into my work and soI don't want to like look up and
stop because it's really hardfor me to get back into what I'm
(13:53):
doing.
But everybody knows this.
We all respect that everyone'sbusy, so people don't need a lot
from each other.
You can see how, in thisscenario, both people could be
interpreting this interactionincredibly differently and from
very different assumptions ofhow one should behave in the
workplace.
And when you can get to thespace where you give a rational,
(14:19):
generous interpretation toBob's behavior, you will hold on
to things much less.
You will assume Bob isfunctioning from this space, you
will give him the benefit ofthe doubt and you'll move on
with your day.
It just cuts out so much dramain your brain that your brain
(14:40):
tends to spin on.
So what I want to offer you isjust the simple steps of
understanding that you have arulebook and that everyone's not
going to share it.
Doing your best to understandwhat other people's rule books
are by simply offering arational, generous
(15:02):
interpretation for theirbehavior.
I'm not saying you need to askpeople specifically like what is
your rule book, what's yourmanual for how people should
behave.
You can figure that out veryquickly by simply asking
yourself how would they answerthe question of why they behaved
that way?
What would they say was thereason for it?
And people do not ever point toa character flaw.
(15:25):
No one says I behave that waybecause I'm a big jerk and I
only care about myself, right?
If you can get to the placewhere you're able to describe
Bob's own rational explanation,then you're really getting to a
place where you're understandinghis rulebook, his worldview,
his assumptions for what hethinks is appropriate or not
(15:48):
appropriate.
You can make requests I'm notsaying that you can't and in
fact, when you understand thatpeople have these very different
assumptions, rule books,understanding of what's
necessary, it becomes a littlebit easier to see why somebody
might not be giving yousomething that you feel like you
need.
So, for example, if you aregetting your feedback in a
(16:11):
particular way from yoursupervisor and you're having a
hard time with that and you feellike you need something
different, when your supervisorsays to you, hey, how's it going
?
What can I do to be helpful, itgives you the opportunity to
make the request.
You can really then identifythat you have this own worldview
(16:31):
, assumption, rule book for howto give feedback that you're
evaluating your supervisor from.
That's like getting messy.
So you can simply say, yeah, Iwould love it if, in our
one-on-ones, you could offer mea few examples of some things
that you see that I'm doingreally well, before we dive into
(16:52):
some of the critical feedback.
That's it Like you can make therequest.
Critical feedback that's itLike.
You can make the request.
She or he may or may not giveyou that request, but you can
always make it from a spacethat's really clear and from a
space that's often cleaner,meaning, instead of it assuming
a bunch of reasons for whysomeone isn't showing up the way
(17:12):
you want them to or treatingyou the way you want them to,
that they're showing up in a waythat makes sense to them and is
very rational to them and youin turn can make a request if
you feel like you need to.
What I often find for myself isthat with this concept I am
able to simply move past thingsso much easier, without even
(17:37):
needing to make the request,that if I really give that
generous interpretation and Iassume my supervisor is coming
from this space of like theirjob is to give me critical
feedback and they need to do itquickly and they know I'm busy
and they're busy and if I sortof get into their rule book, it
will often allow me to just belike that's fine, I can totally
handle this.
(17:57):
I can adjust and be flexiblewith what I usually would need
in this situation.
Of course, you get to decidewhere your boundaries are.
You get to decide what you'rewilling to tolerate and not
tolerate.
You get to decide when you wantto make a request of somebody
and when it's a deal breaker foryou and you're going to exit
that job.
But when it comes to all thesenuanced pieces in the middle,
(18:21):
get really clear on.
Other people have their manualand you have your manual and
oftentimes we actually don'tneed them to function the way we
tend to function in order forus to be okay and in order for
us to have a functioning,helpful relationship and to get
(18:43):
from point A to point B withthem, particularly if you can
really practice flexing thatmuscle of giving them the
benefit of the doubt what is themost rational, generous
interpretation of why they arebehaving or showing up in this
particular way?
And given that, how do I nowwant to move forward?
(19:04):
So that is me offering to youmy absolute favorite concept
that I have ever learned in mytime doing coaching, and I hope
that this will come in handy foryou at work.
If you are finding that you aregetting lost in the drama, lost
in the insecurities, feel freeto hop on over ErinMFoleycom,
(19:26):
grab a free consultation.
We can hop on a call and talkabout one-on-one coaching.
I will be back with more greatinformation for you.
Hope you all have a great week.
My single favorite concept that I have ever learned
that had such a big impact onme feeling less frustrated,
annoyed or personally offendedby other people's behavior.
If you want to learn more aboutthis concept and how to apply
it to your life, stay tuned.
Hello, hello, welcome backeveryone.
(00:24):
I hope that you are having agreat week.
I am hopping on to talk to youtoday about truly one of my
absolute favorite concepts thatI use when I am coaching people.
This is a concept I learnedfrom Brooke Castillo many years
ago and I would say this has hadthe most significant impact on
(00:46):
everything in my life myrelationships, my working
relationships, my personalrelationship, my romantic
relationship.
It is a concept that I wish Iknew many, many, many years ago.
So today I'm going to talk toyou about Brooke Castillo's
concept that she calls themanual.
I'm gonna talk to you about howit applies in the workplace and
(01:07):
how you can use this concept toreally dial down the drama, all
the drama that our brain getsinto your frustration with other
people, your frustration withhow your boss or coworkers
function, which can take up aton of energy and a ton of
anxiety that is often reallyunnecessary and will burn you
(01:29):
out in your job.
So I'm going to talk to youtoday about the concept that
Brooke calls the manual.
For some reason, my braininterpreted this to be rule
books.
That's sort of how I've alwaystalked about it.
The manual is equivalent to apersonal rule book or a personal
worldview, and the concept isthat you and I and everyone in
(01:54):
the world is walking around witha manual in their brain for how
people should behave, what'sappropriate, what's not
appropriate, what's respectful,what's not appropriate, what's
respectful, what's notrespectful, what's most
effective, how we should behavewhen we're collaborating, all of
it.
You can like literally thinkabout it as a big, thick book.
(02:17):
We all have one in our brain,and the part that becomes really
tricky is most of us assumethat everyone shares a similar
rulebook or a similar manual,and the truth is people have
very different manuals for many,many, many things in our lives.
(02:42):
Particularly when we all moveinto a workspace where we need
to coordinate to get to variousoutcomes, where we need to
interact professionally andpersonally, it becomes very
nuanced and very messy.
So the issues come into playbecause we tend to assume that
(03:03):
we share similar rule books.
We tend to expect everyone tofollow our rule book because we
assume that it's obvious, right.
So like if we assume behavingin a particular way is
respectful and not behaving inthat way is not respectful, we
assume that most people sharethat with us and then when
(03:24):
someone behaves in a way that'soutside of our rulebook, we
really can evaluate theirintentions in a specific way.
We can start to make it meanthat they're being disrespectful
, et cetera.
So the other thing that tendsto happen when it comes to
rulebooks in the workplace isthat we misinterpret other
people's rule books from a verysimplistic lens, and the lens
(03:49):
tends to also be verypersonalized.
So I'm going to take thisconcept we all have a rule book,
we all have a way of movingthrough the world, we all have a
worldview that we function fromand we tend to assume other
people are functioning from thatsame space.
And I'm going to apply it to asituation and I'm going to show
you how it gets us into troubleand I'm going to talk to you
about what to do instead.
(04:10):
So let's use Sally, because Ilike to use Sally for all
examples for some reason.
So let's assume Sally goes inand gets feedback from her
supervisor.
Her supervisor dives directlyin and tells Sally three things
that she wants her to do toimprove her performance.
(04:30):
Okay, sally has a rule bookthat says you should offer
positive feedback and let peopleknow what they're doing well
before you tell them what theyneed to correct.
This is what's appropriate.
(04:50):
This is what equals goodmanaging.
Her boss, however, has adifferent rule book.
Okay, what's going to happen isSally leaves that encounter.
She's playing this whole thingthrough in her head and she
immediately feels like my bossis disrespectful, she is not a
(05:15):
good manager.
She doesn't think I'mperforming well.
She should not behave this way.
Let's assume that in thisscenario, sally's boss has a
rule book and she believes thesandwich method, which is kind
of a traditional method of liketell someone what they're doing
well, then give them somecritical feedback, then end it
(05:36):
with something they're doingwell.
It's been done for many years.
It's something that used to bekind of taught as how you, you
know, give effective feedback toyour subordinates.
But let's say that Sally's bossbelieves it's condescending.
Everybody knows that.
It is sort of a strategy.
(05:57):
It's superficial.
People can see through it.
Her boss might believe myco-workers don't have time for
that.
They know what they're doingwell.
My job is to give themconstructive feedback so that
they can improve.
So Sally and her boss are now ina room together.
Her boss is functioning fromthis rulebook, where she's like
(06:18):
I'm not going to becondescending, I'm not going to
give her sandwich feedback, I'mnot going to just tell her
things that she's obviouslydoing well, I'm just going to
get down to it, give her thechanges I want her to make and
we're all going to move on fromour day.
And meanwhile Sally's on theother side with her rulebook and
(06:50):
she's thinking this is sodisrespectful.
Why right?
And you could argue both peopleare wrong, but being right or
wrong becomes much lesssignificant than being able to
move through that interactionwithout it creating a lot of
drama or taking up a lot of time.
So what I want you to be ableto see in this setting, which is
often so much easier to seewhen we're outside of the
situation, is that these twopeople are just functioning from
(07:12):
very different worldviews.
But what you can see in theexample I gave you is that both
worldviews are pretty rational,that I've offered two
perspectives on why someonewould behave this way in a way
that can probably make sense tomost of you as listeners.
You might identify with onemore than the other, but you can
(07:35):
see how, from a rationalperspective, it makes sense to
most of you as listeners.
You might identify with onemore than the other, but you can
see how, from a rationalperspective, it makes sense to
both people.
What tends to happen when we'removing through really life in
general but we just see itreally heightened in workspaces
is that we have our rationalrulebook and we are able to
(07:56):
articulate very rationally whywe believe what we believe, why
we think people should behavethis way, why we think what
we're thinking is the mosteffective way to go about this.
When we're interpreting otherpeople's behavior, we tend to
lose all rational thinking ontheir behalf.
So instead of looking at thesituation and asking ourselves
(08:20):
like what could be the reasonfor Sally's boss to function
this way, what rational reasonmight she be applying what our
brain tends to do it's similarto how they describe attribution
theory is it will just take acharacter flaw and slap it on
our boss and assume that ourboss is behaving that way
(08:43):
because they have some majorcharacter flaw.
So people will say things likemy boss is just like a total
narcissist, doesn't care aboutanybody, looks down on everybody
around them and just wants totell us why we're all terrible.
Okay, it's our brain taking ourrational rulebook, using it to
(09:05):
interpret that behavior and thenassuming a bunch of character
flaws of the other person.
And what I get to see incoaching that is so helpful in
my own life and helping me movepeople through theirs, is that
everyone has rationalexplanations in their own brain
(09:25):
for why they're behaving the waythat they're behaving.
And when you can get your brainto empathetically try to
understand someone else'srulebook in a way that is
rational and gives them thebenefit of the doubt, it will
save you so much time spinningin drama about how other people
(09:50):
behave.
I am not saying you can't haveboundaries, you can't have
expectations, you can't decidewhen something's unacceptable to
you.
All of that is fine.
But I am talking about all ofthese nuanced encounters where
two people come in contact witheach other in the workplace and
(10:13):
it creates a ton of mind, drama,exhaustion and frustration.
That can often be easilyavoided when you simply allow
yourself to understand your rulebook and how their rule book
might be different and you tryto interpret it through a
rational lens from bothperspectives.
(10:37):
So what I'm offering here isthat first you get very clear
that you have a rule book.
It's kind of like lovelanguages.
We tend to understand that,like we all have love languages
is like in the zeitgeist now,and people tend to understand
like we all have a differentlove language.
We all want to be loveddifferently.
We all understand what lovelooks like differently and a lot
(10:59):
of people kind of understandthat language in their intimate
relationships.
It's similar in the workplace.
People have very differentinterpretations of what it means
to give feedback, what it meansto be respectful, what it means
to collaborate, how we shouldmost effectively function in a
(11:20):
meeting, and when all of thosepeople get in a room together
and all of those differentassumptions come to the table,
it can get messy.
So what I want you to do is getvery clear that you have a rule
book and to first become veryaware that other peoples are
different.
You need to move through theworkplace knowing on so many
nuanced issues, people aroundyou have different rule books.
Some are the same, like we allprobably agree.
(11:42):
We're not going to like smackeach other at work, right, we
all agree.
We're not going to name call,and certainly the company
creates rule books for theculture that everyone is asked
to buy into or agree on, butthere's so many other nuances
below the surface when it comesto all of these different ways
that we're collaborating,connecting and coming in contact
(12:04):
with each other.
So let's move through anotherexample that I think will be
helpful.
Let's say you walk into work.
You say hello to Bob.
Bob is really short.
He barely looks up from hisdesk.
He says hello to you.
He doesn't really acknowledgeyou very much.
You walk away feeling like Bobis rude, bob doesn't like me for
(12:25):
some reason.
If you're feeling insecure inyour job, your brain's probably
going to tell you something likeBob thinks I'm not competent
enough in this role.
So you have a rule book thatsays you should look at people
when they say hello to you.
You should acknowledge them Atwork.
(12:46):
You should engage in maybe kindof short back and forth how was
your weekend?
How are you?
How are you doing?
Whatever it is, you might justhave an assumption about how
much you should engage withsomeone when you're saying hello
at the beginning of the day.
So if I asked you why Bobbehaved that way, your brain's
(13:11):
going to go into potentially alot of drama.
He's just kind of a jerk.
He's rude to everyone.
He only cares about himself.
He doesn't care about anybodyelse.
He thinks he's better thaneveryone else.
If we take that same situationand we zoom back and I asked you
to give a rational, generousinterpretation of Bob's behavior
(13:31):
you might get to somethingdifferent.
For example, bob might feellike I'm paid to focus on my
work.
My coworkers know this.
Everyone is super busy.
I say hello to everyone whosays hi to me, but I tend to be
very sucked into my work and soI don't want to like look up and
stop because it's really hardfor me to get back into what I'm
(13:53):
doing.
But everybody knows this.
We all respect that everyone'sbusy, so people don't need a lot
from each other.
You can see how, in thisscenario, both people could be
interpreting this interactionincredibly differently and from
very different assumptions ofhow one should behave in the
workplace.
And when you can get to thespace where you give a rational,
(14:19):
generous interpretation toBob's behavior, you will hold on
to things much less.
You will assume Bob isfunctioning from this space, you
will give him the benefit ofthe doubt and you'll move on
with your day.
It just cuts out so much dramain your brain that your brain
(14:40):
tends to spin on.
So what I want to offer you isjust the simple steps of
understanding that you have arulebook and that everyone's not
going to share it.
Doing your best to understandwhat other people's rule books
are by simply offering arational, generous
(15:02):
interpretation for theirbehavior.
I'm not saying you need to askpeople specifically like what is
your rule book, what's yourmanual for how people should
behave.
You can figure that out veryquickly by simply asking
yourself how would they answerthe question of why they behaved
that way?
What would they say was thereason for it?
And people do not ever point toa character flaw.
(15:25):
No one says I behave that waybecause I'm a big jerk and I
only care about myself, right?
If you can get to the placewhere you're able to describe
Bob's own rational explanation,then you're really getting to a
place where you're understandinghis rulebook, his worldview,
his assumptions for what hethinks is appropriate or not
(15:48):
appropriate.
You can make requests I'm notsaying that you can't and in
fact, when you understand thatpeople have these very different
assumptions, rule books,understanding of what's
necessary, it becomes a littlebit easier to see why somebody
might not be giving yousomething that you feel like you
need.
So, for example, if you aregetting your feedback in a
(16:11):
particular way from yoursupervisor and you're having a
hard time with that and you feellike you need something
different, when your supervisorsays to you, hey, how's it going
?
What can I do to be helpful, itgives you the opportunity to
make the request.
You can really then identifythat you have this own worldview
(16:31):
, assumption, rule book for howto give feedback that you're
evaluating your supervisor from.
That's like getting messy.
So you can simply say, yeah, Iwould love it if, in our
one-on-ones, you could offer mea few examples of some things
that you see that I'm doingreally well, before we dive into
(16:52):
some of the critical feedback.
That's it Like you can make therequest.
Critical feedback that's itLike.
You can make the request.
She or he may or may not giveyou that request, but you can
always make it from a spacethat's really clear and from a
space that's often cleaner,meaning, instead of it assuming
a bunch of reasons for whysomeone isn't showing up the way
(17:12):
you want them to or treatingyou the way you want them to,
that they're showing up in a waythat makes sense to them and is
very rational to them and youin turn can make a request if
you feel like you need to.
What I often find for myself isthat with this concept I am
able to simply move past thingsso much easier, without even
(17:37):
needing to make the request,that if I really give that
generous interpretation and Iassume my supervisor is coming
from this space of like theirjob is to give me critical
feedback and they need to do itquickly and they know I'm busy
and they're busy and if I sortof get into their rule book, it
will often allow me to just belike that's fine, I can totally
handle this.
(17:57):
I can adjust and be flexiblewith what I usually would need
in this situation.
Of course, you get to decidewhere your boundaries are.
You get to decide what you'rewilling to tolerate and not
tolerate.
You get to decide when you wantto make a request of somebody
and when it's a deal breaker foryou and you're going to exit
that job.
But when it comes to all thesenuanced pieces in the middle,
(18:21):
get really clear on.
Other people have their manualand you have your manual and
oftentimes we actually don'tneed them to function the way we
tend to function in order forus to be okay and in order for
us to have a functioning,helpful relationship and to get
(18:43):
from point A to point B withthem, particularly if you can
really practice flexing thatmuscle of giving them the
benefit of the doubt what is themost rational, generous
interpretation of why they arebehaving or showing up in this
particular way?
And given that, how do I nowwant to move forward?
(19:04):
So that is me offering to youmy absolute favorite concept
that I have ever learned in mytime doing coaching, and I hope
that this will come in handy foryou at work.
If you are finding that you aregetting lost in the drama, lost
in the insecurities, feel freeto hop on over ErinMFoleycom,
(19:26):
grab a free consultation.
We can hop on a call and talkabout one-on-one coaching.
I will be back with more greatinformation for you.
Hope you all have a great week.
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