Are you listening? Receiving critique in the workplace

 I am the last to say that my friendships and relationships are perfect cherry topped sundaes, but I have learned a lot through the years to help me navigate them in more healthy ways and what I had to learn was more about me than the person I’m in the relationship with. To some this seems counterintuitive, but in the long run it has helped me to communicate and let others communicate more effectively with me.

Why? I can’t control another person’s anger, tone, or communication style, but I can control mine and that’s key in maintaining an open dialogue with others.

Listen and Think before you speak       

We’ve all heard this old axiom, but many of us subconsciously believe this doesn’t actually apply to us. I have at times been one of those people, wanting my opinion to be heard before the person I’m talking to and likely about to fight with can get another word in. One of the number one ways to think first is to listen to what someone is trying to say to you before inserting your input into the situation.

It’s tough to listen to someone tell us what is wrong with a project that we’ve turned in, a presentation we’ve done, or worse, something that might actually fall into the “personality problem” category.

I’m an optimist, so I generally believe that when a coworker, friend, or loved one comes to me with a critique then there are probably some words of wisdom that I should glean from it even if all I want to do is yell slurs at them or slink back to my cave and curl in a ball.

With this said, I want your next unforeseen run-in with Colonel Critique to be as productive as possible. How?

Ask yourself:

Can I repeat what this person just said back to me? If not, then you probably weren’t listening and became defensive as the first few words came out of their mouth. The key to listening before responding is taking a second to repeat what you just heard and rephrase it for yourself.  Then ask yourself, is the accusation true or untrue without making excuses or blaming others if it is.

This means if your boss comes up to you and says, “Sam, you screwed this up, the edits aren’t correct. It looks like we’re going to have to delay production for another day because of you.”

What you may have heard was, “Sam, you’re an idiot, I’m going to fire you.”

What you should be hearing is, “Sam, the edits weren’t quite right and you need to fix them, just make sure to review them more thoroughly the next time.”

      If True:

Your response should sound more like this, “I’m sorry I have delayed production, I understand the errors and will make sure to be more thorough next time around.”

Just make sure that next time around you actually are more thorough so that this same conversation does not happen again and escalate.

If False:

Still continue to be civil. You still need to respond to why something that was your responsibility was not well handled. Keep a calm and steady tone in order to keep the dialogue open and both of you as composed as possible. If it was not your responsibility at all let your boss know. ** As a reminder, if you delegated the task it was still your responsibility to follow-up.

Changing the way you hear people and speak doesn’t happen in a day; it takes practice and can be a life long process. It can ultimately help you become a better listener and make you a more trust worthy person. If people believe they can come to you and express their views without you going off the deep end then it will make all your relationships a little better.

Does this all mean that you should just let people yell at you at the office? Of course not! You will know when something is necessary feedback and when it’s not. If someone is criticizing you and you just can’t figure out why, pull them aside and ask them what or how these things relate to your job and if it’s something that needs to be escalated to higher authority. Generally you can alleviate some of the tension just by listening and talking it through.

Have any comments or questions about critique at the office? Let me know!

nicolecpeoples@gmail.com

I wonder what Izzie is doing today?

I’ve been watching unnecessary amounts of online T.V. programming for the past two weeks. At first it was an excuse to just “catch” up, because of course I have been behind on a few of my old regular programs, though my T.V. programming was never as regular as say, my colon’s schedule. Of course, ABC.com was my first stop because it has my first choice shows. Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, and for a while there, Pushing Daisies.
I caught myself up on the Meredith and Derek’s commitment turmoil (per usual), Callie’s forage into the lesbian sisterhood, little Grey earning her big girl points with Mc. Steamy (whom of course I will always find much better looking than Mc. Dreamy), and last of all Izzie’s well… likely demise on the show. I started watching all of these on a Friday night in the end of February. It was my first Friday at home in the span of about five months. I wanted to relax and be alone, as long as we all still agree that one can be alone while entering into a covert friendship with the characters one is viewing.
Four hours, five episodes, and a half a carton of chocolate Soy Dream frozen desert later, I was balling like a baby because my life, or should I say the character’s lives were in utter chaos. When I found out that Izzie’s hallucinations weren’t her usual charming quirkiness and really the cause of an underlying illness, I felt as if one of my best friends was going to die. But wait… did I say it had been almost ten months since I had seen this show? I mean really, what was going on? Could one really just leave all of her friends behind without a word and ten months later come back with arms open saying, “give me all you’ve got?”
Apparently so, because that’s exactly what I did. I hadn’t realized that I missed Meredith, Derek, Callie, George, Izzie, Dr. Bailey, and Christina – okay maybe not Christina – so much. I longed for their laughter, their disputes, the obligatory montage’s at the beginning and end of the show that sum up the “moral” purpose and pursuit of the episode, though most of all, I longed to cry. Grey’s is the one show that can turn me into a five year old with badly skinned knee, sobbing and needy.
There is a term for this, just like there is a term for almost anything one does, like the acts of sleeping and eating: Para-social Relationship. Yes, my need to know the day to day happenings of all of my favorite doctors and interns is really my innate need for relationships. Having lots of friendships outside of this alternate reality cannot keep one safe from developing these kinds of relationships. Just the act of coming back the next week to see what is/has “happened” to a character (this includes reality stars) means that a relationship is forming or formed. According to Donald Horton and R. Richard Rohl’s 1956 paper, Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction:
One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media - radio, television, and the movies - is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. The conditions of response to the performer are analogous to those in a primary group. The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship. (215)

The grim reality of the situation is that once I had caught up on Grey’s, I felt not only exhausted from the emotional barrage that had been lain upon me in only a matter of hours, but sad because I could not hang out with my “friends” for another week. I realized that I did not have their cell numbers and couldn’t ask how Mc. Steamy was doing after his dick had almost been snapped like a dry piece of spaghetti, or how Meredith was feeling after she watched someone executed. Logically I knew that these pseudo relationships were not real, but they had all the baggage of a four year friendship that’s seen its share of ups and downs.
That’s when it all began. I began blowing off real friends for my T.V. ones. I would say I was feeling too tired to do something after work just to have another few hours with my new T.V. friends because the next friend I had to catch-up with was Betty.