Punishment Can Lead to Self-Centered Thinking

When you punish an employee, you run the risk of them focusing on how their actions impacted them rather than reflecting on how their actions affected others.

For example, the employee fixates on, “Because I did X, this happened to me,” while missing the bigger picture of how their behavior might have severely impacted their colleagues.

Sometimes, punishment is warranted, but consider using it as a last resort rather than a first response.

How do you foster a culture of responsibility and reflection in your team?

References: Kohn A. Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason. Atria Books; 2006.

Trust Is An Irrational Necessity

Let’s explore this through the lens of the Prisoner’s Dilemma—a scenario where two individuals must decide whether to trust each other to achieve the best outcome.

Imagine two executives, A and B, each aiming to maximize their department’s productivity. They have two choices: trust each other or not.

  • If both trust each other, they save time by avoiding micromanagement and redundant reviews. This mutual trust allows them to take on additional projects, giving both departments five productivity points.
  • If A trusts B, but B doesn’t trust A (or vice versa), the trusting party becomes vulnerable. For instance, A can complete more projects while B spends time monitoring and redoing A’s work. In this case, A gains eight points, while B loses five.
  • If neither trusts the other, they waste energy on constant oversight and lose opportunities to be productive. Both lose five points.

Regardless of how often A and B play out this scenario, the most reasonable choice is not to trust the other person because it minimizes their losses. However, A and B are intelligent people and realize they are both getting hurt if they fail to trust each other. They talk it over and decide to have a trusting relationship.

The issue is that as soon as one realizes the other is trustworthy, it is more reasonable to take advantage of the situation at the other’s expense. If both players come to the same realization, the game restarts because the most sensible option is not to trust the other person.

“The moral is that reason and trust do not mix.”1 If you want to have trust in your relationships, sometimes you’ll need to be unreasonable.

References

1. Watzlawick P. Brief Communications: Paradoxical Predictions. Psychiatry. 1965;28(4):368-374.

The Best Way to Decide Whether to Leave a Toxic Job

Deciding to leave a job because of a toxic environment isn’t easy to do. Several factors come into play, such as finances, feelings of shame, and the uncertainty of starting a new job. With all of these factors to consider, it’s no surprise people are unwilling to make important life decisions.1

“Winners Never Quit” is A Recipe For Shame

Deriving your sense of self solely from your successes can lead you down a dark path.2 Being able to acknowledge when you need to make a change and following through on it takes a lot of courage. Phrases like “winners never quit” are harmful because they elicit shame responses from people, leading them to make ill-advised decisions to continue down a destructive path.3 Leaving an abusive situation is a healthy response, and it doesn’t make you a quitter.

Take Time to Think

The Tripod of Reflection5

  • Openness – Don’t lock yourself into rigid beliefs about how things “should” be. Let go of your expectations and receive things as they are, rather than trying to make them how you want them to be. Openness enables us to see things clearly.
  • Observation – Be aware of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations when considering your decision. Evaluate yourself in the present moment. For example, are you tired, hungry, angry, happy, etc.? Self-observation allows us to see the fuller context in which we live and is a powerful way to disengage from automatic behaviors and habitual responses.
  • Objectivity – This permits you to have a thought or feeling and not become swept away by it. It tells the mind to be aware that our present thoughts and feelings are temporary and not the totality of who we are.

“To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic, [not] heroic.”

Viktor E. Frankl

Beware of Escalating Your Commitment

Escalation of commitment is the tendency for people to continue with a failing course of action even in the face of overwhelming evidence they have chosen the wrong path.6 There are several reasons people engage in the escalation of commitment, such as sunk costs, anticipated regret, and threats to one’s ego.7 It might be hard to know whether you’re falling into this trap when deciding whether to leave your current position. Nevertheless, if any of these statements sound familiar, you might be escalating your commitment.

  • I would leave, but I’ve already invested so much time and effort in this job.
  • I’m worried a new job might be just as bad or worse.
  • What if my new job turns out to be a mistake.
  • I can’t be a quitter if I want to succeed in life.

It’s easy to talk yourself out of making a significant change, but you’ll only learn who you are by living your life3

Don’t Blame Yourself

Contemplating all of the “shoulds” about your unhealthy job isn’t helpful. It’s easy to get caught up in the “I should have stood up to them more,” “I should have talked to human resources,” “I shouldn’t have let it get me down so much,” but these types of thoughts will only lead to an irrational sense of shame.5 You’ve done all you can, and you deserve to be working in a healthy environment. “To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic, [not] heroic.”8

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References

  1. Levitt S. Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness. NBER Working Paper Series. Published online 2016.
  2. Dweck CS. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House; 2006.
  3. Epstein D. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Penguin; 2021.
  4. Armor DA, Taylor SE. Situated optimism: Specific outcome expectancies and self-regulation. Adv Exp Soc Psychol. 1998;30:309-379.
  5. Siegel DJ. Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. Bantam; 2010.
  6. Brockner J. The escalation of commitment to a failing course of action: Toward theoretical progress. Academy of management review. 1992;17(1):39-61.
  7. Grant AM. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. Penguin Books; 2014.
  8. Frankl V. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press; 1959.

The Five Goals of Verbal Conflict

Winning or losing an argument isn’t the best way to determine whether you were successful. So here are the five goals you should always strive for during any verbal conflict.

Set Yourself Up For Success In Verbal Conflicts

Deciding how to measure success is crucial because it gives you a solid baseline for setting your expectations. Be sure to set achievable goals to give yourself the best chance of following through on making changes in your behavior.1 Unrealistic expectations, such as believing you can change the other person’s opinion or behavior, will leave you open to disappointment and increase the likelihood of engaging in ill-advised actions.1

Measure What You Can Control

Learning isn’t easy, so you’ll need to be patient with yourself.2 The key is to measure your performance based on things you can control.3 You only have control over yourself and your actions. The outcome of the conflict is out of your hands. Increase your likelihood of success by sticking to these five manageable goals.3,4

The Five Goals of Verbal Conflict

  1. Respond as an adult – Be polite and avoid sarcasm, insults, yelling, and threats.
  2. Be clear about your position – Just because you’re being polite doesn’t mean you can’t be direct and assertive.
  3. Remain focused – Try not to get caught up in your emotions or lead astray if the other person tries to change the subject.
  4. Remain calm and composed – This is always difficult during a conflict, but staying in control of your emotions is essential to achieving the other goals.
  5. Be considerate of the other person’s feelings – It’s something you should keep in mind whenever you want to start lashing out at the other person.

After the conversation, review the list of goals, and if you managed to achieve one or more of them, you could consider the conflict a success.

Success Is Measured On A Spectrum When It Comes To Verbal Conflict

The best way to measure success in verbal conflicts is on a spectrum, not as a fixed outcome. Achieving one goal is good. Hitting all five is fantastic! When evaluating progress on how you handle yourself during verbal conflicts, don’t base your judgments on your next performance. Immediate improvements or disappointments could be misleading. It takes time to create real change, and patience is a requirement.5

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References

1.          Armor DA, Taylor SE. Situated optimism: Specific outcome expectancies and self-regulation. Advances in experimental social psychology. 1998;30:309-379.

2.          Heath C, Larrick RP, Klayman J. Cognitive repairs: How organizational practices can compensate for individual shortcomings. In: Review of Organizational Behavior. Citeseer; 1998.

3.          Mason PT, Kreger R. Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder. New Harbinger Publications; 2010.

4.          Pink DH. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Penguin Publishing Group; 2011.

5.          Lewis M. The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. W. W. Norton; 2016.

3 Steps For Setting Healthy Personal Boundaries

Setting personal boundaries is a healthy way to navigate complicated relationships. Unfortunately, people usually won’t react well when you establish a personal boundary with them. Although boundary-setting conversations can be difficult, here are three steps you can take to increase your likelihood of success.

1) Define Your Personal Boundaries

Personal boundaries are the limits and rules people create to establish how they want people to treat them in a relationship.1 Setting a boundary is when someone clearly articulates to another person the types of behavior they are and are not willing to accept.2

When you set a boundary with someone, you’re likely to receive three increasingly aggressive responses: mild disagreement, intense disagreement, and threats.3 There are several counterattacks people will employ to challenge your boundary, and a typical response is to question the validity of your boundary. You don’t need to justify your limits to anyone because the “window of tolerance” varies from person to person. The window of tolerance is the range of emotion “within which a person can function well.”4 If someone’s behavior is upsetting or hurtful to you, it doesn’t matter if other people might be okay with the same behavior. Avoid getting into arguments about whether your boundaries are reasonable by using some of the techniques covered in the verbal judo article.3,5

2) Prepare For The Boundary Setting Conversation

Your mission is to be clear and concise about your boundaries. Focus on your mission and not the results. Your mission is the only thing within your control.6 You can improve your chances of accomplishing your mission by practicing what you will say with someone else. Having a successful beginning to the conversation is crucial because the first three minutes determine how the discussion will progress 96% of the time.7

The boundary-setting conversation you imagine may differ dramatically from reality regarding your feelings about the situation. For example, before the conversation, you might imagine you’ll feel angry, but in the heat of conflict, you might be overwhelmed by fear.8 Being surprised by your emotions during an interaction is common behavior, but you can hedge the risk by reviewing the article on affect forecasting.

3) Choose The Right Moment

Timing is critical so try to do it in the morning. Positive attitudes are highest in the morning, decline in the afternoon, and increase again in the early evening.9 You’ll have a better chance of success if you’re in a positive state of mind.10

Nothing you say or do guarantees a person will honor your boundaries. But, setting boundaries clearly and assertively puts you on the right path to having healthier relationships.

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References

  1. What are Personal Boundaries? www.TherapistAid.com.
  2. Weuve C, Pitney WA, Martin M, Mazerolle SM. Perceptions of workplace bullying among athletic trainers in the collegiate setting. Journal of athletic training. 2014;49(5):706-718. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-49.3.13
  3. Lerner H. The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships. William Morrow Paperbacks; 2014.
  4. Siegel DJ. Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. Bantam; 2010.
  5. Heldmann ML. When Words Hurt: How to Keep Criticism from Undermining Your Self-Esteem. New Chapter Press; 1988.
  6. Camp J. Start with No: The Negotiating Tools That the Pros Don’t Want You to Know. Crown; 2011.
  7. Gottman JM. The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples. W. W. Norton; 2011.
  8. Woodzicka JA, LaFrance M. Real versus imagined gender harassment. Journal of Social Issues. 2001;57(1):15-30.
  9. Pink DH. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. Penguin Publishing Group; 2018.
  10. Armor DA, Taylor SE. Situated optimism: Specific outcome expectancies and self-regulation. Advances in experimental social psychology. 1998;30:309-379.

How to Use Verbal Judo With Toxic Coworkers

A crucial element of handling conflict with toxic coworkers is learning that you don’t need to engage head-on. Here’s how you can move with their attack and still end up on top.

The 4 Don’ts of Verbal Conflict With Colleagues

When someone unjustly criticizes you, your natural inclination is to object in the same ways you have all your life. Objections might work with a reasonable person, but a toxic coworker is unlikely to be deterred. You’re likely to end up in a circular argument that might make you look just as foolish as them.1

  1. Don’t defend –  The toxic coworker is unlikely to admit they are wrong, and engaging in a tit-for-tat argument with them, will not change anything.1
  2. Don’t deny – The toxic coworker is likely to continue throwing out unwarranted accusations hoping something sticks, and this can quickly break down into a game of  “Did not!” “Did too!”1
  3. Don’t counterattack – This will only escalate the disagreement, and it’s unlikely to win you any allies in the conflict.1
  4. Don’t withdraw – Depending on the circumstances, physically leaving a situation when a toxic coworker is attacking you might be a perfectly acceptable response. The type of withdrawal you need to avoid is remaining quiet and passive while enduring the toxic coworker’s attacks.1

3 Verbal Judo Responses To Use During Conflict With Coworkers

If you don’t defend, deny, counterattack, or withdraw, what options do you have? You have several because it is possible to stand your ground without being drawn into the toxic coworker’s unhealthy cycle of conflict. Here are three verbal judo techniques you can use to respond to attacks.

  1. 1) Agree with part of the statement1

Toxic Attack: “Are you so busy working on other people’s stuff that you can’t handle my request?”

Verbal Judo Response: “Yes, I am busy handling other people’s requests.”

2) Agree with the possibility that your critic could be right1

Toxic Attack: “So I yelled at you a little. It’s not a big deal.”

Verbal Judo Response: “Some people might not think it’s a big deal if someone yells at them, but I’m not one of them.”

3) Recognize the critic has an opinion1

Toxic Attack: “If anyone made us miss the deadline, it’s you, not me.”

Verbal Judo Response: “I can see we disagree about who is responsible for missing the deadline.”

If the toxic coworker persists after your verbal judo response, you can either repeat your response or tell them, “I’m not sure we’re going to make any progress on this issue at the moment. I need to think about this more.”2 If they keep trying to argue, you can either repeat your statement about needing more time to think or, if possible, politely excuse yourself and walk away.

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References

  1. Heldmann ML. When Words Hurt: How to Keep Criticism from Undermining Your Self-Esteem. New Chapter Press; 1988.
  2. Mason PT, Kreger R. Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder. New Harbinger Publications; 2010.

3 Steps For Writing A Story That Heals

Making up stories, also known as sense-making, is a healthy way to cope with the chaos and anxiety of life.1 Searching for explanations during difficult times in life is beneficial to your emotional well-being, and people who engage in sense-making are less likely to react emotionally when things don’t go their way.2 When a person can explain their reality and identify their feelings, even if it’s painful, they will feel relieved and more in control of their life.3–5 Here are three steps you can take to write a healing story.

1) Include Details

The more details you have in your story, the more helpful it will be when making sense of the distressing events. I recommend using these guidelines when you’re building a narrative. They will help you to create a clear picture of what happened.

Three guidelines for writing a healing story:6

  1. Include details about yourself and the other people involved in the interaction
  2. Include emotions, what you were feeling and how you think others felt at the time
  3. Include the time and place this was happening

2) Ask Open-Ended Questions

When you engage in sense-making, avoid asking yourself yes/no questions. Avoiding yes/no questions helps to reduce your preconceived bias in your review. By asking open-ended questions about why something happened or the person’s motivations, you open yourself up to the possibility of considering more information and creating a more objective story in your head.7,8 For example, asking “was Karen acting like a jerk?” isn’t helpful because the answer is definitive and supports your pre-existing narrative. Instead, ask, “why was Karen acting like a jerk?”

3) Share Your Story

After you’ve developed your story, it’s time to express it. Research has shown writing down or talking about your experience improves your health and well-being.9 You can share your story with another person, write in a journal, or simply repeat it out loud to yourself. The more a person can explain their reality and identify their feelings, the greater the sense of relief and control they will have over their life.3–5

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References

  1. Masterson JF. The Personality Disorders Through the Lens of Attachment Theory and the Neurobiologic Development of the Self: A Clinical Integration. Zeig, Tucker & Theisen; 2005.
  2. Wilson TD, Gilbert DT. Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current directions in psychological science. 2005;14(3):131-134.
  3. Johnson S. Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown; 2008.
  4. Lieberman MD, Eisenberger NI, Crockett MJ, Tom SM, Pfeifer JH, Way BM. Putting feelings into words. Psychological science. 2007;18(5):421-428.
  5. Siegel DJ. Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. Bantam; 2010.
  6. Hall K. Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business. HarperCollins Leadership; 2019.
  7. Voss C. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. Moody Publishers; 2016.
  8. Heath C, Larrick RP, Klayman J. Cognitive repairs: How organizational practices can compensate for individual shortcomings. In: Review of Organizational Behavior. Citeseer; 1998.
  9. Pennebaker JW. Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological science. 1997;8(3):162-166.

Learn to Reframe Your Toxic Coworker

Trying to change a toxic coworker isn’t an effective use of your energy. Instead, you’re better off learning techniques to reframe your perspective so you can effectively process negative emotions. The energy you put into regulating your emotions and behavior for a given situation is known as emotional labor, and it can be mentally and physically exhausting.1–4 Make sure you’re focusing on goals that are more likely to give you a positive return on your emotional investment.

The goal of reframing is reappraisal.

Reframing is when you explore different perspectives to process hurt, sadness, and anger. The goal of reframing is reappraisal.5 Reappraisal is when you interpret emotionally charged events in unemotional terms and is an effective strategy for lessening negative emotions.5 Here are three reframing methods for you to explore.

3 Reframing Strategies For Dealing With Toxic Coworkers

  1. Try viewing toxic people as newborn babies, crying and afraid of the world, begging to be picked up and comforted. Babies aren’t threatening, and we accept them as vulnerable beings needing support and attachment, but we rarely view adults in the same sympathetic manner.6 Toxic people are helpless newborns desperately screaming for someone to calm them and soothe their pain. Remember, toxic people are unhappy with some aspect of their life, and their abusive behavior is a byproduct of their misery. Imagine how you would react if you found a crying baby in one of the cubicles at work and project that same level of empathy towards your toxic coworker.
  2. You can choose to view the negative interactions as learning experiences and opportunities to experiment with different methods of addressing conflict.7 Focus your reframing efforts on figuring out what you can change to improve your situation and the positive aspects of stress.8 When people focus on the positive benefits of stress, such as increased mental toughness, the negative impact stress has on a person decreases, leading to a better quality of life.9
  3. You can choose to focus on the positive parts of your job, which redirects your attention away from the negative aspects of working with someone toxic. Shifting your focus can reduce the intensity of negative emotions.7

Reframing isn’t an all-or-nothing solution. You can use it as much or as little as you want. The most important thing to remember is you get to decide how to view your life.

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References

  1. Härtel CEJ. How to build a healthy emotional culture and avoid a toxic culture. Research companion to emotion in organizations. Published online 2008:575-588.
  2. Barrett LF. Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company; 2020.
  3. Heath C, Heath D. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Random House of Canada; 2010.
  4. Sapolsky RM. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Penguin; 2017.
  5. Gross JJ. Antecedent-and response-focused emotion regulation: divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of personality and social psychology. 1998;74(1):224.
  6. Johnson S. Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown; 2008.
  7. Armor DA, Taylor SE. Situated optimism: Specific outcome expectancies and self-regulation. Advances in experimental social psychology. 1998;30:309-379.
  8. Klein G. Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights. PublicAffairs; 2013.
  9. Achor S. Make stress work for you. Harvard Business Review Blog Network. Published online 2011.

Can People Predict How They’ll Feel?

Affect is the combination of all your feelings, moods, and emotions.1 When people plan for the future, they consciously or unconsciously engage in affective forecasting, which predicts how their actions will make them feel.2,3 For example, going on a vacation will make you feel happy, and being insulted by a toxic coworker will make you sad.

Research categorizes the pieces of affective forecasts into four parts:2

  1. Estimating your level of emotional valence – the degree to which your overall response will be positive or negative1
  2. Predicting specific emotions you’ll feel (happy, sad, depressed, etc.)
  3. Estimating the intensity of your predicted emotions
  4. Calculating the length of time you will feel a certain way

How Accurate Are People’s Predictions?

People are pretty good at predicting whether their affect will be positive or negative, but their accuracy decreases as they venture towards predicting the intensity and duration of specific emotions. The reduced accuracy is due to people’s failure to consider life’s nuances resulting from the anticipated event.2,4,5 For example, when I anticipate feeling hurt if a toxic coworker yells at me, this is likely to be an accurate prediction. However, while I am estimating the length of time I will feel hurt, I am unlikely to consider the possibility of receiving emotional support from a friend or family member.

Do My Predictions Influence My Choices?

The affect you predict will influence your decisions. The impact affective forecasts have on your choices is known as decision affect theory.3 Typically, people overestimate negative feelings due to an adverse outcome and are less likely to pursue risky actions, such as confronting a toxic coworker.2,3

Remember, your initial predictions are probably oversimplified, and it’s essential to evaluate your current mood while examining your options. When considering whether to use the techniques outlined in my blogs, be sure to assess your current emotional state. If you feel angry, hurt, or depressed, you will likely underestimate the potential benefits you may receive by trying out the techniques.2

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References

  1. VandenBos GR, ed. APA Dictionary of Psychology. American Psychological Association; 2007.
  2. Wilson TD, Gilbert DT. Affective forecasting. Published online 2003.
  3. Mellers BA, McGraw AP. Anticipated emotions as guides to choice. Current directions in psychological science. 2001;10(6):210-214.
  4. Wilson TD, Gilbert DT. Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current directions in psychological science. 2005;14(3):131-134.
  5. Wilson TD, Wheatley T, Meyers JM, Gilbert DT, Axsom D. Focalism: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of personality and social psychology. 2000;78(5):821.