How to deal with difficult people
Sunday, December 14th, 2008 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniAsyouknowbob, I have a day-job. By and large, it's a pretty good day-job; certainly, I've had worse. It's occasionally hard-to-very-hard on the hands, Absolutely Brutal on any Planned Writing Schedule, and sometimes the Scholarly Angst is to drown in, on account of there are more scholars angsting than there are departmental secretaries available to absorb it. Still -- a steady paycheck and health insurance, mostly grown-ups to work for... In this economy, and the one that's lumbering down the street, the day-job is not to be lightly discarded.
Working as I do in a college means that every year or three I get a new chair for one or all of the department/programs that I support. The beginning of this school year saw a changing of the departmental chair and next year there will be a change in a program chair.
The outgoing chair is senior faculty, an intelligent and savvy woman I'm going to miss very much. The incoming chair is...junior faculty, smart as new paint -- and certainly smarter than you -- perky, and extremely political. She spends a lot of time on her hair and on planning what to do with her hair. My experience of her as a faculty member is...not positive.
Now, before we go further -- I am myself a difficult person. I'm opinionated, sarcastic, and, um, old. I have no use for perkiness or for girl-games. Let us, indeed, make it plain that I am actively hostile to girl-games, having bypassed the whole girl thing in order to do the work of surviving childhood as a more-or-less intact human being. I am not a nice old lady who likes to take adorable young faculty members under her wing and mother them. Just. No.
So, the new chair is not inheriting a picnic.
On the plus side, I'm a smart, fast, experienced, good worker, with a lively sense of the ridiculous (OK, maybe not a plus, there)-- and I try to keep the lines of communication with my chairs wide open.
Keeping communication open, of course, means that the person on the other end of the line actually listens, which has not been my experience of the incoming chair. She seems -- and this is subjective, of course, but it's all I've got -- to believe that support staff exist only for the brief moment she needs to issue orders. She has no idea of the work attached to accomplishing her orders -- and doesn't care, which, to a point, she shouldn't, though she should have some realization of the fact that she is not the only fish in my supervisory sea.
Now, the challenge awaiting me is having to deal with an inexperienced chair who will insist that she knows everything, who does not have good listening skills, whose bacon I will have to save on a daily basis, and who will blame me utterly for every failure or misstep. I will need to do this and have enough emotional stamina to go home every night and write, because we have books under contract, and I don't intend to quit writing and Devote Myself to being a secretary.
Coping strategies, please? "Not taking it personally" doesn't appear to be an option, though I'd love to hear from anyone who actually manages that.
Working as I do in a college means that every year or three I get a new chair for one or all of the department/programs that I support. The beginning of this school year saw a changing of the departmental chair and next year there will be a change in a program chair.
The outgoing chair is senior faculty, an intelligent and savvy woman I'm going to miss very much. The incoming chair is...junior faculty, smart as new paint -- and certainly smarter than you -- perky, and extremely political. She spends a lot of time on her hair and on planning what to do with her hair. My experience of her as a faculty member is...not positive.
Now, before we go further -- I am myself a difficult person. I'm opinionated, sarcastic, and, um, old. I have no use for perkiness or for girl-games. Let us, indeed, make it plain that I am actively hostile to girl-games, having bypassed the whole girl thing in order to do the work of surviving childhood as a more-or-less intact human being. I am not a nice old lady who likes to take adorable young faculty members under her wing and mother them. Just. No.
So, the new chair is not inheriting a picnic.
On the plus side, I'm a smart, fast, experienced, good worker, with a lively sense of the ridiculous (OK, maybe not a plus, there)-- and I try to keep the lines of communication with my chairs wide open.
Keeping communication open, of course, means that the person on the other end of the line actually listens, which has not been my experience of the incoming chair. She seems -- and this is subjective, of course, but it's all I've got -- to believe that support staff exist only for the brief moment she needs to issue orders. She has no idea of the work attached to accomplishing her orders -- and doesn't care, which, to a point, she shouldn't, though she should have some realization of the fact that she is not the only fish in my supervisory sea.
Now, the challenge awaiting me is having to deal with an inexperienced chair who will insist that she knows everything, who does not have good listening skills, whose bacon I will have to save on a daily basis, and who will blame me utterly for every failure or misstep. I will need to do this and have enough emotional stamina to go home every night and write, because we have books under contract, and I don't intend to quit writing and Devote Myself to being a secretary.
Coping strategies, please? "Not taking it personally" doesn't appear to be an option, though I'd love to hear from anyone who actually manages that.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 04:00 pm (UTC)Actually, not to sound like a nut case, (though some might consider me such), the "voodoo doll" solution has its merits. Not a doll as such... but here is a recipe. I do actually do this on the side of my , sigh, real life living, so it is not as nuts as it seems.
Take piece of paper- colored if that resonates with how you see the appalling person.
Write her name on it, intentionally, as in thinking about her as you do so, perhaps several times as the spirit moves.
FOCUS- this is important. Perhaps appropriate soundtrack. ( joke here- Night on Bald Mountain?)
Surround the name with a little circle of salt, cutting her energy off totally from your energy-
Then envision her in a cube of mirrors, mirror side in.
All of her disagreeableness reflecting strictly back upon her. Until she learns to temper it, resolve it, or get rid of it. As in grow up.
You end with a blessing on her choices. That she may learn, and quickly, to become a better human being, and heal her past woundings. I suspect someone, somewhere, did not see her as feminine and capable. She is compensating. But that is not YOUR problem. This doesn't need more than 5 minutes, so it is not onerous.
Then take a small rock, christen it as her, put in a real box, and take it to work.
See where this takes you.
I know- sounds whack and weird. I can only say such things are, in my life, known to work.
Lots of good luck.
Nanette
no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 04:04 pm (UTC)boxes, et al
Date: 2008-12-15 06:27 pm (UTC)All good ritual should be flexible. I have created it for over 30 years. I have learned. Recipes are good, but like all cooking, once you have the notion and skills you can get real creative. Grin. You need one?
Be well,
Nanette
Re: boxes, et al
Date: 2008-12-18 01:09 am (UTC)demonfellow in her life.no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 08:25 pm (UTC)Actually, it reminds me of something my grandfather -- a cigar-smoking, beer-drinking ex-cop with whom I bonded profoundly as a small child -- once did. Something was bothering me -- I don't remember what it was anymore, but it was just really chewing me up. He got out a piece of (my grandmother's) good letter-writing paper, with her so-called "ink pen," and proceeded to draw this:
on the paper.
"Now," he said, around his cigar, "I want you to put your upset right there in that box. Go ahead, do it right now."
I stared at the box, concentrating on pouring all of my distress into it.
"Is it in there?" he asked after a while.
I nodded.
"All of it? You sure?"
"Yes, Grandpa."
"Good." And he used the pen, just one sharp line, and put the lid on the box.
"There," he said. "It's all sealed away now and can't bother you any more."
boxes
Date: 2008-12-15 06:24 pm (UTC)Been doing this stuff 40 years now... it works.
Be well,
Nanette
PS Loved you panels at Worldcon ( aka the lamest Denver con ever, but oh well)