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.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 05:24 pm (UTC)I think you've got a lot of good comments so far (and I actually second the one about the paper and the box--it does work, whether it's just a mental construct or not). But I would also suggest really working on making sure that the other fish in your sea are very well fed, so that if she starts acting like the jerk she appears to be, you will have some support from the folks who appreciate you.
If you have space to post one of those dry or wet-erase calendars on the wall near your desk, you could try filling in the requirements from your various bosses so she can see it.
And remember, since department heads do come and go... eventually, she's gonna go. This Too Shall Pass, and you are a survivor, and she doesn't know it yet, but she cannot function without you.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 09:16 pm (UTC)Oh, definitely.
If you have space to post one of those dry or wet-erase calendars on the wall near your desk, you could try filling in the requirements from your various bosses so she can see it.
I think I'm going to have to invest in one of these, anyway. I just got caught in a minor landslide that shouldn't have happened. I'm not sure if the problem was lack of planning so much as unexpectedly rich returns, but I'd like to be sure, so that it never, ever happens again.