Things not to talk about at work.

anonymously

Hello! I am 30 years old and have changed many jobs in my life. I have a problem - do not develop relationships with employees at work. Of course it wasn't always. I got into teams where it was very comfortable, interesting and fun so much that I didn’t want to go home! And now I'm in a relatively normal team and treat everyone with respect, but I want to communicate only at work and nothing more, because. I am not interested in discussing other topics with them. They are offended by this and believe that I come to work in a bad mood. But this is not true! They told me such heresy that it became disgusting. They announced a boycott to me - whatever one may say, but this is not pleasant, but I live with it and worry, because. extremely suspicious. In part, I understand my shortcomings - this is youthful maximalism, which should have passed a long time ago, but for some reason it doesn’t go away, this desire to always and everywhere say only what I think, and not what needs to be said (I don’t like to lie or dissemble, in I see some injustice in relation to myself and to others, and it’s a sin, if you like, and for this I am silent, my boss doesn’t like it and she incites me to talk, and after what I give out to her, she takes offense) I don’t consider it necessary to explain to them that I'm in a normal mood. By nature, I am a sociable person, but only when I am interested. Help me, all my life I've been doing nothing but delving into myself and trying to figure out what's wrong with me. I trust my mother with my feelings, and she adds fuel to the fire, saying that she herself is to blame for everything. I can't do this anymore. What is my fault if in a boring team I don’t want to communicate and be more comfortable alone. But in some ways I'm wrong, because. this case is no longer an isolated one. Advise me how to work on myself in order to correct my shortcomings.

Hello! From the text of your letter, we can conclude that you are a rather sensitive person, prone to reflection (what you call digging) - these qualities help you understand what another person may feel. Do you know how to be quite firm and frank when you say what you think, but do you want to be soft and delicate? You can call it cunning, or you can call it unwillingness to offend another person, which comes from compassion for the pain that you can inflict on a person with your truth. Explain what you mean by speaking of injustice and sin? What specific shortcomings would you like to correct? What would you like to learn?

anonymously

Hello! I want to clarify what I consider a sin - this is when people say something other than what they think because of the desire to appease the interlocutor, to look in his eyes as an ally for the sake of the rear or other similar things - self-interest. In other cases, I consider it acceptable, because. to do without deception is sometimes not possible because of the same delicacy. Even if it is necessary for a simple infusion into the team, it is easier for me to remain silent or smile in response than to respond with solidarity to some of the beliefs of the employees. And sometimes I want to pretend that I didn’t hear anything. I agree with you that you need to be softer in a conversation, and I do it if this is a normal conversation, and nothing else. Olga Sergeevna, I would like to correct my "looping" on the problem, I have been suffering all my life, I cannot quickly switch to something else - I leave for a long time. I have many hobbies, but sometimes they can not help me relax. I am offended. To some extent, good, because All my life I have been a "jacket" for others. People come up to me and talk about their problems, but I feel sorry for them and I help them with advice. I became prickly because people often took out their evil on me, etc. For a long time I could not understand why and now I do not understand, but I decided not to let myself be offended anymore. I, as it were, "mirror" the relationship - I don’t consider this a way out, because imitate them. But because of my childish resentment and not wanting to get hit again, I sometimes consider it appropriate to do this. It helps if a person comes across with a mind, if he is angry and not smart, then nothing helps here. (I want to get rid of excessive resentment - I understand how to do it with my mind, but I can’t do it in life) It seems to me that I live in a sick society, the world seems to be turned upside down. A feeling of anxiety often visits, then this is replaced by joy when I think about the good, but this is not for long - the anxiety takes its toll again. Sincerely, Elena!

Dear Elena, it is very difficult to get rid of resentment, since resentment is a consequence of emotional vulnerability, sensitivity, and “thinness” of a person. If there is a long list of offenders who took something out on you, there are several ways to reduce the severity of the painful experience of resentment (the basis of all methods is the rule that the expressed feeling loses its intensity). The first way: for each of the offenders to express their grievances in a letter or in a conversation (it is more difficult in a conversation than in a letter). The only, but very important rule is to use I-messages, not reproaches or criticism. If for some reason the above is not possible, then you can write a letter (or a series of letters) listing grievances without sending it to the addressee. Another way to cope with resentment is to complain to a loved one, cry into a "vest", seek consolation from a loved one - something that you know well when you yourself are a "vest". Another way is to work with a psychologist. I repeat, it is impossible to radically change your style of emotional response, but it will be easier for you to live, and there will be more joy, your “loops” will become less dramatic. If something is not clear in my text, ask questions.

Wherever your conversations with colleagues take place - in the smoking room, in the corporate canteen, on the way to or from work, you should remember about topics that should never be touched upon in conversations with colleagues.

A culture of speech.

Gossip, conflicts, management issues, loss of clients are just some of the issues that are often discussed between colleagues in the office. And sometimes these discussions take up a significant part of the working time. HR professionals and HR professionals often notice that sometimes colleagues perceive each other as a second family. In some cases, colleagues really become so inseparable that they spend vacations and weekends together, introduce their family members and spend leisure time together. Such relationships sometimes lead to very close relationships with colleagues at a nearby desk. And then follows frankness, closeness, sincerity, up to the so-called hot topics.
The main rule in the team on the advice of experts is openness, positivity and conversations and discussions on the most harmless and neutral topics. The main thing that should unite you with colleagues is openness, honest and direct emotional background, common interests, ideas and values. But we must remember that there must be limits to openness even in the most intimate relationships with family members. In no case should a colleague become your vest, you should not complain, let alone cry. Your colleague is just your work partner. He is not your therapist, not your financial advisor, not your banker, and not your classmate. Remember that the hardest blows we receive from the people closest to us. And the more people who are not close to you know about you, the greater the risk that information known to your colleagues at some point will be used against you. Who will you blame then? Yourself or your colleague?
Remember the old wisdom: words are silver and silence is gold.

professional plans.

If you are not happy with your job or salary, if you are planning to change jobs, and your boss finds out about it from your colleagues, you can get into an extremely unpleasant situation. You just thought, you just shared your plans, and your boss may have already instructed the personnel department to start looking for an employee for your place. Did you like the result of a simple chat over a cup of coffee? But a couple of your random words can ruin your relationship with the boss forever and you really have to look for a new job. And even if you stay in your place, your boss will treat you without trust, as a temporary person, not focused on a long-term positive result.
You should also keep your mouth shut when any personnel changes take place in your company, regardless of whether they concern you personally or not.

Discussing your promotion.

If you have received an offer for a career advancement, then you should remember that now you will become the boss for one of your colleagues. Remember whether you have always been honest with them, frank, or maybe too frank. Have you given your colleagues information that can now be used by them to manipulate you into your new position. And you have to make decisions, delegate tasks and be responsible for the result. Remember if you discussed your boss with your colleagues, what words and comparisons you used, and imagine that, perhaps in the near future, exactly the same words can be said to you in the back. How is the feeling?
Of course, the leadership can and should be criticized, and it is possible and necessary to argue with the leadership. But only in one case - in the presence of his leader.

Office romances and personal life.

Office romances and the personal lives of colleagues are a very interesting topic that is constantly in motion. Imagine that you tell your colleague that you met up with friends over the weekend, went to a nice expensive restaurant, spent some amount of money you name, and generally had a great time. After a couple of minutes, you notice that your colleague is reacting strangely to your story. He is frowning and annoyed. And how can he not be annoyed if he was flooded over the weekend by neighbors whose pipes burst. And he spent the whole weekend, first waiting for emergency services, and then trying to save his things, and then he had to go with his children and his wife to spend the night with his mother-in-law, and on the way to the subway, calculate the damage from this damn pipe. How to be? It's simple: when asked how you spent your weekend, just say that everything was fine and you feel better because you got enough sleep. Quite enough. Further along the way, you will be able to understand what a colleague wanted to hear from you. If the situation described above really happened to him, complain with him, sympathize with him, but do not let yourself be drawn into a lengthy and detailed story.
As for office romances, it's even easier. You just shouldn't see them. You don't notice them. And that means you have nothing to discuss. Imagine that one of your colleagues is having an office romance. What is the difference between real office romances and a movie of the same name? And they differ in that they certainly end. You are ready to be drawn first into a detailed description of meetings, dates, romance, etc., and then, after parting, you will have to be a vest and wipe your colleague's tears. And again, and again, and twenty times a day. Do you have any personal problems? Do you have anything to think about during working hours? Do you want to feel involved in someone else's personal "drama"? Remember, you should always look like a successful person at work, you should support official ones with your colleagues as much as possible. Not cold and stiff, but calm and dignified.

Criticism of the last place of work.

You absolutely do not need to talk in detail about your past work, about your management and colleagues. The name of your company may be familiar to some of your colleagues, and if the city in which you live is small, then it may turn out that your new colleague is a relative or close friend of the person from your former job that you now speak so negatively about. Awkward situation, right? When asked about your last job, you can safely say that absolutely everything suited you there, except for the product that you had to work with. It doesn't matter what field you work in. Product here means anything you could have done in your last job.

Wage

Office workers have also long been hopelessly spoiled by the issue of wages, just like Muscovites by the housing issue. Especially if it so happens that with comparable responsibilities, one of the employees has a higher salary. Well, how can you resist an emotional discussion?
Remember that many Russian companies have individual systems in the form of bonuses, compensations, etc. Often you don’t even know why your colleague was given a higher salary than you, but what a pleasure it is to talk about it, causing negativity in the team against your colleague. In fact, in such a situation, you put only yourself at a disadvantage. Believe me, you will never be offered additional incentives if they know how you react to a similar additional payment for your colleague. Payroll is as personal a matter as your personal bank account. Would it occur to you to discuss with your colleagues at work in which bank and how much do you keep? If you are discussing this with your colleagues, then you need to urgently refer to the specialized literature on corporate relations. And this is not a joke at all!

Politics and religion.

When discussing political and religious issues, one must also be extremely careful. Russia is a multi-confessional country and a representative of any religion can be in your environment. Your awkward joke or remark can forever quarrel you with your colleague. The same goes for political views. Disputes and misunderstandings that may arise when discussing political issues have an extremely negative impact on the climate in the team.

Work is a place where a person spends a huge part of his life. Conflicts will not bypass you, whether you are teachers or carpenters. In a word, you can make friends, or you can make enemies. At the same time, the enemy in the person of the authorities is sometimes less terrible than the enemy-colleague. Therefore, it is very important that communication with colleagues brings positive emotions to you and them.

The first step is to remember a few unbreakable rules of behavior in the workplace.

Unbreakable rules:

1. Good mood is the key to easy communication. If in the morning you got up on the wrong foot, you should not show it at work and take out your bad mood on your colleagues. Positive people are always worth their weight in gold in the gray walls of the office, you rarely want to start conflicts with them.

1. Many people, not knowing what to talk about with colleagues, start gossiping - this is a bad decision. Gossip often consists of exaggeration and lies, which leads to distrust among colleagues and negativity. It’s better to ask how things are going with the new project, find out if you need help, share your opinion.

1. Do not try to make the whole team fall in love with you at once: it is impossible for everyone to like it. Just do your job conscientiously, and people, noting your positive qualities, will themselves be drawn to you.

Conflict is the scourge of teamwork

When you see people every day, it is impossible to do without conflicts, especially if you have a working relationship. When it comes to a conflict situation, three consecutive questions arise: how to avoid conflict, how not to aggravate the situation, and how to end a quarrel without consequences.

How to avoid a quarrel?

• Under no circumstances should you raise your voice. Even in kindergarten, they teach that screaming cannot solve anything, but only "adds fuel to the fire." If emotions are rushing out and you really can’t hold them back, it’s better to leave the place of the “battle” under some pretext and return to the conversation after a while with a cool head. This will benefit both you and your opponent. It is best to continue the conversation in an informal setting, where nothing will remind you of the subject of the quarrel.
• It is always necessary to clarify contradictions one on one, without witnesses and strangers.
• In any situation, one should not forget about etiquette and switch to personal insults.

How not to aggravate the quarrel?

• Having come into conflict with a colleague, you should not run to the authorities for help. In such a situation, for everyone you will appear as a weak and infantile person who cannot cope with problems on his own and hides behind "parents".
• In a conflict between colleagues, it is always important to hear the arguments of the other side. Perhaps you just do not understand each other and want the same thing.
• No need to talk about the conflict to other colleagues and pour mud on the opponent. After all, the walls have ears.

How to reconcile?

• The most important thing is to listen to your colleague and find a compromise. In extreme cases, this can be done under the guidance of an impartial third party.
• If you could not restrain yourself and went personal, then you always need to find the strength in yourself and apologize. Explain your behavior with excessive emotionality.
• After closing the topic of the conflict, never return to it again. Remembering again and again about your then arguments, you can cause a wave of aggression towards yourself.
• Concentrate on a common goal - moving in one direction helps to forget old contradictions.

Friendly conversation

In any place (especially if you spend a lot of time in it), you need a person with whom you can escape from pressing issues and just chat. Therefore, at work, not businesslike, but friendly easy communication is very much appreciated. It is important here to separate personal and work relationships, otherwise you can sit on your neck with requests for help, etc.

How to refuse?

• First of all, a complete refusal should be as polite as possible. For example, you can say that now you yourself have a blockage, but next time you will definitely help.
• Do as in school: when you approach the teacher for help, he only suggests how to do it, but does not do all the work for the student.
• In case of refusal, you can refer to the circumstances. For example, “I would love to, but my wife and I have already agreed to go to the movies.”
• Do not forget that you are not refusing a person, but a request. Do not drag in the personal and professional qualities of a person.

When communicating with colleagues, it is important to remain a person who, in case of emergency, can both support and help. But it's also worth letting your co-workers know that you're not a workhorse that you can ride day and night. A warm, friendly and trusting atmosphere in the work team is pleasant for everyone, whether they are nurses, sailors or office workers.

The older a person becomes, the more restrained he has to be. Vivid emotions that are normal for a baby are unacceptable for a schoolchild, what a teenager got away with will be unacceptable for a young person over 20. How to determine the level of emotionality possible in the workplace?

We are all living people and may well get angry, upset or happy, but is it worth showing your feelings? How will employees react to this, and, most importantly, what can it turn into? There are different degrees and forms of manifestation of emotionality. Today we will talk about those that usually cause discontent among colleagues.

Mimimi

“We have an employee who is constantly touched by everything, uses diminutive forms of words, lisps, spams pictures with captions“ what a nyasha ”and generally behaves as if she is in kindergarten,” complains Anna Egorova, manager of a travel company. - It's terribly annoying, it's impossible to talk seriously with such a person. I don’t know how clients perceive all these “vouchers”, “visas”, “trips”, although I guess that not everyone likes this manner, but colleagues are already trying to discuss some important things without it. I don't think she'll last long at work."

Perhaps somewhere there is a society in which endless streams of tenderness are appropriate, most likely, among your friends there are those who like to receive references to touching cats, but definitely not at work. If it seems to you that in this way you win over people, then this opinion is erroneous. They may not show their dissatisfaction openly, but this does not mean that everything suits them.

Believe me, if you do not send a cat to someone who wants to receive it, there will be no trouble. But if you send it to someone who does not want to, you can make trouble.

Let's go, let's go

“The other day I had to fire two employees,” says Nina Pavlovna, head of the personnel service. - One got a job recently, proved himself well: qualified, hardworking, but, as it turned out, too sensitive to jokes. This is not a disadvantage, and no one would have noticed if another colleague had not started constantly provoking him. The conflict developed almost instantly, the young people quarreled and ... fought. And although they both regretted what happened, such behavior is unacceptable.

Such a concept as “the ability to stand up for oneself” must be left in the transitional age. Rude words, aggressive behavior and, of course, fights at work are guaranteed to end in dismissal. If it seems to you that they do not show due respect to you, they make fun of you, provoke a conflict, this does not mean that you need to react and try to put the alleged offender in his place. Authority is won by impeccable performance of duties, professionalism, and not by yard “showdowns”. And for those who like to demonstrate their wit, work is also not the best place. Colleagues can support a prankster only if his barbs are not directed against one of them.

"Joke of Humor"

About humor is worth talking about separately. Mankind has been trying for many years to unravel the cause of laughter: why do some things seem funny to us, while others cause rejection and irritation? Unfortunately, there is no answer to this question, and the recipe for the perfect joke has not yet been found, so be careful! There is nothing worse than a person who considers himself witty, regardless of the opinions of others.

He is like that, and I am like...

Emotional stories about your own and someone else's personal life at work are not uncommon. When people have been working in a team for a long time, and they are connected by friendship, they can share their secrets. But those who retell numerous stories without asking if the interlocutor likes such conversations are often disliked. Since it is considered impolite to rudely interrupt someone else's story, employees tolerate a talker, but not for long - they try to get rid of such a person at the first opportunity.

Your opinion

Another problem characteristic of young employees is categorical statements. Lack of experience often does not allow them to consider the situation from different points of view, so they often give sharp negative assessments of the actions of other people. However, you must understand that your words can hurt the feelings of others. This story is told by the chief accountant of a large construction holding.

“Recently, a girl, a graduate of the Faculty of Economics, got a job in our accounting department. Very capable, smart, works perfectly, but she speaks too peremptorily about everything. Talking about her friend, for example, she once said: "He is so inert, lack of initiative, he has never been abroad except Turkey." Many of our employees only exchanged glances in response to this, because there are not so many travelers among us - not everyone can, like her, travel around the world at the expense of rich parents. Another time, not embarrassed in expressions, she began to resent the fact that her friend gave birth to a child without a husband: “It is impossible to raise a full-fledged child alone, and a woman who finds herself in such a situation is irresponsible and stupid.” At the same time, we have a single mother working in our department and several divorced women who were uncomfortable listening to all this. ” Obviously, such an employee will not find friends in the team, and it is unlikely that she will stay in this job for a long time.

Also, don't show off your beliefs or tastes if you think they might shock employees. Outrageous behavior characteristic of young people, defiant appearance, the desire to contradict everything does not make anyone strong and independent. Rather, on the contrary, they create frames and stereotypes, from which it will then be very difficult to get out.

Of course, it is impossible to completely exclude feelings and emotions from communication - it is unlikely that your employees would like to see a robot in their colleague, but you should not go too far either. To the famous calmness that Carlson so advised to show, it would be good to add delicacy and respect for the feelings and convictions of others. After all, a person who controls himself is always more likely to succeed.

If you are annoyed by a colleague with whom you often have to deal with due to work needs, try to immediately establish certain boundaries with him in communication. You don't have to be polite and approach someone you don't like, you don't have to do that at all. On the contrary, keep your distance from this employee. Communicate strictly at work.

When you don't like that a person violates your personal space, state it directly. Say that you are much more comfortable communicating at a certain distance, and ask that you continue to maintain the specified distance. You may have to remind the person of your agreement a couple of times, but in the end, if you have an adequate person in front of you, you will achieve the desired effect.

Perhaps you are annoyed by the way your colleague communicates. If he shows intemperance and allows himself to become personal, do not hesitate to stop him and remind him that you are at work, where you should show less emotions, especially negative ones. Don't be afraid of conflict. If you show calmness and tact, the truth will be on your side. As a last resort, you can ask management to put you in a link with other people.

Be wiser

Try to remain calm, even if your colleague's behavior pisses you off. Imagine a wall between you that does not allow the negativity coming from a person to reach you. Perhaps such visualization will help you remain indifferent in the presence of an annoying person. Do not succumb to provocations from the outside. Be stronger and wiser.

Try to better understand the person you don't like. Maybe you are too critical of him. Try to put yourself in the place of your colleague. Think about the fact that he may have objective reasons to behave in a certain way. Be patient with others. Maybe what annoys you about a person is that he is completely different from you. This attitude is not entirely fair.

Do not take to heart what happens to you during the performance of work duties. Realize that work is not your whole life. Remember that you are a free person and have the right to independently change your place of work or profession. Sometimes understanding this relieves unnecessary stress and makes it easier to relate to people with whom you have to communicate on duty.