People Strategies: Criticism of workplace colleagues often misplaced

Linda Bower is a speaker, executive coach and human performance improvement consultant in Rogersville.

Stressful working conditions include spending time with someone you can't stand to be around. When your criticism of another person reaches the point of distraction, then it is time to look at yourself, not the other person.

This is, believe it or not, a huge business issue. How many people have you known who dread going to work because they have to be with so-and-so? Do you think they work with a positive, motivated attitude?

People who perceive they have no choice but to suffer through the day do have an alternative. Erma was the first person to teach me this lesson some 22 years ago; unfortunately, she was not the last.

Fresh from Stephens College and righteous in my views about equality for women, I met Erma. She was everything I didn't want to be in the workplace or anywhere, for that matter. Our offices were adjoining, of course.

Erma was probably in her late 50s (she seemed ancient); she dyed her hair jet black, wore clothing suffocating-tight, plastered on her cosmetics (including fake eyelashes), squeezed her deformed feet into toeless spiked high heels, smoked nonstop and cackled loudly on the phone for hours every day.

How Erma presented herself so bothered me that I was angry about her competence. The truth was that Erma had run the office very successfully for some 15 years. She was well respected by corporate headquarters and loved by everyone in the office, except me.

After about six months, it was obvious that I was hurting myself by harboring resentment toward Erma. I dominated conversations with friends about my Erma-angst. It seemed my peripheral vision was always aware of Erma's presence, which was a constant distraction.

At the time, in the early 1980s, voice mail hadn't been introduced; faxes were barely hitting the market and psychologists started offering an alternative to psychiatrists.

A friend had gone to a psychologist about a work problem; this was a completely novel idea. I soon followed, in hopes of fixing Erma. This was how I learned about "universal boundaries." Apparently, I had a pretty bad case of them.

Having universal boundaries means that what is right for you should be right for everyone else. I had developed an image of appropriate behavior for a professional woman and my standards were "right" for everyone.

The exercise that seemed to matter the most was simple visualization. My doctor asked me to close my eyes during quiet time and picture myself in the middle of a circle of people. I was only to see their hands and notice how each is unique in size, texture, color, strength and so on. Then I was asked to touch each hand and examine its individual uniqueness.

Eventually, I began to see Erma as a unique character with a right to be on the planet. All Erma needed was a pleasant word from me, and she would do anything to help. I can't imagine how she felt about my behavior toward her. I began to feel foolish for brooding about her personal habits.

During the past two decades I've heard a lot of people tell Erma stories. Sometimes I picture the size of a cloud if it held all of our wasted energy judging others. I think it would be a really big cloud.

We don't always get to choose the people we interact with at work. We can choose to accept that everyone is different and shaped by his or her own circumstances. We can choose our attitudes about them.

You've heard the expression, "Forgiveness is for the forgiver." The same goes for acceptance "Acceptance is for the acceptor." If your life is stressful at work because you don't like the habits of people you work among, you are hurting yourself. You might even be hurting others unintentionally.

You may be dragging down the energy of the people around you if you aren't keeping your judgments to yourself. In fact, you may be the office problem, not the person you are criticizing. Even if others are joining in, giving you the gratification of being right, you are still leading an unproductive conversation that lacks integrity.

If someone is doing something that bothers you, ask yourself if it's any of your business. If it is, then go to the source of the problem, not everyone else in your office. You will like yourself better and so will other people.