Don’t Be Offended!

Manager your emotions to level up your soft skills.

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Hi this is John with this week’s Developing Skills - Skills for Developers looking to develop their careers.

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Tip of The Week: Refuse To Be Offended

An email landed in my inbox titled: “WTF ARE YOU DOING!”

It was from the CTO of the company I’d just joined. Uh-oh! What had I done?

I opened it to find pages of ranting telling me how wrong I was to assume that after a few weeks on the job I understood the complex software the team had built. It went on to remind me I had no experience in this domain and the team that reported to me knew far more than I did.

I was arrogant to assume I knew what I was talking about and he was annoyed with me for my approach, especially as I hadn’t involved him in the decisions I’d made.

He was clearly upset and emotional. He let it show and some of what he said could have deeply offended me.

Instead, I chose not to be offended.

I encourage you to do the same, because you and only you determine your behaviour. If someone says something to you that you find offensive, it’s your choice whether you’re offended.

If someone does something stupid or annoying, it’s your choice whether you’re annoyed.

In short, whatever someone else says or does, you alone decide how you respond to it. If you respond in haste, making a poor decision or doing something you later regret, it was your choice.

It’s not easy to accept that, and it’s not easy to follow through. Doing so will make you happier and provide you with a much better way of handling people, allowing you to make good decisions that will have a positive outcome on your career and life.

So how can you actually do it?

Here’s three things that work:

1. Pause, take a deep breath and allow yourself ten seconds break before doing anything. This gives your rational mind a chance to catch up with your emotional reaction.

2. Ask yourself if it really matters now, or if it will really matter in 1 week, 1 month, 1 year or 10 years from now. Put the issue in perspective and you’ll find it’s probably not that important to you and your life goals.

3. Think about the outcome you want. Then think about what action you can take to achieve that outcome. Being annoyed or offended aren’t going to be the answer.

Which is what I did, I took a deep breath and paused for several seconds. I considered whether his rant really mattered to me. Yes it did, I wanted a good working relationship with him and I hoped to be at the company for several years. So the outcome I wanted was to defuse the situation and getting angry and upset wasn’t going to help.

Instead I calmed down, then walked to his desk and invited him to step out of the office with me to get a coffee in a local cafe where I could explain. By the time we’d finished our conversation we had a mutual understanding and he was onboard with my plans.

I would not have gotten the outcome I wanted if I’d responded with anger.

Remember:

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

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