Re: Getting along despite interpersonal skills

["Dick Margulis " <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net>]

If your company provides an Employee Assistance Program benefit (maybe yes, maybe no), you could call them to see if any of their professional counselors can coach you through an appropriate process.

If you are on your own to handle this, on the other hand, various things come to mind.

First, accept that nothing you do is going to change a person who is shy at social gatherings into the life of the party. It is a lifelong affliction that, I assure you, is more painful to its victim than it is to you. I've gotten to the point where most people don't actively avoid me (AFAIK); but "It just wouldn't be a party without Dick" is not a sentence that has ever been uttered about me.

So accept that the personality is not going to change and just work on the behaviors.

One thing that helps is the direct approach: "Stan, when you do X, you are delaying the project unnecessarily. Technical writing is a business process, not an art form. We are not looking for perfection. We cannot endlessly delay the project to make minor corrections. After Step Y in our process, it is my job to determine if an error is important enough to correct. You may not raise such issues with anyone else after that point. If you do, I will note the incident in your personnel records and give you a written warning. After three such incidents, I will have to fire you."

That usually gets someone's attention.

What does not work is, "Stan, when you do X, you are annoying the developers." Stan is not going to believe you. If, on the other hand, you can persuade one of the developers to say, "Stan, I get upset when you approach me with these little things. I lose my concentration, which costs us in productivity," Stan will believe it.

The important thing in all this is the direct, active "I" language: When you do that, I feel this. It can't be When you do that, Sally feels this (I don't believe it unless I hear it from Sally), or When you do that, you annoy me (you're accusing me, so I'm going to act defensive).

This kind of feedback can help Stan change his behavior, even if it will never change who he is.

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