Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 576: Jerks at Work | Amy Gallo

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

This is the third installment in our Work Life series. In other episodes, we cover topics like imposter syndrome, whether mindfulness really works at work, and whether you should actually bring your whole self to the office.Today's episode is one that many of us struggle with: interpersonal conflict at work. Our guest is a true ninja on this topic. Amy Gallo is a workplace expert who writes and speaks about interpersonal dynamics, difficult conversations, feedback, gender, and effective communication.Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review and the author of a new book, Getting Along, How to Work with Anyone, Even Difficult People. She's also written the The Harvard Business Review Guide to Dealing With Conflict, and she cohosts the Women at Work podcast.  In this episode we talk about:Why quality interactions at work are so important for our professional success and personal mental healthWhy Gallo believes one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to dealing with difficult people in the workplace Why avoidance isn’t usually an option What the research tells us about work friendshipsWhy we have a tendency to dehumanize people who have more power than usWhy passive aggressive people can be the most difficult to deal withThe provocative question of whether we are part of the problem when work conflict crops upAnd, a taxonomy of the eight different flavors of difficult coworkers, including the pessimist, the victim, the know-it-all, and the insecure boss — with tactics for managing each. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/amy-gallo-576 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Greetings, my fellow suffering beings. Today's episode hits very close to the bone for me. In my adult life, one of the most consistent drags on my personal mental health has been interpersonal conflict at work. My guest today is a true ninja on this topic. Amy Gallo is a workplace expert who writes and speaks about interpersonal dynamics, difficult conversations, feedback, gender, and effective communication.

She is the author of a new book called Getting Along, How to Work with Anyone, Even Difficult People. She's also written a book called The Harvard Business Review, or HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict. And she hosts the Women at Work podcast. Oh, and one more thing. She was recently selected for the latest thinkers 50 list. Anyway, you get the idea.

She's a hitter. So in this conversation, we talk about why quality interactions at work are so important for your professional success and personal mental health. Why Amy believes one size does not fit all when it comes to dealing with difficult people in the workplace. Why avoidance is not usually an option. What the research tells us about work friendships. Why we have a tendency to dehumanize people who have more power than us. Why passive aggressive people

can be the most difficult to deal with. And the provocative question of whether we might be part of the problem when work conflict crops up. Oh, and this is a big thing. She also taxonomizes eight different flavors of difficult co-workers, including the pessimist, the victim, the know-it-all, and the insecure boss, and she provides tactics for managing each of these archetypes. Just to say this is the third installment in our work life series. If you missed it, go check out the other episodes where we cover things like imposter syndrome, whether mindfulness really works at work, and whether you should actually bring your whole self to the office. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping

our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app.

It's taught by the Stanford psychologist, Kelly McGonical and the great meditation teacher, Alexis Santos, to access the course, just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10%.com. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby,

this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts, the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from? And where's time for my space? Listen to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. Amy Gallow, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. I just have to ask at the start here, how and why did you get so interested in conflict at work?

Were you beefing a lot with your colleagues? What happened? I wonder if my former colleagues are listening to this saying, yeah, that's exactly right. No, I mean, I've been someone who's always gotten along well with people I work with, but I will say I worked as a management consultant earlier in my career,

and I didn't love being a management consultant, but one of the things I noticed in that work was that you could have the smartest minds in the room, you could have top-notch strategy, plans for executing that strategy, just really talented people, and whether or not it succeeded or failed, was dependent on the quality of the interactions of the people in the room. And so I really saw just how critical getting along and having strong relationships with people where now that doesn't mean that they're all best buds and that everything was smooth sailing,

conflict was part of it, but healthy, constructive conflict was part of it. So that was really for me the origin of my interest in this topic. And then I wrote a book a few years ago about dealing with conflict at work, and inevitably people would say, at the end of a talk or a virtual training, this is great. These are great tools for handling conflict, but I have this one coworker. And I just kept hearing these stories of people who were just otherwise very happy in their jobs or mostly got along with the people they worked with, but there was one person who was really pushing their buttons

and that was taking up so much of their psyche. So that then led to this book specifically. In this new book, you lay out these different archetypes for challenging personalities in the workplace and we'll get to that in great detail, but I kind of want to stay on the higher level just for a second. One of the things you say in this new book is that you believe much of the advice about conflict at work that's out there is based on some faulty assumptions. What are those assumptions? Well, I think one is that the advice for dealing with someone who's exhibiting, let's say, passive-aggressive behavior, would be the same as the advice for dealing with someone who's

a political operator or an insecure manager. There's this generic approach that you can take to anyone we would call quote-unquote difficult. You can lump them all into one big category of jerk or button pusher, then just use those tactics. Now, to be fair, there was a chapter in the book where I shared principles that applied to anyone. But I knew that there was research and specific tactics

that could be used for specific types of people or specific patterns of behavior. And that's really one of the things that I wanted to get at with the book was to help people with their unique situations that they were facing and get away from the generic advice. I mean, you know, working as an editor at HBR or dealing with a lot of generic advice all the time

and even the world you work in of mindfulness and meditation, there's a lot of generic advice, much of which is useful, but there's a limit to that. And that was one of the assumptions I really wanted to challenge was that, you know, we need to go a little bit deeper. We need to be more specific. We need to be a little more tailored if we're going to help people deal with the specific problems that they have. You know, another of the assumptions is that the workplace works the same way for everyone. So, a tactic that might work for you, the assumption is that it would work the same for me. And I think we know very well that that's not the

case. And that identity plays a huge role, both in terms of how we identify or consider difficult behavior, what even we label as difficult, but also in terms of what's effective, right? So gender bias, racial bias, all sorts of prejudices and biases play a role in whether I'm allowed to call out a colleague directly and say, please stop being passive aggressive, and whether that's effective or not. And so that was the other thing I really wanted to pay attention to and challenge with this book is the idea that we can give advice that will work the same way for everyone regardless of their identity factors.

And again, talk about that bias, talk about how some of us have to use more indirect approaches. Some of us have to go through the mental gymnastics of thinking, here's how I would address this. But then I also have to consider how I will be perceived what the reputational damage might be. Whether me saying, please stop doing that will actually be effective

or whether it will cause more grief in the relationship. So it may be easier for me in many circumstances to address a conflict and it would be for you given our chromosomal differences. Do you think there are cases though where it would be harder for a white man to address a conflict? Yeah, I mean, I think the idea is that there's a narrower range of behavior for certain identity groups.

So women, certainly, people of color, certainly, in terms of what we allow. But we know that all those biases and prejudices are not helpful for anyone. So wait, we might, for example, as a white man, we might expect you to be more direct and more assertive. And that might not be your natural style. That might not be something you feel comfortable doing. You might want to use more indirect approaches. And people might criticize you for doing that, right? I'm saying, you're being too weak about this. You should just address it directly. So all of those norms and expectations and stereotypes work always in terms of limiting what we can do.

You know, I don't wanna imply that you just have carte blanche to address behavior however you want. It's a matter of understanding what the cultural expectation is of us as based on our identity, and then knowing how do we navigate that while also advocating for ourselves and at the same time, which makes it really complicated trying to increase the connection that we feel with the other person,

because ultimately, I think what we want is to have stronger relationships with the people that we work with. Well, that brings me to a question I suspect some people might have, which is why would I engage in conflict at all at work? If somebody's a jerk or difficult, like, what's the point? Maybe I should just avoid them. Well, yeah, that might be a solution, yeah. And sometimes avoiding is absolutely the right thing. However, I think in most work circumstances, that's not really possible.

Work is so interdependent these days, the amount of collaboration we do with others, it is rare to have a job that does not rely on other people. And so, yeah, you know, maybe you work in HR and there's someone across the building in finance who you have to interact with once a year and you think they're a jerk and great, you just ignore them, right? You get what you need at one time a year or three times a year and you're done. But more often than not, we have to be in collaboration with people. So I don't think avoiding is a realistic tactic. I think we also have to consider that it's not just about our relationship. So let's just for hypothetical assume you and I don't get along and we decide to ignore each other.

Right. The people we manage, the people on our team, maybe our bosses take note of that. They're going to pick up on that. That might influence how they interact. Let's say we both lead teams, and they see that we don't get along and we avoid each other. They might think, well, I don't have to cooperate with that team. That could then trickle down affect the quality of the work, affect the quality of the collaboration. It's not just about us. There's the ripple effects. I call it the emotional shrapnel of us not getting along that then impacts everyone around us. I will also say most people I know who say, oh, I had someone at work who I

don't get along with, I just ignore them. They say they ignore them, but then they're actually doing a lot, right? So they may not actually engage or make snarky comments or talk badly about them, but it's having a toll on their well-being because they're thinking about it, they're having to take great effort to avoid them and not involve them. They might be complaining about it to their spouse at home or their friends or roommates. Like we often say, well, I'm going to do nothing. I'm just going to ignore it when we're actually doing quite a lot of things, many of which are not healthy for us. That makes a lot of sense. You make the point that there's real upside here. If you have positive relationships at work, it can be the opposite of emotional shrapnel. It could be emotional glitter bomb.

I love that emotional glitter bomb. Yeah, and there's decades of research that show this. I mean, I started out in my 20s thinking, I don't need friends, I work. I just need to show up. Do my job. Be done with it. Right. And I just didn't think work was a place to make friends, but there is so much research that

shows the more positive, friendly, congenial our relationships, our work are the better we perform, the more engaged we are, the more productive we are. One of my favorite studies on this is they gave people backpacks with weight in them and said, you're going to have to climb this mountain with this backpack. Guess how much that backpack weighs? If they were standing alone, they were more likely to guess it was much heavier than if they were standing with a friend.

So we tend to think the load is lighter when we work with people. There was a team at Rutgers that found that people who consider themselves to have a best friend at work actually have higher performance ratings than people who don't. So that we also see in the workplace there is a material effect on actually having friends at work. And we see quite the opposite when you look at all the studies around in civility at work, people treating one another really, in civility at work, people treating one another rudely,

making those snarky comments, demeaning one another, there's real implications, not just that it hurts, which of course it hurts emotionally, but there's real implications for the work where more distracted, where more likely to make mistakes. People who observe the incivility are also more likely to be distracted and make mistakes. And so it's not just about the sort of emotional upside, there's also real material effect on the quality of the work, the way we do it, and the impact of the people who receive

the work, whether those are patients, customers, whoever's on the receiving end of our jobs. Just to quickly say we did a whole episode on civility at work and I'll drop a link to that in the show notes here. But you have a section called your brain on conflict. Can you give me the TLDR on that? Sure. Conflict, no matter how small, even if it's a disagreement on the project plan or the right way to email someone or whether we show up late or early to

a meeting, all of that starts to feel like a threat, right? And I know you've talked a lot about this and your app and then the podcast of when we sense a threat, the amygdala, the threat sensing part of our brain gets activated and it takes over for the prefrontal cortex, which is the rational thinking part of our brain. And so any sense of threat or rupture we experience with a colleague again can be very minor. We start to have that stress response. Cortisol rushing through our body. My classic symptom is sweaty palms, but yours might be elevated heart rate or turning red in the face, whatever it is. And we quickly jump to conclusions. We do something social psychologist called premature cognitive commitment. So let's just say you roll your eyes at me in a meeting.

All right. Immediately I start to tell myself a story of Dan's a jerk or here Dan goes again, he's always so passive aggressive. I just tell myself that story and I commit to it. Rather than thinking Dan's having a hard day, this conversation is a trigger for Dan because his department is under threat from these impending layoffs. I don't start seeking other explanations. That might be a softer explanation. I get committed to the Dan as a jerk narrative and I have trouble letting it go. So then that story starts and then we get into the confirmation bias of anything you do. You turn and talk to the person next to you. Oh, Dan's talking about me. Right?

He's talking about why he will desire is even though I have no idea why you might be turning and talking to the person next to you And so we sort of get into the snowball effect of my story is true Usually the story is I'm the hero. They're the villain or some people's story is I'm the villain I'm only hurting other people, whatever it is, but that just becomes very true to us and it can be really hard to undo that story once our brain has committed to it. So how do you undo it? Great question. So the first thing I would say mindfulness is hugely helpful, right? Taking a pause and really focusing on how am I responding? What's going on in my body? So as I said, sweaty palms are for

me the first instinct that like, oh, I actually feel threatened. I might be going into a MIG-DILA hijack noticing those reactions and saying, okay, well I know when I get into MIG-DIL molecular hijack, I start telling myself these stories and asking yourself, what assumptions am I making? What else could be true? What if I'm wrong, right? I don't know if Dan is talking about me, but what if I'm wrong? How would I behave differently?

And also watching out for all the things like, am I fed, am I hydrated, am I tired? I remember I was doing a sort of high profile live video project with a team. We had spent months planning for this. And it was exhausting. The last few days of it, I wasn't sleeping well, wasn't eating well. We finally do this live video in front of thousands of people

and went well by most measures and I got back to my desk and I got an email from someone high up in the organization that said that was okay. Here are 10 things you can do differently. And in that moment, I was not resourced enough to have a rational response to those 10 pieces of feedback. And I'll be honest, some really choice words came out of my mouth. Luckily, I was alone at my desk. No one else heard them. But she also would see seed people. It did not feel good. And I will tell you a big Delahe Jack kicked right in. I was ready to be done with her. I was never going to talk to her again. And this video project was going to be canceled. Like, I had really serious, committed thoughts to what I was going to do. And instead, I went and took a walk around the building,

got a glass of water. I used to do this thing. I don't know what you would call this in my fullest, but I would sit in my chair and spin. Like something about spinning in my office chair calmed me down. So I was like spinning and sitting there thinking, like, okay, like, what is she's right? What if some of the points are cracked? And then sort of going back and addressing that with a calmer brain and a little distance, I was able to say three of those things are totally off base. I'm just going to ignore those. Four of them probably are partially true. And the other three are very true. And next time we do this video

project, I'll take those into consideration. That was an example of handling it. Well, I have lots of examples, but I haven't handled it well. But I think we just have to catch ourselves in that cognitive commitment or making insane what if this is wrong? And perspective taking helps too. All the research shows were terrible at perspective taking, so like if I tried right now to put myself in your shoes, what's Dan thinking, what's he doing? I would probably be very wrong about it, but what's helpful about it is that it reminds me that my perspective is probably not 100% correct.

And so even the exercise of asking what's going on for Dan or what's going on for that woman who sent me that email, even the exercise of doing it helps unhook me from that story I've told myself about why we're having this conflict or why things are hard between us. That makes a time of sense, and I would say that your boss or whoever sent you that email, the timing was not optimal, and so that hijack seems pretty justifiable to me. Before we dive into the archetypes, and you've listed a few of them, including the political operator and the insecure boss. I just want to call out something that you mentioned to my colleague, Gabrielle, who's producing this, that apparently some of the feedback you've gotten on the book is that

some people don't like the term difficult. Yeah, actually, could I ask you, what's your reaction? When you see that phrase, difficult people, what do you think? I have no problem with it. I think I can understand the pushback because very few people are holistically thorough, goingly, difficult in every regard. So I understand why you could get personality in the face of that term, but I also titled books and podcasts all the time and you really want to have something that's catchy.

And I would put more weight on the goal of coming up with a catchy title that helps people navigate conflict at work than I would about making sure that that title is correct and could withstand a telemotic level of analysis. Yeah, so you and my editor are very closely lined. I actually wanted to put difficult and quotes on the cover because it's pretty big there, difficult people. And I never was like, now people won't even know what that means. And you sort of have to commit that the readers who you want to

buy this book are using that phrase. Right. Third, saying, I'm dealing with someone who's difficult. My hesitation about it in the pushback I've gotten is that people aren't difficult, right? Behaviors are difficult. Actions might be challenging for us, but people themselves, it's unfair to call them difficult. I'm not sure I 100% agree with that feedback. What I do agree with is that I think that that label is often used dismissively, so it's used to say like he's difficult. I don't have to deal with them, or it's really often informed by bias.

So we will use that label to describe someone who doesn't think like us, look like us, act like us, has different values than us, maybe comes from a different culture, and we use that as shorthand to say, I don't like what they're doing, as opposed to really analyzing what is problematic about the way they're treating me

or the way we're interacting. I've made peace with it, but I do, even talking to you, put air quotes around it when I say difficult people, because I get the hesitation, and I don't want to turn off readers where I like, people aren't difficult, you can't do that. But I also want people to read the book who need the help.

And they're probably struggling with someone that they would use that adjective to describe them. Yeah, I mean, I think I would come down where you've come down. That being said though, I had not considered the bias piece of this. And I have seen in my many years in the workplace, people from non-dominant cultures get dismissed as difficult. And I think, in my opinion, a lot of times I've seen it be maybe partially true, but a lot of it is informed by bias. But my guess, this is a little bit off topic, but I think it's 98% really good that we're in an era where we're thinking carefully about language Mm-hmm and there are times where it can lead to a way of speaking or writing that is hard to decipher and

Turns people off and so I think that's a really tricky balance that we have to manage Yeah, well, I agree and I think adding those quotes around difficult would have just been confusing, right? And I think people wouldn't, you know, let's put aside the fact that I want them to buy the book because I wrote a book and everyone wants people to buy their book, but it wouldn't actually get people the help they need because they think they're dealing with a difficult person, not a quote unquote, difficult person. And so I think that's where the cautions around language can sometimes impede what we're actually trying to do, even when it's in the service of good. Yes. Another piece of feedback you're getting, which was

something that was exactly where I went as I was looking over your materials, is that I immediately found myself as I looked over this taxonomy of difficult people, these archetypes within the office. I immediately started thinking, well, which one am I? I'm probably several of these. And apparently, I'm not alone, that you're hearing that quite a bit. Yeah, and actually having much your tentong, I'm not surprised that that's where you went with the book, given that you're someone who reflects on your own behavior and how it impacts other people. That's a new development just to be clear.

Fair enough. Better late than never, right? So when I handed in the manuscript, it was about 30% too long. And anyone who works in books knows it's way too much. And each of the archetypes had a section in that original manuscript that if this is you, so if you identify as the know-it-all, if you identify as the political operator, here's some tips for what you should do. And when we were thinking about how to

cut back the manuscript, again, my very smart editor said, I think we have to lose those sections. And I was hesitant, but he made the point. He said, I think we have to lose those sections. And I was hesitant, but he made the point. He said, I don't think people will have the self-awareness. Right? First of all, the person who identifies as difficult or might be seen as difficult isn't picking up this book. And I agreed with that logic. And I thought, yeah, it's true. It takes a lot of self-awareness to admit you're doing one of these things or exhibiting these patterns of behavior. But then from day one of the book coming out on social media, I was getting emails. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm the insecure manager. Oh my gosh, I'm the bias colleague. What do I do?

And I immediately thought, oh man, we made a mistake. We should have got those chapters in there. So you're not alone. You know, I do try throughout the book to talk about times I've exhibited each of these behaviors because I don't think any of us are above doing these things. But I think maybe there's another book I need to write about what to do if you do identify. But behavior change is hard and identifying as the insecure manager and then actually taking action to remedy that. That's a lot of work. And for some people, that's a lifetime of work to try to undo some of these patterns that we've learned. And in many cases have made us successful. And so I have regrets about the cuts we made in the book, but I also am so encouraged

that people are seeing themselves and actually thinking about how are they impacting the people they work with. My best friend from childhood texted me when she got her copy and said, I'm gifting this to everyone on my team because I have a feeling I fit into all of these categories. And I was like, that's very nice of you. Are you going to tell them that that's why you're giving to me? She's like, yeah, I'll do that. And again, I think we just underestimated people's ability

to admit that they fall into these categories. And they might very well be very annoying, very difficult to the people around them. Coming up, Amy Gallo talks about what the research says about dealing with an insecure coworker and advice that involves imagining that you are a cute and fluffy squirrel. That's right, this HBR writer recommends that for real. We also talk about dealing with the pessimists and the victim to other archetypes and why we have the tendency to dehumanize people in power at work. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on

page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the build-up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans,

a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wonder App. So let's talk about the categories, the archetypes.

The first is something you've mentioned a few times, the insecure boss or manager. Describe that behavior. Yeah. So that is someone who does not feel like they are cut out for their job. Maybe consciously they know that or subconsciously they know that and they take that insecurity out on the people around them. So they may struggle to make decisions. They may hoard information. They may try to stop you from interacting with other departments or senior leaders as a way to sort of keep the power control

in their realm. They often micromanage, they may even take credit for things that you do. One of the interesting things in researching this archetype is that the more senior you get, the concerns about whether you're competent or not tend to increase, right? Being found out as an imposter, folks who are very senior in organizations tend to have that more. And it makes sense, the expectations for them are higher, they're expected to do more leverly things. And so the gap

between what's expected of them and what they think they're capable of might get wider at that point. But it's no fun to actually work for this person. And one of the real hard parts is their questioning of you can be contagious. So then you start to feel insecure as a result. Was this something one of the ones you identified with?

No, no. I've had bosses like this, so what are the moves? Yeah, this is one of the ones where I'm always hesitant to give the advice, because what the research shows is something no one wants to do, which is to flatter the boss. Right? And I do not like that to come out of my mouth, like just give your boss some genuine compliments. But unfortunately, that's what the research shows actually works, is that during this process of ego-defensiveness, they're just protecting their sense of self-worth,

and the more you can calm that defensiveness, the more likely they're going to stop some of those micromanaging, distrusting, hoarding information behaviors. And of course, you can't compliment them on something they're not actually good at. So like if, you know, if they're horribly indecisive, you're not going to be like, you have great decision-making skills, right? You actually have to find something. And most people have something, they're good at. Most managers have at least one thing they're good at.

And if you can really show that you value them, and then align yourself with them. So figure out what does it they actually want to achieve? Maybe even ask them, like, what are your top three goals? What are you really focused on? And assume they can articulate that, assuming they're being honest with you, to then help them achieve that,

you get sort of brought in to their circle of positivity as opposed to the circle of threat that they see. They see lots of people as threats. So you want to signal that you're not a threat to them. Lindy Greer, who's a professor at University of Michigan, who I interviewed for the book, because she studies a lot of this, had this tactic that she said it hasn't researched it, but it's something she personally got from her coach, which is that she had an insecure

manager who felt very threatened by her. And the coach encouraged Linda to imagine she was a cute fluffy squirrel whenever she interacted with this boss. And she thought this was the most ridiculous thing. She was like, but whatever, I'll try it. And she said, it was amazing. Like she didn't actually say anything or do anything. It was just in her mind imagining herself as non-threatening. She didn't have to not speak.

She didn't have to become a doormat. She just had to become a cute fluffy squirrel whenever she met with this manager. And it seemed to sort of take the tension out of their interactions. The manager was disarmed by the fact that she had a lot of walnuts and cheese. That's exactly.

She kept climbing up a tree. It was like, what? Yeah. I know. How's your tail twig like that? That's right. That's right. We often assume that we're hiding

our disdain for other people or our dislike. I can tell pretty quickly when someone does not like me, I'm sure you can too. And if I'm at all insecure about that, that's just gonna feed that insecurity. And so it's a silly mental trick, but to imagine yourself as something that's not threatening to get in that mindset is going to start sending a little bit more warmth toward that person. They're going to pick up on that and ideally sort of breaks the cycle of threat retaliation,

threat retaliation. But comment and then a question, quick comment, which is just that I didn't mean to dismiss the possibility that I'm an insecure boss or manager. I didn't immediately see myself in it, but if you talk to people who work for with me, maybe they would see it. So just to be open-minded on that score, the question is that I can imagine some people might hear this and say, wait a minute, this boss is micromanaging me, thwarting my potential for growth, and I should flatter them or pretend I'm a squirrel,

like that, what I really ought to do is stand up for myself. And I empathize with that. And like I said, I don't love giving the advice to like flatter and to imagine yourself as a cute fluffy squirrel. I just know at least in Lindy's experience, the cute fluffy squirrel work and lots of research,

the flattery worked. So the question is, yeah, you might want to stand up for yourself. The question is, will that be received? Or will that make things worse? And I think navigating challenging relationships at work is often about deciding between, And this is true for the tactics I share in the book, it's like it's deciding between how much do you call out the behavior, stand up for yourself, advocate for yourself, versus try to influence the other person to behave

differently. And I think that's going to be a personal decision for a lot of people, but one of the things I really encourage people to do is think about, well, what is your ultimate goal? If your ultimate goal is to say your piece and you don't care about whether the relationship gets better or the person gets more defensive or it gets more controlling, then go ahead, say your piece, I get that, stand by your values, hold your integrity, I get that. But you just have to be realistic about what that ultimately will accomplish. And with many of the archetypes, including the insecure boss, oftentimes that standing up makes things worse. And you just have to

be realistic about that. But in no way am I telling people to do anything that would compromise their values or their mental health or their sense of well-being. I mean, ultimately that is primary, but is having a better relationship with your boss going to contribute more to your well-being or is going to stand up and say, stop doing that. That's ridiculous, right? What's going to contribute more, I think, is the real question.

Let's move on to the next archetype. It's the pessimist. Yeah. So this one, I think, is pretty self-explanatory, right? This is the person who is a naysayer. We've all worked with someone who just is like, this isn't going to work. Oh, that never worked.

Oh, we haven't thought of all these risks, right? Just sort of puts every idea down. Lens about their boss, complaints about the clients. They'd have nothing good to say. And one of the things to keep in mind here is that there's this concept of motivational focus. So some people identify as prevention focus or maybe don't identify, but we might identify them

as prevention focus, which are the classic pessimists, people who are really thinking about risks, concerns, they're very cautious, they tend to think about all the things that could go wrong and try to prevent that. And then there's people who are promotion focused, who tend to be our optimists, who are focused on opportunities, forward action, they tend to be just sort of wanting to push forward as opposed to protect against what things could go wrong. So if we want to put a more neutral frame on it, pessimists tend to be prevention focused and often for good reason, right?

The pessimists play an important role often in our work and in identifying risks and pointing out what might go wrong and often seeing things that other people don't see. And that can be really beneficial if it's channeled in the right way, which is the real key. Pesemism, like many, many of the behaviors we'll talk about, is contagious. So we also have to watch that the pessimism doesn't sort of taint the rest of the team or the conversation and that everyone sort of gets pulled down. There's some interesting research that shows that pessimisms tend to have more power simply because they're contrarian. So we afford their viewpoint because it's not aligned with the rest of the group. We afford their viewpoint more

value than it actually would warrant. So one out of 10 people disagree, we don't give them 10% of the credit, we actually give them much greater percentage because it's contrarian. And so we have to watch out for that pessimist really spoiling the water, so to speak. So when the pessimist is spoiling the water, what are the moves? Yeah, one thing to caution against is the polarization. So you don't want to get into a tug of war of like everything's horrible. No, everything's great. Everything's horrible. And you have to remember that pessimists think optimists are idiots. So the more you'd say, no, no, everything's fine. No, that would never happen that they just think you're naive.

They're going to dismiss you right out. And so in some ways, you have to give credence to their caution, not endorse it, not say, oh my gosh, you're totally right. That's going to happen. But say things like, well, I see how can you think that? Or yeah, you know, part of me shares that concern. Or yeah, you're raising an important risk. And then move on to sort of a more productive frame

of discussion, which is how can we mitigate that? Or what would have to be true for this to actually succeed? I get your concern, but what could we change to actually make this success? And I think granting them their premise so that you don't shove them into the pessimist corner and they get defensive like a cornered animal, by doing that, you can take a little bit of the heat out of it and then align yourself of like, this is a problem we have to solve

together. How can you contribute in a productive way to this conversation? I think that's really one of the most important things you can do with a pessimist. So let's do the third archetype now, the victim. Yes. So the victim is a flavor of the pessimist, right? The pessimist thinks everything's gonna go wrong.

The victim is convinced everything's gonna go wrong to them. And so, you know, one of the things I really caution about the victim is that there are people who are truly victims, who are being persecuted, worked, or bullied, or ostracized. And so be careful to quickly label someone in this whole truth for all the archetypes, but be careful to label someone in the chance

that they actually are being victimized. But if it's someone who just sort of feels like everyone's out to get them, one of the things you want to do is encourage them to have some agency because they often feel helpless, right? There's nothing that can be done. And so even doing something hypothetical, saying, well, if you were in charge, what would you do? If no one else is opinion mattered charge, what would you do? If no one else is opinion mattered here,

what would you say? And just trying to sort of get them to imagine their way out of that victim mentality. This is one where I would say most people have marginal success, not great success. This is also an archetype where being a little more direct can help, especially if you have some sort of responsibility for them at work. And you can be more direct and help, especially if you have some sort of responsibility for them at work.

And you can be more direct and say, I see this as your responsibility. Let's talk about why you don't see it that way. And just getting them to see the more they play the victim, the less they're going to get what they want. And really trying to focus on what is it they want from work, get them to articulate what their goals are, and then you might even say, you know, when you don't take responsibility for your actions or you assume that no one's going to go along with you, it doesn't help you achieve those goals. It just sort of blocks you into a corner. So let's talk about what

you can do differently. One of the interesting bits of human psychology here that was explained to me recently that it was just so illuminating when I heard this. I think it's relevant to this discussion around feeling like a victim, which is a feeling I've had at work for sure. It's that when you're on the less powerful part of a power dynamic, there is a pronounced tendency to dehumanize the person with more power. In other words, to not think of them as fully human and not ascribe to them many of the

characteristics that you have, you can just kind of demonize them and it seems easy because they have so much power over you. And as soon as I heard that, I just interpolated back to all the times in my life where I've done exactly that vis-a-vis my bosses. And I'm wondering if that lands for you and if so, what can be done about it? Yeah, I mean, it absolutely lands for me. And I think our discussion about labels plays into this. It's so easy, especially when someone has power and you feel subjected to their decisions or their whims to just label them as something as Macchi Vellian or as out to get you. Whatever the label is that you want to put on them and decide, you know, they have no

humanness, right? Things they have no concerns or worries. And I think especially when someone has control over how much you make, where you work, what you work on, when you take vacation, you start to see them as a tool to get what you want, or not get what you want, as opposed to as a human who has concerns. And I do think we need to remind ourselves that we are all vulnerable humans, and we all have insecurities and concerns and faults and superpowers. I opened the book with a story of a boss I found really challenging,

and I've certainly dehumanized her. And I remember thinking, she's a jerk at work, she must be a jerk everywhere. And I was just convinced. She was just an awful, awful person. But when I think back on it, she was under a lot of pressure. She probably was in over her head.

I do know she had stuff going on in her personal life that was really challenging. Even as I say that, I can feel my chest like sort of relax a little bit. And I think that's one of the exercises that can be important to do is remind yourself. I mean, I've heard mindfulness teachers like just remind yourself everyone was a baby. Everyone was vulnerable at some point and the care of others. And yes, they may be doing awful things or things that you find awful,

but that doesn't mean they're not human. So I love that point. I think it's an important one. Coming up, Amy talks about why dealing with a passive-aggressive colleague is so infernally difficult. The archetype, Amy and I both identify with the most, and why it's important not to dismiss man-splaining. The next archetype is the passive-aggressive peer. Yes, this was the origin of the book. Whenever I do talks, or I shouldn't say with the origin of the book, it was the first archetype I landed on. And whenever I do talks, the first question is, what do

I do when someone's passive aggressive? Truthfully, you shouldn't say this about your own book, but I wish I had better advice in this chapter. Passive aggressive can feel like shadow boxing. Like you just can't land anything. You're trying to talk to them or give them feedback or ask them a question and they're just like, nope, nope, I'm okay, nope, like a vaid, a vaid, a vaid. And it's so, so frustrating. And if someone is, I hesitate to use the word pathologically

because I don't wanna get like psychological about it, but if someone is consistently passive aggressive, it is really hard to make any of these tactics work. That said, there are a few things I will point out. Well, one, I think, keep in mind the passive-aggressive behavior. There's usually a rational explanation for it, even if you don't agree with the rationale. It's fear of conflict, fear of failure, seeking perfection, fear of rejection. Like, those are all rational things, even if they're not founded in your relationship with this person.

So, keep that in mind. And then one of the things is to do what Heidi Grant, social psychologist, I interviewed for the book talks about is like sort of hypothesis testing is trying to really focus on what is it that they're trying to convey, that they feel afraid to convey. And you might have a hunch about what that is and then can you test that. So you might say, you know what I hear you saying, I think is this. Am I getting that right? And they might just say, nope, nope, no, no, you totally wrong.

They might dive right into that passive grass, but you've shown them that you're not just going to listen to the words coming out of the mouth, but you're going to try to understand a little deeper. And that can encourage them to be a little bit more direct. You might also think about, have you done anything that has encouraged them to be passive grass? Have you shown them? You don't like conflict.

Have you shown them you don't like to be disagreed with? Have you shown them that it's unsafe to say exactly what they think and feel? And can you change some of that? Right? Can you sort of roll out the red carpet of, I want to hear differences of opinion. I know I don't always react great to it, but I really want to hear what's on your mind and make the stakes clear. Like if I don't hear your opinion, on your mind and make the stakes clear. Like if I don't hear your opinion, if I don't have your perspective, if I don't know how you really feel, we're not going to be able to do XYZ, whatever it is you're trying to achieve together. One other thing I'll add, and this is true for a lot of these behaviors. Sometimes some positive peer pressure can help. So if you can establish some norms on a

team, so classic passive aggressive behaviors to say one thing in a meeting and then never follow up or do the opposite afterwards or say, yeah, I'll do that and just never follow through is create norms on the team of when we say we're going to do something and we're not able to do it. We'll report back to the team within 24 hours or we hold each other accountable when we don't follow through on our commitments. And so then it's not just you and this other person fighting over whether they did what they said they would do, but it's an entire team holding one another accountable.

The passive-aggressive one is the one I do struggle the most with because I think it's the hardest to deal with. And I'm curious if in your experience working with people like this have you had anything that it's the hardest to deal with. And I'm curious if in your experience working with people like this, have you had anything that it's worked well for you? Well, what I found particularly useful was the notion, and this is just me speaking personally here, the notion that if you're dealing with somebody passive aggressive, it may be because you've made them feel unsafe.

I have some expertise in making people feel unsafe. And so I try to really be on guard for that. I don't know if my techniques work for remedying the situation, but it is often just almost beg them to give me feedback and a push and push and push and to demonstrate once they've taken the leap of faith to give me feedback that I'm okay with it. I don't always succeed at any of this, but that is my goal. Yeah. Well, and not only saying that you want to hear from them, but then when they do reacting the way, like I said, rolling out the red carpet, I had a, I think, one of the more embarrassing points in my career where a colleague, this was a peer

when I was working management consulting, turned to me in the middle where a colleague, this was a peer when I was working management consulting, turned to me in the middle of a meeting with several other people and he said, do you realize that there's a silent U-asshole at the end of every sentence? He said, and I was like, what? He said, your tone is so arrogant. You don't say it, but it sounds like everything you say ends with a silent U-asshole. And I mean, first of all, he and I had a very strong relationship, so he clearly knew he could take the risk in doing this. I sort of wish he hadn't done in front of other people, but for me, it was such a wake-up

call to the way that my tone of voice was threatening or cutting off conversation or all the ways in which I probably was encouraging people to be passive aggressive toward me because I was making it completely unsafe for them to disagree with me. How do you know that guy wasn't thin-skinned? Well, because when he said it, I was like, oh shit. Like, you know when you get feedback and sometimes you're like, no, that's not right.

Like when he said it, I was like, oh yeah, like that makes sense. And everyone in the room, no one was like, it was uncomfortable. Let's be clear, no one was having fun in that conversation. But it was clear he was not alone in thinking that. And so I had to really pay attention. And even if he was thin skin, even if I made one person feel that way, thin skinned or not,

that was not the impact I wanted to be having. And I now do this sort of compulsive thing where I will end a sentence, especially with a group and people who I want to hear input from, of does that make sense? Like, how do you see it? And just so that I'm not ending with that, so I'm ending with an engaging question so that I can actually hear from them what they think.

That all makes sense. I fear that either in your case or other people's cases, especially women or people who are from communities that are not often given as much power, that men might not like hearing feedback from certain groups of people. And I be hesitant to advise people to therefore do a whole song and dance and pretend you're a squirrel and you know make everything palatable for sensitive baby boy. And I know that's not what you're saying, but I'm just trying to, because I feel like I might have been sensitive boy in the past. And so I'm just trying to put that on the table.

Yeah, no, and it's a very fair point. And especially if I think about a lot of the vis-eye personal experience owning my expertise, I think is often threatening to other people as a woman, right? And claiming I know something, declaring it with certainty, I think can rub some people the wrong way, maybe the sensitive boys, whoever we want to characterize them as. Emo guys. Emo guys, right. I think it really mattered who that feedback came from.

He and I had a relationship. I did not see him as someone who is thin skin sensitive. Certainly he had been an advocate for mine in the organization we worked for. I didn't feel like that was sort of unfounded threat. And like I said, it completely rang true at the moment. Now, that said, you're exactly right, that people who traditionally aren't seen as powerful or experts, or even as human sometimes, I don't want to give the impression that we then have to bend over backwards to make those people comfortable right. The goal and I hope this is clear in the book,

the goal isn't to like smooth the way so that everyone sees you as easy to get along with and make everything copicetic. No, the goal is to be able to live your values, hold your integrity, do your job, and also get what you need from your relationships at work, and sometimes that's gonna be uncomfortable, not just for you, but for others. Sometimes that's gonna require some tension that's not gonna be easy to dissipate,

and certainly imagining yourself to be a squirrel or whatever you need to imagine yourself as, you know, that's not the only solution. Like you have to keep an eye on are you continuing to advocate for yourself or you're continuing to advocate for your career, push yourself forward, get what you need? I understood.

Next archetype is the know-it-all. Mm-hmm. From that story I just just shared you probably know every list I identify with this. Me too. Yes. And so I wrote this chapter through like squinted eyes of like, oh, God, this is so painful to write. This is the person who talks down to you to try to explain things that you already know who declares something to be absolutely true with no basis in fact or data, and ultimately just is feeding their own ego. I mean, I can say that because that's often what what I'm doing when I participate in this behavior. The thing I like to remember about know

it all and why they succeed so much in our cultures that we really reward over confidence. And often we reward over confidence, especially in things like leadership that are hard to measure. So instead of actually deciding whether someone's good or bad is a leader based on the results, because that's always very subject to interpretation, we decide they can tell us how good they are. And that leads to us valuing confidence over competence over and over again. So I know when I participate in that behavior, I'm brokering in that currency that's very valuable in our organizations. What works? And I'm sharing this advice because it's worked when I've been in this position as a node all, it's sometimes asking for facts and data, right? Not show me why you know that to be true, but what are you basing that assumption on? Can you share any data that would support that?

And they might bloster back of like, well, I know it because of this, but you've put them on notice that you're not going to just let them declare things. You know, one of the hallmarks of a note all is also interrupting, speaking over people. So doing anything you can to sort of preempt that, you know, could you hold any questions or thoughts till I'm done, or even when someone interrupts, just say, I'm speaking, we'll get to you when I'm done, right? I think of Kamala Harris and her VP debate with with fans, right? I'm speaking and just being very clear about that.

One of the flavors of the know it all is the mansplainer. There's been a lot of talk about mansplaining. And it cautioned against dismissing that. I think we talk about it as if it's a cute thing that happens. It is really rooted in gender bias and it is very damaging to women's careers to be talked over, talked down to, have things explained to them that they know. And so we have to take that very seriously and one of the things that's been shown to work is to actually form allyships with other women or even people who don't identify

as women to make sure that when the know it all Starts with their mansplaining starts with their talking over that someone else also speaks up on your behalf, right? Amy's not done. I want to hear what she has to say Right or that point you just made I think Amy made it earlier I'd like to hear again what she had to say There's some research that shows that when you're the target of bias what she had to say. There's some research that shows that when you're the target of bias, you're given less credence when you call it out. And so having someone else call it out on your behalf can be more effective in actually changing that dynamic in the room.

I've seen that deployed skillfully on my own team actually by members of the team. The tormenter. So tormenter, this was someone who you expect to be a mentor, perhaps because they came up ahead of you in the organization and you share some identity factors, but then instead, they consistently undermine you. This is the person who's like, I walk to school three miles of hill, both ways in the snow, and now you must suffer as a result. And most of the people who I interviewed for this chapter, either were on the verge of quitting or had quit because of the behavior.

And so it's something to take very, very seriously. And there's some research that shows that when you've gone through something difficult, like a divorce, raising young kids and working at the same time, that you don't have as much empathy for people who are in that same position. And the research is sort of positive that it's like, either you sort of forget how difficult it was, or you presume because you made it through that they'll be fine and you dismiss the struggles they're going through. And there's also the issue of social identity threats. So if the tormentor is someone who is not from the dominant group in the organization,

associating themselves with you can be seen as a downside, right? It's something that might actually threaten their standing. And so instead, distance themselves from you, often in harmful ways. This is one of those behaviors or patterns of behavior that are really hard to counter. And often, sympathizing with the sacrifices they did make can help. Right? So I know you came up in a very different world in this industry and I can't imagine it was easy for you. And just sort of giving them a sense that you understand what they went through can take a little bit of the staying out of their behavior. But I would also caution that you don't want to do too much of that. The tormentors, someone you really have to ask yourself, can I work with this person?

This might be one of those ones where you're setting really clear boundaries. You're limiting the amount of interaction. You're avoiding, you know, to your earlier question at the beginning of the show, like, this might be one where you're crafting your job around them in a way where you really only have to interact with them minimally. I'm going to make an executive decision game time call here. There are two more archetypes, but in the interest of time, I want to ask some more general questions. And so if people want to learn about the biased coworker and the political operator they can and should buy your book, you just talked about setting boundaries.

And I guess I'd be curious to hear, what do you do when all else has failed? Yeah. And this is the reality. Many of us are in when we're dealing with these people. We've tried these tactics. You've experimented with different approaches. Maybe some that are more direct. Maybe those that are indirect.

Some that are changing your reaction and your thoughts and behaviors. And nothing's shifting. It's still a torturous situation. One of the questions people ask is, when do I involve higher ups? When do I escalate? And I'm a big believer that resolving conflict

is best done at the source of the conflict. That said, I think there's times where, especially if you think about like a political operator or an insecure boss, you don't have a lot of leverage in that relationship. And sometimes those people will listen to someone who has more authority over them, whether that's an over them, whether that's an HR person, whether that's their boss. You just have to consider the risks of doing that, will escalate in the issue, make you look bad. Well, the person you escalate to actually have the skills to address the issue at hand,

but I do think that it's something you really need to consider. I also think establishing boundaries, as I said, and those might be emotional of like, I'm going to allow myself 15 minutes a day. I'm literally going to set a timer, allow myself 15 minutes a day to think about this person and the pain they're causing me, and then I'm going to put that away and focus on other things. Most of us have very positive relationships with many people at work, even if we're dealing with one, two, three difficult people, and to spend time with those people, focus your energy on those relationships is a much healthier thing to do. And then there's always

the question, do I leave? And this is something I get asked a lot of, like, is this enough to make me look for another job? And, you know, I think it's both an underrated option in that I think people stay way too long when they're in a situation that's untenable for them. And I think it's an overrated option in that we often think, once this person's out of my life, my life will be like puppies and rainbows. And then you get to the next place and you're like, oh, here's a whole new flavor of difficult person that I have to deal with. I know very few people who don't have at least one difficult coworker that they have to deal with.

And so I just would be very careful about weighing the pros and cons of looking somewhere else. And setting time limits, right? Give yourself, like, here are the two things that have to change. And I'm going to give it three months, and I'm going to give it my best effort. I'm going to try these tactics. I'm going to learn what works. Revise my approach. And if in three months, those two things have not changed, and I'm not out on the job market, and I move to something else. One of the key ideas of your new book is that one size does not fit all and that's why you came up with these archetypes.

And yet there are strategies that are applicable in many, many situations. And you have a section in your book called Nine Principles for Getting Along with Anyone. We can't do all nine right now, but I'd be curious to hear if there are one or two that come to mind. Yeah. Well, one, I've sort of been referring to throughout this conversation, and that is really

to treat this as an experiment. If someone tries to tell you, here's a five-step process to deal with your passive-aggressive peer. Do not believe them, right? Because every circumstance is going to be unique, the context in which you're working, the industry, your relationship with that person, your personality, their personality, all of that is going to be unique. There's not going to be a clean solution. Instead, think of this sort of as menu of tactics, again, ranging from very direct to sort of more indirect or things that require more influence skills,

and try them out. You know, I've even created a spreadsheet to deal with someone where I'm like, here's the tactic one. I tried it for two weeks. Did it work under what circumstances and I make notes. And I'm like, okay, what did I learn from that? Let's try again, tactic two. Right. And then what happens when I combine tactic one and two? Partly, I do that because it helps me learn along the way, one and two. Partly I do that because it helps me learn along the way, but also it helps make it a little more fun to be honest right. Then you sort of gamify it of like, can I get this to actually change? And so experimenting to find what works as one of the principles, I really come back to over and over. The other is a mindset shift, which is that it's easy to get stuck in like it's me versus them, you know,

that story you tell yourself, I'm good, they're bad or I'm bad, they're good, whatever the story is, and it's about you and this other person engaged in a battle. And I find it very helpful to instead think of three entities in the relationship, which is me, the other person, and then the problem we're trying to solve. And the problem might be something work related. It might be a project that we're actually working on together, or it might be the way we interact, all right? The way we email.

The tone of our emails, that might be the problem we're trying to solve. And if I imagine myself and that other person on the same side of the table engaging and problem solving together, I'm much more collaborative. And I find that encourages them to be much more collaborative. Then I'm asking questions of what do we do about this? How can we behave differently going forward? Here's what I want to do. What do you want to do?

Right? It becomes a sort of exchange of how do we fix our relationship? You don't have to actually say that, but how do we together find ways that make this much more pleasurable or positive or even neutral for both of us? You're also talking the book about self-care. I guess a lot of people don't like that term, but just take care of yourself as a way to fortify yourself for dealing with whatever comes up. I sort of wish this was the first chapter.

It's how I end the book, but I really think that this is primary and throughout all of this because a lot of what we're talking about is really wearing, exhausting, that can cause us to burn out. And I'm a big fan of mantras. I have things I like to repeat to myself, you know, whether it's like, well, this isn't really about me, or sometimes it's as simple as like, I'm a good person, right? Or everything that has a beginning has an end. And just sort of reminding

yourself that this isn't a reflection of who you are as a person in all aspects of your life. The fact that you're having this one challenging relationship does not need to color every other interaction you have. I share in that chapter a post that I keep on my desk borrowed from my friend's daughter's school. You know, my body is calm, my heart is kind. I am the boss of my brain and my mind.

And sometimes when I'm really struggling with someone who's sent the third nasty email in a row or I'm gearing up for a conversation where I'm going to have to tell the passive aggressive person that I need them to be more straightforward, like even just repeating that to myself reminds myself that this is in my control. I can't influence the way they behave, but I can control how I react, I can control how I feel about it, and my emotional reaction is valid,

and I'm going to handle that, and I'm also still going to do what I think is right. And I mentioned it earlier, but also just leaning into those relationships that you have that are positive. Because of our natural negativity bias, we get so fixated on all of the poor interactions we have negative relationships, but chances are you have some really great relationships, maybe not with co-workers, but maybe outside work. And to really focus on those, invest in those decades and decades of research of the quality of our life is dependent on the quality of our relationships.

And so remind yourself of the positive ones you have to give you sustenance to get through those more tricky negative interactions that are inevitable. All of the wisdom you've shared with us in the course of this interview, is it easier or harder to apply in a remote work environment? That is a good question. I haven't seen a lot of good research about conflict in remote settings. I think there's some thinking that it actually is easier because we are more task focused. We are not as relationship focused and that we're really focused on what actually needs to get done. So a lot of the noise for lack of a better word around the how we do work together is

quieted. That thinking though is based on research done pre-pandemic. And I think it's also done in environments where people always worked remotely. I think the difference is that many of us have existing relationships with people who we are now working remotely with. And so, you know, we are worried about the relationship.

We are concerned about how we interact, how we feel about one another, our relationship. And just personally, I will say, and of one, I feel less human in this environment. And if I'm a tiny little box on a screen, and I get to turn people off and on at will, it just doesn't feel very connected. And so I go back to actually co-host on the Women Women at Work podcast said this at the very beginning of the pandemic. She said, I feel like the lights in the room got turned on and we're seeing the spider webs and we're seeing the cracks and we're never going to be able to turn the lights off.

And I think that's true relationships in that if you had strong relationships with co-workers going into this extended experiment with remote work, they might have gotten stronger, but if there were fractures, if there were cracks, chances are they got much harder. And these are not great mediums of communication for being clear. You know, they're right for miscommunication misunderstanding. You and I might see each other this sort of snippet of our lives. You're not seeing everything that's going on around me. And so we make a lot of assumptions. And I tell the story in the book of a woman who was on a meeting with a coworker of hers. And she's presumed he was rolling his eyes at her. And she was furious, fuming. And just left this faster her a long time. And when she finally said,

I have to talk to him about this, he told her there was a clock above his computer that he was trying to look at very quickly, because he was afraid he was going to be late to pick up his kid from school. And it was just, I mean, she had so many negative thoughts about him. And the reason he was doing it quickly, because he didn't want her to think he wasn't paying attention, right? In his effort to be courteous, he had created this whole situation and she had created this whole situation in her mind.

So, you know, the short answer to your question is I think, for me personally, I find it much harder. I think we do, because these methods of interacting are just so flat or flattened, I don't think we're getting the whole human experience and relationships are based on us being able to see ourselves in one another as humans. Is there something I should have asked but failed to ask? Nothing's coming to mind. You are very thorough.

Before I let you go, can you please just remind everybody of the name of your new book, the name of your past book, any other stuff you're putting out into the world that people might want to take a look at? Sure. So, the new book is called Getting Along, How to Work With Anyone Even Difficult People. My previous book is the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict. I am the co-host of HBR's Women at Work Podcast. I highly recommend checking that out. One of my favorite projects to work on. I also have hundreds of articles

on Harvard Business Reviews, so if you go to hbr.org and search my name, Amy Gallo, you can find my writing there. Amy, thank you so much. Thank you, Dan. This has been really fun. Yes, I agree. Thanks again to Amy Gallo. Thanks to you for listening while I have you, if you have the time or energy, I would love it if you would go rate and or review this show. It really helps us grow five stars.

If you're up for it, feel kind of like an Uber driver at this show. It really helps us grow five stars if you're up for it. I feel kind of like an Uber driver at this point. Also, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. 10% happier is produced by DJ Cashmere, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davy, Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson. Our supervising producer is Marissa Schneiderman

and Kimi Regler is our managing producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of Ultraviolet Audio and Nick Thorburn of the Great Rock and Roll Band Islands. Wrote our theme. We'll see you all on Wednesday for the final installment of our work series. We're going to talk to Professor Lindsay Cameron about whether mindfulness actually works at work. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Or you can listen early and ad free with Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. you