My stuff don’t stink!
I was talking to a co-worker this week. His Mom had been having some medical trouble recently and he had been called away from work a bunch. What struck me is that he ‘felt bad’ about not being available when the boss called and was worried that people at HQ would think he wasn’t working hard enough or pulling his weight.
Part of this is cultural. In America we ‘have this work comes first’ norm that makes us only begrudgingly take personal time. Above and beyond that little cultural issue is valuable lesson that I told him and I’d like to share with you.
Your managers and your peers will take their cues from you and your attitude. They are going to react to what you are doing based on how you act. This, again, is some subtle artifact of our communal, pack evolutionary response.
If you act submissive, or penitent the people you work with are going to pick up on that and reinforce it. There will be those who look to take advantage of any signs you show of weakness. It’s not that they are bad people it’s that we evolved to live in a hierarchical tribe where everyone has their place in the pecking order.
What you have to do in these situations is act like your ‘stuff’ doesn’t stink! If you act like and send signals that what you are doing is perfectly ok and there is no issue then your coworkers will pick up on that cue and go with the flow.
Let’s take an example. You show up for an important meeting 15 minutes late. You can tell by the body language in the room that people are not happy. How do you manage it? If you start blithering excuses and dwell on it you’re just going to make it worse and give people an excuse to pile on. You can’t change the fact that you’re late. You can only change how you deal with it and how others perceive you.
Instead, if you smile, make a brief, sincere mea culpa, perhaps a self deprecating joke and then move on as if nothing has happened. Act like this is just something that happens and now everything is cool. Act like your stuff doesn’t stink! The people in the group will cue off your attitude and you won’t take a hit for it.
People are like dogs in that they are used to living in a social pack or herd. They need to know who is in charge and how everyone else measures up on the pecking order. If they don’t know they get uncomfortable. I’ll go out on a limb and say 80% of that is figured out through non-verbal cues.
I’m not saying that you enter every social situation and act like the alpha dog. I’m saying that you need to be comfortable enough in your own skin so that when you interact, you interact without fear and with confidence in yourself.
It all comes back to having your inner game, your inner self-comfortable-ness, in place and bringing that with you to these interactions. This way when you act like your stuff don’t stink, it’s not an act. It is authentic and people will cue on to that authenticity.