00:00:04
Speaker 1: You're listening to a CNA podcast. What is confrontation to you? What does it look like?
00:00:09
Speaker 2: Um, that's a good question. That feels like confrontation is very confrontational. She will go to your manager and tell your manager because she's being helpful. This is next level spy stuff. This is like top 10 anime betrayals. I cannot.
00:00:36
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Work It podcast. My name is Nat, and with me on the Work It couch, as always, is my co-host, Gerald. Hi, as well as our producer Pen Ning. And today, we are going to be covering something that you guys have requested.
00:00:49
Speaker 2: Because we covered bad bosses in a previous episode, but some of you have written in about another workplace headache, toxic colleagues. So, right now, we're gonna be talking about colleagues who make work harder than it needs to be and what you can do about them. One of it is colleagues who make your life hard because they are bad to work with. So they might not be bad people, but it's just almost impossible to work with them. But is it because they're bad at their job or
00:01:17
Speaker 2: They are. Well, so we'll find out. So, there's this thing about a colleague, right, who wrote down notes for the same duties over 6 times in the same notebook. So, it's the same thing. They keep writing down, OK, maybe I got to do task A, I got to do it 123, and they wrote it down again and again and still on the 7th time, she has no idea how to do it and when somebody asked her why she hasn't done it, she says that nobody ever taught her and she needs to write it down in her.
00:01:45
Speaker 2: Notebook for future reference. At what point does this become incompetence? Yeah, I feel like, I feel like it is. OK, so I have a similar story. I have a colleague who I thought was not very competent and I felt like he weaponized it. Yes. So, OK, I was working with this colleague and this colleague was in charge of managing external stakeholders. I constantly felt that our team's comments weren't being brought across to the external stakeholders. In the end,
00:02:13
Speaker 2: We decided to take on a little bit more work. We created group chats, group emails, group threads and everything and we just directly liaised with the external stakeholders. So, so you just went over this person because you decided it's too much hassle to get them to do their job. Yeah and you just do it for them. Because at that point in time, I was a new
00:02:32
Speaker 2: Employee, so I kind of gas lit myself. I thought that, oh, maybe, maybe this is what you don't understand. Yeah, maybe I'm not. So I went back to check my messages and I found so many messages in which I said I'm so sorry if I'm not communicating this well and I repeated that throughout the whole thing that I
00:02:50
Speaker 1: was there. The way I look at it is an issue of whether you take pride in your work because if today you are someone who really um
00:02:59
Speaker 1: treasure your work and you're proud of what you do. If today, let's say I'm working with you and you have, I'm representing you to talk to another stakeholder.
00:03:06
Speaker 1: It's in my interest to value add to the whole process by finding out what you really need and then representing the other side as well so that I can broker well. So sometimes I guess I've come across people who are like that as well when they, they said, why don't I just take a step back, you just talk like anyway, you know what you want, right? And then they can hear directly from you. So why not? I feel like this person kind of like sidestepped their responsibility. It makes me feel like maybe this person, the middle person, um,
00:03:32
Speaker 1: kind of don't really take pride in their work, right, because they don't see that they are, they don't see the purpose in being in this value chain, right? And we all know that the, the role that they do perhaps does have some value and they're supposed to give a perspective, happy to see something or communicate something more effectively, and if you're not doing that, then, then you're a bit unprofessional, a bit incompetent, and definitely you should, you display to people this lack of pride in your work. Then it's really bad because after that, you know, the reputation.
00:04:00
Speaker 1: gets out there, then who wants to work with you. On,
00:04:02
Speaker 2: on the flip side of this coin, maybe not so much incompetence, but I have experienced colleagues who were very process-driven. They were beholden to the process. So, if you ask them even for a small, small favor like to send, to forward an email thread from an inbox that you don't have access to, right, they will say this is not my job. You go and find your own way to do this. I don't really have the bandwidth to do this kind of thing.
00:04:26
Speaker 2: So they really make it like you have to go through your manager to ask their manager and get your two managers managers' approval so that they will do something for you. But what if they just had like boundaries, like they just didn't want to do grunt work like the following emails, maybe I should have sorted that out for you, right? So what, what if they were just like, you know, I've been through positions in which, you know, I kept being asked to do grunt work and
00:04:54
Speaker 2: I'm just not doing that at all. So I'm not gonna budge. But if it's my first time asking and you're like, sorry, not my job, I feel it's just you not wanting to help out somebody who is clearly just looking for solutions to a problem that they have.
00:05:08
Speaker 1: But I, I do empathize with this because I used to work in a department where we handle data requests. So people will come to us to ask for data and um
00:05:17
Speaker 1: We tried to be helpful, but then we realized that after a while we became um overtaxed, over, overburdened with like many, many requests. We had to put in some process, right, to say that um let's uh tell us the real reason why you need this and give us enough working timeline to get back to you, you see, and this, of course, made several people, our stakeholders not happier, they felt like we were putting in a lot of barriers. We felt that we're not being very uh client-centric, but we said we had to do this because these are the boundaries, so I echo what painting mentioned the boundaries there.
00:05:47
Speaker 1: But also we need to communicate that properly is to say that we are doing this so that we can serve you better, because if not, that there are too many requests come in, I don't know which one to prioritize. So we have to learn to say these things, I guess, uh, not, not to say it's not my job, um, but we have to communicate to say that I'm trying to be, I'm sounding a bit more.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: Uh, process-centric, right, but because it's for the better of everyone, including the company as well.
00:06:12
Speaker 2: Or if that colleague has simply come to me and be like, hey, actually, if you can go to IT and ask them for access to the inbox, it'll probably solve your problem more, more long term, more permanently rather than every time this happens, you have to ask me. But for now, you know what, I'll do you a solid, I'll just do it for you.
00:06:27
Speaker 2: So I feel like there were more ways to communicate that this wasn't his job than to say this is not my job. I said, that felt very selfish I guess or very self-centered and I think in office jobs particularly, there's a lot of gray area about what exactly is your job. Yeah, because there are so many small tasks that anybody can do that's not really pegged to one particular job responsibility.
00:06:52
Speaker 2: Uh, but you know, we, we're talking about things in which there's a lot of gray area, right? What about colleagues who are outright terrible people? On Reddit, there's this comment, right about a very toxic, it is why I think it's 100% toxic colleague. We had this colleague that appears super nice to everyone, but later this Redditor found out that this colleague was nice to people only to find out their secrets and gossip.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: And she will go around sharing and gossip with everybody. If you complain about work, she will go to your manager and tell your manager because she's being helpful. Oh wow. This is spy stuff. It's like top 10 anime betrayals. I cannot. I actually have experience working with a colleague like that.
00:07:37
Speaker 2: Because she would come up to me and say she loves my work, she loves working with me, the few times that we worked together, and only a few interactions in months into our work relationship that I hear from other people that she was badmouthing me to everybody else. So, in front of me, she would be like, oh, wow, like you do a great job. You're so good at what you do. And then I will hear from someone else say like, oh,
00:08:01
Speaker 2: Did you and her have a fight or something? Do you disagree or did you have an argument? Because she was like just ranting about you to all of us at the pantry or like after work. So what did you do after that? I, I didn't do anything. I just let it below. I mean, it wasn't really affecting my work and I kind of have a high tolerance for people just talking bad about me behind my back, but a very low inclination for confrontation.
00:08:25
Speaker 2: Oh, OK. Yeah. I didn't work there for very long but uh it was something that I thought of every time I would see that colleague because every time they saw me, they'll be like, oh, hey, well, you know, hi, good morning, how was your weekend? And I'll just be like
00:08:40
Speaker 2: OK,
00:08:41
Speaker 1: so, so, so just wondering here, right? What if, what if the person who told you, what if this wasn't not true, but the person who told you this was trying to jeopardize your relationship for whatever reason.
00:08:53
Speaker 2: I never even considered that.
00:08:54
Speaker 1: That's why you should
00:08:55
Speaker 2: clarify.
00:08:56
Speaker 1: You should always clarify.
00:08:58
Speaker 1: So that you don't let these things become misunderstanding.
00:09:00
Speaker 2: But how
00:09:00
Speaker 2: do you know what to trust though? OK, what if you clarify and then this colleague said, well, no, I didn't say that. It was obviously this other colleague who is trying to make a mess and then you go to this other colleague again and then you ask and nobody owns up to what they've said.
00:09:15
Speaker 1: So what do you do? So if I get the feedback from somebody who was doing me a favor by telling me, I will ask the person, can you give me specifics? What exactly did the person say?
00:09:23
Speaker 1: Because I don't want to look like a fool in confronting and then when when it's actually nothing. Sometimes, you know, the message right when it spreads across different people, it gets, it gets contorted, distorted, and then after that, it, it, it sounds bad, but actually it was quite a general statement maybe clarify first, where did you hear this and what did the person exactly say? What was the situation it was being set in, so that at least you have some context. And then after that, if you feel like it's important to go and clarify, go and go to that person and find out that, especially if you're working very closely together.
00:09:54
Speaker 1: Go and talk to that person about it. Like yeah, I hear, I heard someone was sharing with me about something that you mentioned. I just was wondering whether was this, did this really happen and how come you will say something like that? Yeah,
00:10:05
Speaker 2: because
00:10:05
Speaker 2: it feels like a very heavy conversation to have. I feel like
00:10:09
Speaker 2: Unless it is getting to the point where it affects my mental health or it is in danger of affecting my mental health. I don't think I would start that conversation. What I do confront them and now they have a personal vendetta against me. So I have this person who is a complete gossip monger who now already knows that oh I'm on their tail, they're going to spread more tails.
00:10:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, but, but you see, if we don't clarify, right.
00:10:37
Speaker 1: Then would there really be no consequences?
00:10:41
Speaker 1: I'm, I'm thinking that the like on that, you know, you mentioned that, you know, maybe you don't want to do anything about it and you just carry on your work, right, but at the back of your mind, there's this thing there. And, and, and if you had to work with this person, how, how, how would you work with that person and what if this whole situation was not as bad as it seems and essentially a missed opportunity.
00:11:01
Speaker 1: Um, to really, you know, have a better working relationship maybe. That's true. So if it's bad, if it's really bad, then it'll be better and you clarify and then you'll be better. But if let's say it wasn't that bad and then at least you managed to salvage that relationship that, that also make you feel better about yourself, the people around us are just like a second family, right? As much as I don't like to say they're family, but they are like because we spend so much time with them. I think uh if today you want to do your best at the workplace, I think you've got to feel like you got the backing of the people who work with you.
00:11:30
Speaker 1: Then you can do great work. To me, conflict is not a negative thing. Conflict is just a way to clarify. So we cannot control responses of people, but at the very least we can get the clarity that we need. So I always feel that like clarifying, that's an art to it, by the way, you don't go and confront a person and then start to accuse a person right from the get-go. I think it's helpful to start to, you know, understand first like clarify.
00:11:51
Speaker 1: And sometimes, let's say even that person was doing something bad to you, bad mouthing you, right, at the very least, knowing that you're willing to confront or to converse in this behavior, the person might be a bit more mindful.
00:12:04
Speaker 1: And they may not do it to you anymore,
00:12:06
Speaker 2: right? It might take you off their target list,
00:12:09
Speaker 1: all right. It could, it could also make them, make you a bigger target list. It could also, but at the very least, you know, you try to do something for
00:12:15
Speaker 1: yourself.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: There, there was this comment on Reddit, right, also said there was an art of art of confrontation, but their art was a bit simpler, basically.
00:12:25
Speaker 2: What, what you have to do is just confront them. After that you apologize. It might be awkward for a few days, but then you give them chocolate and it will be back to normal a few weeks later. What if, what if they don't like chocolate? Oh, OK, then you give them, I don't know nuts. You give them something like biscuit, nuts, a drink.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: drink maybe a coffee and I think it's just basically to show goodwill after you have confronted them and apparently this person said that if you do it once, most people hate confrontation. If you do it once, they will never cross
00:12:56
Speaker 2: you again.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: Can I just ask like from both of you, right, like how do you see, what, what is confrontation to you? What does it look like?
00:13:03
Speaker 2: Um, that's a good question. That feels like confrontation. It is very confrontational right now. I thought, you see, I smiled nervously.
00:13:11
Speaker 1: OK. I thought, I thought that that was just, I'm just asking for clarification like what, what do you see confrontation is like? Yeah,
00:13:17
Speaker 2: if, if I have to
00:13:18
Speaker 2: pause.
00:13:19
Speaker 2: In the middle of like work and then clarify something that is not within the scope of work I'm not talking about, oh, is this supposed to be the title of this episode or is this the caption that we want to go with. I'm talking like, hey, do you have a problem, then that's confrontation, OK?
00:13:41
Speaker 2: about the work itself, but to kind of point out something that might be maybe in terms of quality especially something that's subjective. So to me it might be not high in quality, but to you it might be, oh, it's pretty acceptable and I don't know why you're picking this out. I feel like that is already
00:13:57
Speaker 2: confrontation.
00:13:58
Speaker 1: OK, for me, I confrontation as a form of collaboration actually. I thought you're trying to fine-tune the, the working process and I need to talk to you about this because
00:14:08
Speaker 1: Later on downstream, there could be some repercussions if you don't work out the kinks.
00:14:12
Speaker 2: So for people like us, like how would you advise us to confront or maybe take a step in your direction, right, whereby we are seeing confrontation as collaboration.
00:14:21
Speaker 1: Most of the time from what I've seen so far, most of the time, right, it's like you realize that the situation isn't as bad as it seems.
00:14:28
Speaker 1: It was like something taken out of context or something set out of, out of misunderstanding and then you realize that actually it was not, not a big deal and OK, now, now you know you can get back to work and go back to your productive self. Yeah. So I find that, that, that will be helpful. Um, it might, it might seem like it's taking like breaking the day to go and talk about this thing, right? Of course, you might
00:14:51
Speaker 1: Consider this as if you don't get this thing done, then how would your day, the rest of the day look like, because this thing is nagging in the back of your mind, you don't feel good. I feel like the more we learn to do this um in a healthy manner, in a way where we are not looking to, to accuse someone, someone or to prove that we are right, but really just to understand like, like there's always a cause and effect in all of these situations that happen. Something must have happened in order for something to be said.
00:15:13
Speaker 1: So we want to understand first before we, we, we, we decide on how we want to respond to ourselves and also to the other person.
00:15:20
Speaker 2: What if
00:15:21
Speaker 2: I don't confront them and I just adjust my way of working because I feel like sometimes or a lot of the situations in which I'm met with like a not very good environment or maybe a not very good partner or colleague, I would just kind of adapt.
00:15:34
Speaker 2: and that actually helps me sleep a bit
00:15:37
Speaker 2: better.
00:15:38
Speaker 1: Basically what you're saying is you're not, you don't need to confront every situation that you're comfortable with, you want to pick your battles.
00:15:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can adapt, I pick my battles like some things I really like it's a non-negotiable, then I might, you know, consider confronting. Yeah,
00:15:51
Speaker 1: and, and of course, this is part and parcel of working with different people. We don't expect people to be the same like us and when we are in a team, in a company, we have so many different perspectives and different personalities coming together.
00:16:04
Speaker 1: There is a huge amount of give and take that we must give, we must put in.
00:16:08
Speaker 2: There was one practice that I had at a previous company that really helped with this, which is that everybody was made to draft out a single-page document and it was kept on the work drive and it was called a user guide. User guide, yeah, it's a user guide. So, you have a net user guide, you have a.
00:16:27
Speaker 2: The user guide, the general user guide, it lists out preferences for communication, what time of day they are most likely to be available for meetings, er where they usually work from. It wasn't just the benefit of allowing people to quickly get on board with how other people work, but it was a very introspective exercise to list down your working preferences because then you realize what actually you want to put pen to paper and say is your non-negotiable and what you're actually willing to, you know,
00:16:57
Speaker 2: let go of or compromise in favor of someone else's preferences.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: So you see, if you, if you have some clarity about these things and it's made known, then working will be a lot easier. Otherwise, it can be just be assumed as, oh, you're toxic, you know, you always work like this, you're sending me emails at night, expecting me to work, you know, or sometimes they might say that, oh, you are, you, everything asked me to send to you over email, you know, you, you, you, you cannot take like instructions over the phone, man, you know, why are you so inflexible.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: But actually people all have preferences and this the preferences helps us to work better. So, and this is building off what you mentioned earlier painting about how if today we understood how the different people work, then you can also learn to choose your battles like which ones would you really struggle more with and then really talk to that person a bit more about how to work better.
00:17:45
Speaker 2: I do have to say
00:17:45
Speaker 2: though, that whole user guide thing, it really helped because there was no need for confrontation.
00:17:52
Speaker 2: Everything was in the data bank to be checked. So you never had to go to someone and be like, what's your problem? Why never reply to my email? Why not reply my Slack message? It's all there. It's all written and it's all documented. Yeah. I think that's good.
00:18:04
Speaker 1: I think good managers should build this of practices within the team, right, like the managers knowing how the team works and making sure how the team understands each other's work styles. I used to have a manager who would tell me that uh
00:18:16
Speaker 1: I, I work at ungodly hours, but I don't expect you all to work at that hour. I only do so because it fits my schedule and then this allows all of us to not
00:18:26
Speaker 1: get worried, you know, when she says something at 3 a.m. because we think we have to reply by 4 a.m. Yeah, I think allowing all these things to, to, to be said clearly or rather said or written down as a user guide clearly, I think it really helps.
00:18:39
Speaker 2: OK, what if I call you guys toxic? What, what, what, what would you say? Wait, wait, wait, clarify, are you calling us toxic or are you, are we toxic? Oh no, it's just a question here. I don't know who wrote it.
00:18:53
Speaker 2: So, honestly though, if someone were to come to me and tell me that certain behaviors that I exhibit are toxic, it depends how they say it, but I would take it at face value. I wouldn't necessarily internalize it, but I will confront the matter because even though I am non-confrontational, I need to make sure that my work isn't impeding others.
00:19:12
Speaker 1: There's always a cause and effect in the workplaces and what someone sees as toxic.
00:19:17
Speaker 1: Um, may actually come from something that I was maybe had good intentions to do. I'm sure you have experience like that where you're trying to do your best, but yet the outcome was perceived in a very negative way. So I think we want to know what transpired to lend to that, to that, to that, to that comment. Yeah, and then if I had known that, and then I realized that I wouldn't have changed anything.
00:19:38
Speaker 1: In that process, right, then OK, then I'll be toxic to you. I'm OK. Yeah, because I know that this is, this is the, the, the thing that I had meant to do is the right thing to do and then this is it lah. Yeah, but if today there was something indeed I could have changed, I could have said something better, then I should apologize for it and then I should learn from it and do it better the next time.
00:19:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see where you're coming from though, because if someone calls me toxic and then in their reason why it's basically just because like they are wrong and they refuse to be wrong.
00:20:05
Speaker 2: And they don't want to change their ways, then I'm like, OK, in, in your definition, I'm toxic, but like, let's be real, you know,
00:20:14
Speaker 2: yeah. You know,
00:20:15
Speaker 1: in the workplace, I always feel that like during lunchtime or during the get-togethers, right? If you hear colleagues who are always like bad mouthing, always having something to complain, right? After a while, you realize that this person seems to say everybody's toxic, but, but that person could be the real toxic one because it's like the lens that you wear.
00:20:32
Speaker 1: If you're not happy about everything, you're finding a bone to pick with every person, every, every job, right? After a while, while it might seem like you have a lot to say,
00:20:41
Speaker 1: But after a while, people around you realize that you are the problem.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: Um, but I also feel like there are certain industries, right, that are more prone to toxicity. So even people like even if you jump from company ABC all the way to Z, right, you still find that there are lots of toxic companies and I feel recently we've had a lot of discussion or we've heard a lot, right, about lawyers and like the toxicity that happens in certain industry because it seems to attract a certain profile of people.
00:21:09
Speaker 2: Maybe the, the way the world is structured just lends to it. So I feel that even if you find yourself jumping in the industry to different companies and the people you see there are all toxic, I feel like it doesn't necessarily mean that you're the toxic person though. You really have to identify whether you are complaining about everyone else being toxic because objectively everybody else has a problem or whether everyone's problem is actually just you.
00:21:34
Speaker 1: Remember cost and effect, there's always two sides of the coin.
00:21:37
Speaker 1: And there's always a part that we can learn from and
00:21:38
Speaker 1: grow.
00:21:39
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like that's a good place to cap off this episode. Um, if you guys have uh any other work-related issues or questions, drop us an email. Maybe you have a toxic colleague you want to rat out and have us, uh, read your message about on the podcast. Just email us at CNA podcast@mediacorp.com.sg. And we wouldn't have this episode without the team behind the Work It podcast, Ho Pi Ning, Jonani Johari, Joanne Chan, Wesley Tan, and Tiffany Ang.
00:22:07
Speaker 2: Video and sound by Zachary Ayman and Justin Garnell.
00:22:10
Speaker 1: I'm Gerald.
00:22:10
Speaker 2: I'm painting and I'm Nat. Remember, you can't choose your colleagues, but you can choose your limits.
Speaker 1: You're listening to a CNA podcast. What is confrontation to you? What does it look like?
00:00:09
Speaker 2: Um, that's a good question. That feels like confrontation is very confrontational. She will go to your manager and tell your manager because she's being helpful. This is next level spy stuff. This is like top 10 anime betrayals. I cannot.
00:00:36
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Work It podcast. My name is Nat, and with me on the Work It couch, as always, is my co-host, Gerald. Hi, as well as our producer Pen Ning. And today, we are going to be covering something that you guys have requested.
00:00:49
Speaker 2: Because we covered bad bosses in a previous episode, but some of you have written in about another workplace headache, toxic colleagues. So, right now, we're gonna be talking about colleagues who make work harder than it needs to be and what you can do about them. One of it is colleagues who make your life hard because they are bad to work with. So they might not be bad people, but it's just almost impossible to work with them. But is it because they're bad at their job or
00:01:17
Speaker 2: They are. Well, so we'll find out. So, there's this thing about a colleague, right, who wrote down notes for the same duties over 6 times in the same notebook. So, it's the same thing. They keep writing down, OK, maybe I got to do task A, I got to do it 123, and they wrote it down again and again and still on the 7th time, she has no idea how to do it and when somebody asked her why she hasn't done it, she says that nobody ever taught her and she needs to write it down in her.
00:01:45
Speaker 2: Notebook for future reference. At what point does this become incompetence? Yeah, I feel like, I feel like it is. OK, so I have a similar story. I have a colleague who I thought was not very competent and I felt like he weaponized it. Yes. So, OK, I was working with this colleague and this colleague was in charge of managing external stakeholders. I constantly felt that our team's comments weren't being brought across to the external stakeholders. In the end,
00:02:13
Speaker 2: We decided to take on a little bit more work. We created group chats, group emails, group threads and everything and we just directly liaised with the external stakeholders. So, so you just went over this person because you decided it's too much hassle to get them to do their job. Yeah and you just do it for them. Because at that point in time, I was a new
00:02:32
Speaker 2: Employee, so I kind of gas lit myself. I thought that, oh, maybe, maybe this is what you don't understand. Yeah, maybe I'm not. So I went back to check my messages and I found so many messages in which I said I'm so sorry if I'm not communicating this well and I repeated that throughout the whole thing that I
00:02:50
Speaker 1: was there. The way I look at it is an issue of whether you take pride in your work because if today you are someone who really um
00:02:59
Speaker 1: treasure your work and you're proud of what you do. If today, let's say I'm working with you and you have, I'm representing you to talk to another stakeholder.
00:03:06
Speaker 1: It's in my interest to value add to the whole process by finding out what you really need and then representing the other side as well so that I can broker well. So sometimes I guess I've come across people who are like that as well when they, they said, why don't I just take a step back, you just talk like anyway, you know what you want, right? And then they can hear directly from you. So why not? I feel like this person kind of like sidestepped their responsibility. It makes me feel like maybe this person, the middle person, um,
00:03:32
Speaker 1: kind of don't really take pride in their work, right, because they don't see that they are, they don't see the purpose in being in this value chain, right? And we all know that the, the role that they do perhaps does have some value and they're supposed to give a perspective, happy to see something or communicate something more effectively, and if you're not doing that, then, then you're a bit unprofessional, a bit incompetent, and definitely you should, you display to people this lack of pride in your work. Then it's really bad because after that, you know, the reputation.
00:04:00
Speaker 1: gets out there, then who wants to work with you. On,
00:04:02
Speaker 2: on the flip side of this coin, maybe not so much incompetence, but I have experienced colleagues who were very process-driven. They were beholden to the process. So, if you ask them even for a small, small favor like to send, to forward an email thread from an inbox that you don't have access to, right, they will say this is not my job. You go and find your own way to do this. I don't really have the bandwidth to do this kind of thing.
00:04:26
Speaker 2: So they really make it like you have to go through your manager to ask their manager and get your two managers managers' approval so that they will do something for you. But what if they just had like boundaries, like they just didn't want to do grunt work like the following emails, maybe I should have sorted that out for you, right? So what, what if they were just like, you know, I've been through positions in which, you know, I kept being asked to do grunt work and
00:04:54
Speaker 2: I'm just not doing that at all. So I'm not gonna budge. But if it's my first time asking and you're like, sorry, not my job, I feel it's just you not wanting to help out somebody who is clearly just looking for solutions to a problem that they have.
00:05:08
Speaker 1: But I, I do empathize with this because I used to work in a department where we handle data requests. So people will come to us to ask for data and um
00:05:17
Speaker 1: We tried to be helpful, but then we realized that after a while we became um overtaxed, over, overburdened with like many, many requests. We had to put in some process, right, to say that um let's uh tell us the real reason why you need this and give us enough working timeline to get back to you, you see, and this, of course, made several people, our stakeholders not happier, they felt like we were putting in a lot of barriers. We felt that we're not being very uh client-centric, but we said we had to do this because these are the boundaries, so I echo what painting mentioned the boundaries there.
00:05:47
Speaker 1: But also we need to communicate that properly is to say that we are doing this so that we can serve you better, because if not, that there are too many requests come in, I don't know which one to prioritize. So we have to learn to say these things, I guess, uh, not, not to say it's not my job, um, but we have to communicate to say that I'm trying to be, I'm sounding a bit more.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: Uh, process-centric, right, but because it's for the better of everyone, including the company as well.
00:06:12
Speaker 2: Or if that colleague has simply come to me and be like, hey, actually, if you can go to IT and ask them for access to the inbox, it'll probably solve your problem more, more long term, more permanently rather than every time this happens, you have to ask me. But for now, you know what, I'll do you a solid, I'll just do it for you.
00:06:27
Speaker 2: So I feel like there were more ways to communicate that this wasn't his job than to say this is not my job. I said, that felt very selfish I guess or very self-centered and I think in office jobs particularly, there's a lot of gray area about what exactly is your job. Yeah, because there are so many small tasks that anybody can do that's not really pegged to one particular job responsibility.
00:06:52
Speaker 2: Uh, but you know, we, we're talking about things in which there's a lot of gray area, right? What about colleagues who are outright terrible people? On Reddit, there's this comment, right about a very toxic, it is why I think it's 100% toxic colleague. We had this colleague that appears super nice to everyone, but later this Redditor found out that this colleague was nice to people only to find out their secrets and gossip.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: And she will go around sharing and gossip with everybody. If you complain about work, she will go to your manager and tell your manager because she's being helpful. Oh wow. This is spy stuff. It's like top 10 anime betrayals. I cannot. I actually have experience working with a colleague like that.
00:07:37
Speaker 2: Because she would come up to me and say she loves my work, she loves working with me, the few times that we worked together, and only a few interactions in months into our work relationship that I hear from other people that she was badmouthing me to everybody else. So, in front of me, she would be like, oh, wow, like you do a great job. You're so good at what you do. And then I will hear from someone else say like, oh,
00:08:01
Speaker 2: Did you and her have a fight or something? Do you disagree or did you have an argument? Because she was like just ranting about you to all of us at the pantry or like after work. So what did you do after that? I, I didn't do anything. I just let it below. I mean, it wasn't really affecting my work and I kind of have a high tolerance for people just talking bad about me behind my back, but a very low inclination for confrontation.
00:08:25
Speaker 2: Oh, OK. Yeah. I didn't work there for very long but uh it was something that I thought of every time I would see that colleague because every time they saw me, they'll be like, oh, hey, well, you know, hi, good morning, how was your weekend? And I'll just be like
00:08:40
Speaker 2: OK,
00:08:41
Speaker 1: so, so, so just wondering here, right? What if, what if the person who told you, what if this wasn't not true, but the person who told you this was trying to jeopardize your relationship for whatever reason.
00:08:53
Speaker 2: I never even considered that.
00:08:54
Speaker 1: That's why you should
00:08:55
Speaker 2: clarify.
00:08:56
Speaker 1: You should always clarify.
00:08:58
Speaker 1: So that you don't let these things become misunderstanding.
00:09:00
Speaker 2: But how
00:09:00
Speaker 2: do you know what to trust though? OK, what if you clarify and then this colleague said, well, no, I didn't say that. It was obviously this other colleague who is trying to make a mess and then you go to this other colleague again and then you ask and nobody owns up to what they've said.
00:09:15
Speaker 1: So what do you do? So if I get the feedback from somebody who was doing me a favor by telling me, I will ask the person, can you give me specifics? What exactly did the person say?
00:09:23
Speaker 1: Because I don't want to look like a fool in confronting and then when when it's actually nothing. Sometimes, you know, the message right when it spreads across different people, it gets, it gets contorted, distorted, and then after that, it, it, it sounds bad, but actually it was quite a general statement maybe clarify first, where did you hear this and what did the person exactly say? What was the situation it was being set in, so that at least you have some context. And then after that, if you feel like it's important to go and clarify, go and go to that person and find out that, especially if you're working very closely together.
00:09:54
Speaker 1: Go and talk to that person about it. Like yeah, I hear, I heard someone was sharing with me about something that you mentioned. I just was wondering whether was this, did this really happen and how come you will say something like that? Yeah,
00:10:05
Speaker 2: because
00:10:05
Speaker 2: it feels like a very heavy conversation to have. I feel like
00:10:09
Speaker 2: Unless it is getting to the point where it affects my mental health or it is in danger of affecting my mental health. I don't think I would start that conversation. What I do confront them and now they have a personal vendetta against me. So I have this person who is a complete gossip monger who now already knows that oh I'm on their tail, they're going to spread more tails.
00:10:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, but, but you see, if we don't clarify, right.
00:10:37
Speaker 1: Then would there really be no consequences?
00:10:41
Speaker 1: I'm, I'm thinking that the like on that, you know, you mentioned that, you know, maybe you don't want to do anything about it and you just carry on your work, right, but at the back of your mind, there's this thing there. And, and, and if you had to work with this person, how, how, how would you work with that person and what if this whole situation was not as bad as it seems and essentially a missed opportunity.
00:11:01
Speaker 1: Um, to really, you know, have a better working relationship maybe. That's true. So if it's bad, if it's really bad, then it'll be better and you clarify and then you'll be better. But if let's say it wasn't that bad and then at least you managed to salvage that relationship that, that also make you feel better about yourself, the people around us are just like a second family, right? As much as I don't like to say they're family, but they are like because we spend so much time with them. I think uh if today you want to do your best at the workplace, I think you've got to feel like you got the backing of the people who work with you.
00:11:30
Speaker 1: Then you can do great work. To me, conflict is not a negative thing. Conflict is just a way to clarify. So we cannot control responses of people, but at the very least we can get the clarity that we need. So I always feel that like clarifying, that's an art to it, by the way, you don't go and confront a person and then start to accuse a person right from the get-go. I think it's helpful to start to, you know, understand first like clarify.
00:11:51
Speaker 1: And sometimes, let's say even that person was doing something bad to you, bad mouthing you, right, at the very least, knowing that you're willing to confront or to converse in this behavior, the person might be a bit more mindful.
00:12:04
Speaker 1: And they may not do it to you anymore,
00:12:06
Speaker 2: right? It might take you off their target list,
00:12:09
Speaker 1: all right. It could, it could also make them, make you a bigger target list. It could also, but at the very least, you know, you try to do something for
00:12:15
Speaker 1: yourself.
00:12:16
Speaker 2: There, there was this comment on Reddit, right, also said there was an art of art of confrontation, but their art was a bit simpler, basically.
00:12:25
Speaker 2: What, what you have to do is just confront them. After that you apologize. It might be awkward for a few days, but then you give them chocolate and it will be back to normal a few weeks later. What if, what if they don't like chocolate? Oh, OK, then you give them, I don't know nuts. You give them something like biscuit, nuts, a drink.
00:12:43
Speaker 2: drink maybe a coffee and I think it's just basically to show goodwill after you have confronted them and apparently this person said that if you do it once, most people hate confrontation. If you do it once, they will never cross
00:12:56
Speaker 2: you again.
00:12:57
Speaker 1: Can I just ask like from both of you, right, like how do you see, what, what is confrontation to you? What does it look like?
00:13:03
Speaker 2: Um, that's a good question. That feels like confrontation. It is very confrontational right now. I thought, you see, I smiled nervously.
00:13:11
Speaker 1: OK. I thought, I thought that that was just, I'm just asking for clarification like what, what do you see confrontation is like? Yeah,
00:13:17
Speaker 2: if, if I have to
00:13:18
Speaker 2: pause.
00:13:19
Speaker 2: In the middle of like work and then clarify something that is not within the scope of work I'm not talking about, oh, is this supposed to be the title of this episode or is this the caption that we want to go with. I'm talking like, hey, do you have a problem, then that's confrontation, OK?
00:13:41
Speaker 2: about the work itself, but to kind of point out something that might be maybe in terms of quality especially something that's subjective. So to me it might be not high in quality, but to you it might be, oh, it's pretty acceptable and I don't know why you're picking this out. I feel like that is already
00:13:57
Speaker 2: confrontation.
00:13:58
Speaker 1: OK, for me, I confrontation as a form of collaboration actually. I thought you're trying to fine-tune the, the working process and I need to talk to you about this because
00:14:08
Speaker 1: Later on downstream, there could be some repercussions if you don't work out the kinks.
00:14:12
Speaker 2: So for people like us, like how would you advise us to confront or maybe take a step in your direction, right, whereby we are seeing confrontation as collaboration.
00:14:21
Speaker 1: Most of the time from what I've seen so far, most of the time, right, it's like you realize that the situation isn't as bad as it seems.
00:14:28
Speaker 1: It was like something taken out of context or something set out of, out of misunderstanding and then you realize that actually it was not, not a big deal and OK, now, now you know you can get back to work and go back to your productive self. Yeah. So I find that, that, that will be helpful. Um, it might, it might seem like it's taking like breaking the day to go and talk about this thing, right? Of course, you might
00:14:51
Speaker 1: Consider this as if you don't get this thing done, then how would your day, the rest of the day look like, because this thing is nagging in the back of your mind, you don't feel good. I feel like the more we learn to do this um in a healthy manner, in a way where we are not looking to, to accuse someone, someone or to prove that we are right, but really just to understand like, like there's always a cause and effect in all of these situations that happen. Something must have happened in order for something to be said.
00:15:13
Speaker 1: So we want to understand first before we, we, we, we decide on how we want to respond to ourselves and also to the other person.
00:15:20
Speaker 2: What if
00:15:21
Speaker 2: I don't confront them and I just adjust my way of working because I feel like sometimes or a lot of the situations in which I'm met with like a not very good environment or maybe a not very good partner or colleague, I would just kind of adapt.
00:15:34
Speaker 2: and that actually helps me sleep a bit
00:15:37
Speaker 2: better.
00:15:38
Speaker 1: Basically what you're saying is you're not, you don't need to confront every situation that you're comfortable with, you want to pick your battles.
00:15:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can adapt, I pick my battles like some things I really like it's a non-negotiable, then I might, you know, consider confronting. Yeah,
00:15:51
Speaker 1: and, and of course, this is part and parcel of working with different people. We don't expect people to be the same like us and when we are in a team, in a company, we have so many different perspectives and different personalities coming together.
00:16:04
Speaker 1: There is a huge amount of give and take that we must give, we must put in.
00:16:08
Speaker 2: There was one practice that I had at a previous company that really helped with this, which is that everybody was made to draft out a single-page document and it was kept on the work drive and it was called a user guide. User guide, yeah, it's a user guide. So, you have a net user guide, you have a.
00:16:27
Speaker 2: The user guide, the general user guide, it lists out preferences for communication, what time of day they are most likely to be available for meetings, er where they usually work from. It wasn't just the benefit of allowing people to quickly get on board with how other people work, but it was a very introspective exercise to list down your working preferences because then you realize what actually you want to put pen to paper and say is your non-negotiable and what you're actually willing to, you know,
00:16:57
Speaker 2: let go of or compromise in favor of someone else's preferences.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: So you see, if you, if you have some clarity about these things and it's made known, then working will be a lot easier. Otherwise, it can be just be assumed as, oh, you're toxic, you know, you always work like this, you're sending me emails at night, expecting me to work, you know, or sometimes they might say that, oh, you are, you, everything asked me to send to you over email, you know, you, you, you, you cannot take like instructions over the phone, man, you know, why are you so inflexible.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: But actually people all have preferences and this the preferences helps us to work better. So, and this is building off what you mentioned earlier painting about how if today we understood how the different people work, then you can also learn to choose your battles like which ones would you really struggle more with and then really talk to that person a bit more about how to work better.
00:17:45
Speaker 2: I do have to say
00:17:45
Speaker 2: though, that whole user guide thing, it really helped because there was no need for confrontation.
00:17:52
Speaker 2: Everything was in the data bank to be checked. So you never had to go to someone and be like, what's your problem? Why never reply to my email? Why not reply my Slack message? It's all there. It's all written and it's all documented. Yeah. I think that's good.
00:18:04
Speaker 1: I think good managers should build this of practices within the team, right, like the managers knowing how the team works and making sure how the team understands each other's work styles. I used to have a manager who would tell me that uh
00:18:16
Speaker 1: I, I work at ungodly hours, but I don't expect you all to work at that hour. I only do so because it fits my schedule and then this allows all of us to not
00:18:26
Speaker 1: get worried, you know, when she says something at 3 a.m. because we think we have to reply by 4 a.m. Yeah, I think allowing all these things to, to, to be said clearly or rather said or written down as a user guide clearly, I think it really helps.
00:18:39
Speaker 2: OK, what if I call you guys toxic? What, what, what, what would you say? Wait, wait, wait, clarify, are you calling us toxic or are you, are we toxic? Oh no, it's just a question here. I don't know who wrote it.
00:18:53
Speaker 2: So, honestly though, if someone were to come to me and tell me that certain behaviors that I exhibit are toxic, it depends how they say it, but I would take it at face value. I wouldn't necessarily internalize it, but I will confront the matter because even though I am non-confrontational, I need to make sure that my work isn't impeding others.
00:19:12
Speaker 1: There's always a cause and effect in the workplaces and what someone sees as toxic.
00:19:17
Speaker 1: Um, may actually come from something that I was maybe had good intentions to do. I'm sure you have experience like that where you're trying to do your best, but yet the outcome was perceived in a very negative way. So I think we want to know what transpired to lend to that, to that, to that, to that comment. Yeah, and then if I had known that, and then I realized that I wouldn't have changed anything.
00:19:38
Speaker 1: In that process, right, then OK, then I'll be toxic to you. I'm OK. Yeah, because I know that this is, this is the, the, the thing that I had meant to do is the right thing to do and then this is it lah. Yeah, but if today there was something indeed I could have changed, I could have said something better, then I should apologize for it and then I should learn from it and do it better the next time.
00:19:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see where you're coming from though, because if someone calls me toxic and then in their reason why it's basically just because like they are wrong and they refuse to be wrong.
00:20:05
Speaker 2: And they don't want to change their ways, then I'm like, OK, in, in your definition, I'm toxic, but like, let's be real, you know,
00:20:14
Speaker 2: yeah. You know,
00:20:15
Speaker 1: in the workplace, I always feel that like during lunchtime or during the get-togethers, right? If you hear colleagues who are always like bad mouthing, always having something to complain, right? After a while, you realize that this person seems to say everybody's toxic, but, but that person could be the real toxic one because it's like the lens that you wear.
00:20:32
Speaker 1: If you're not happy about everything, you're finding a bone to pick with every person, every, every job, right? After a while, while it might seem like you have a lot to say,
00:20:41
Speaker 1: But after a while, people around you realize that you are the problem.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: Um, but I also feel like there are certain industries, right, that are more prone to toxicity. So even people like even if you jump from company ABC all the way to Z, right, you still find that there are lots of toxic companies and I feel recently we've had a lot of discussion or we've heard a lot, right, about lawyers and like the toxicity that happens in certain industry because it seems to attract a certain profile of people.
00:21:09
Speaker 2: Maybe the, the way the world is structured just lends to it. So I feel that even if you find yourself jumping in the industry to different companies and the people you see there are all toxic, I feel like it doesn't necessarily mean that you're the toxic person though. You really have to identify whether you are complaining about everyone else being toxic because objectively everybody else has a problem or whether everyone's problem is actually just you.
00:21:34
Speaker 1: Remember cost and effect, there's always two sides of the coin.
00:21:37
Speaker 1: And there's always a part that we can learn from and
00:21:38
Speaker 1: grow.
00:21:39
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like that's a good place to cap off this episode. Um, if you guys have uh any other work-related issues or questions, drop us an email. Maybe you have a toxic colleague you want to rat out and have us, uh, read your message about on the podcast. Just email us at CNA podcast@mediacorp.com.sg. And we wouldn't have this episode without the team behind the Work It podcast, Ho Pi Ning, Jonani Johari, Joanne Chan, Wesley Tan, and Tiffany Ang.
00:22:07
Speaker 2: Video and sound by Zachary Ayman and Justin Garnell.
00:22:10
Speaker 1: I'm Gerald.
00:22:10
Speaker 2: I'm painting and I'm Nat. Remember, you can't choose your colleagues, but you can choose your limits.
