Social discomfort is very common that we can find almost everywhere, how to retain wage negotiations or short conversations interspersed with many embarrassing silences.
Tessa West, a social psychologist, said in a CNBC report that almost all people will find themselves at a certain point in an interaction that puts him uncomfortable, especially at work, since these situations appear daily.
He said: “Most people follow a simple approach to calm the discomfort: we smile with the best we can and laugh (even when there is nothing fun), and we do our best to convince others: interact with me positive. I’m cute. “
But are you too cute at work?
The problem of excessive kindness
There is a sad paradox, since every time we try to use kindness to hide our annoyance, people discovers our truth.
Humans are good at capturing feelings, which have leaked through our non -verbal behaviors, such as sound tone. We believe we better hide our anxiety by increasing the compliments, but when these compliments are said with artificial smiles, nobody believes them.
We often check our annoyance by providing very general, not beneficial notes. Like these classic phrases as “well done!”, In many cases, this praise is not worthy.
The exaggeration in positive reactions indicates that it does not pay attention. Over time, the recipient becomes uncomfortable. He needs specific information that already help him improve his work.
What are you doing instead?
Many people work in environments where excessive kindness is the basis. Here are 3 things you can do to change this culture in an environment where honest and useful reactions are estimated.
1- He asked for “culture of kindness”
Ask yourself: all those who surround me appreciate this excessive culture or are they doing it because everyone does it?
Social rules are an important motivation for behaviors and first the new arrivals faster to adopt these rules, they realize that they “adapt”.
If the new expatriate notes that everyone is giving him praise after a secondary presentation presentation, he will do the same.
If no one has explicitly questioned this behavior, the result will be what social psychologists call “pluralistic ignorance”, everyone assumes that others make very beautiful comments just because they wanted to do it, but in secret.
A dialogue on change begins. Discover people’s true feelings on the culture of kindness. One of the ways to do this is an alternative proposal.
Before the following presentation, for example, you can ask people: “How will you feel if each of us wrote 3 specific things that can be improved and 3 specific things that must absolutely maintain at the end of the presentation?”
2- be accurate and specific
It is normal to rely on behaviors to form impressions and hypotheses. For example, we can judge a person who is constantly late as a lazy. But the impressions are often very general that are not useful, even if they are positive.
Make sure to make specific and based on behavior. The more it is possible to determine the problem, the more useful notes.
The same goes to praise. If you say someone exactly what he did well or because his job was excellent, you will seem more honest and your notes will be more important.
3- Start with small and neutral steps
It may seem to jump from a shelf and go from a culture of very beautiful notes to an honest culture.
Start with small steps, such as the choice of regular topics, but they are still worried about people. The goal is to build a skill that receives notes without causing anger.
In this way, as soon as you go to the most difficult issues, the criteria for honesty have started to change.
While you work to change the culture that surrounds you, be patient. The criteria take a lot of time to form and a lot to change.
