I was expecting to be a little more proactive this last week but I've been kind of dealing with a lot so it wasn't as good a start as I was hoping for. I was still recovering from throat surgery, running out of pain meds and dealing with trying to get them refilled in a highly regulated system, coming of off pain meds, processing my surgery pathology results, and it feels like a million other things that are too boring to mention but are stressful enough in ones own personal life to distract them from personal change. However, when I was able to focus on being positive I garnered some success.
One thing I need and want to work on is how I speak to people. I've noticed that I speak down to people, not necessarily condescendingly but in tone and enthusiasm, like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Especially when talking to people over the phone at work.
I do I.T. support for a company of over 1000 employees. I've been doing this for over 11 years and 13 years before that for a smaller company so along the way users problems have become monotonous. I think I also developed this in order to get people off the phone faster and not make small talk with me. Small talk can be very distracting with trying to concentrate on resolving an end-users technical problems.
I'm also a somewhat socially awkward person who normally doesn't talk a lot. I've also kind of developed the mind set where I don't say anything unless I have something important to say. My personality has often been associated to Spock or Data from Star Trek. I'm very literal in my conversations so I think most people find me dull and boring. Which may be one of the reasons I have few friends. But I'll save that for another post.
So I want to raise my tone and enthusiasm when speaking to people at work. Now there's this one person I deal with regularly whom I absolutely despise talking to. The ironic thing is that it's because he sounds like Eeyore. So, when I called to speak with him last week I decided to try to sound more upbeat. To my surprise by changing my tone he too changed his to a more upbeat, positive tone. I can't remember ever hearing him sound like that. So maybe all this time he was just reflecting my attitude towards him? I was very pleasantly surprised and encouraged by this outcome.
I had another experience worth mentioning. Often when someone poses a contradictory or untrue fact I will debate the point even to the point of my detriment. I was listening to this podcast and I noticed that when one of the hosts had a point that the other host disagreed with they didn't argue the point, they just let it go. That did a lot to keep the podcast moving in a forward direction and I'm sure kept their relationship a harmonious one.
I too was presented with a couple instances where I felt I was in the right, but instead of pressing my point I just let it go. This allowed us to move past this disagreement and even prevented what could have turned into and argument.
On these two points I feel I've made a small victory in moving in a more positive direction toward positivity this week. This week I'll try to continue and build on last weeks success. I want to speak to my co-workers in a more upbeat, positive tone and not react negatively to negative encounters. If I realize I can't change their viewpoint then just let it go and move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment