It's important to understand personalities. When I say that I don't mean the word personalities in a general way. I mean in a very specific way. If you understand personalities as a psychological term, you understand a basic rule. Personalities are predictable. By definition the personality is taking the person on a ride through life. The question is how sold is the person on what their personalities tell them.
Back up. This may be confusing. Too complex, wrong blog title. Simple. Okay. The guy who left nearly cost me my job. He was being evaluated on an even platform with me. I was shocked and offended when I saw what was going on. This guy blew up at me on a Friday afternoon, screaming at me on the phone. I challenged him back without screaming. He was off. In general this guy was unpredictable. Sometimes I loved him. He had an extremely endearing quality about him. But depending on who he was speaking to, he could run you over. He was smart too. But he didn't think before he spoke. Quite possibly I've heard him say some of the dumbest things I've ever heard someone say.
But to be clear. 6 months ago, the company was looking at me versus him. I thought I was going to fly out of my bathing suite. I built up a solid growth business and he's been mostly nothing but trouble, except he keeps his desk clean and his paperwork is on time. I could see right through this guy and the entire exec team was supporting him, including the pres. Not happy. Oh no. I took a huge deep breathe and went into the under-workings of my personality. I prepared for work, not by doing work, but by doing the work. The work, meaning work on myself. Dealing with my anger. Facing it. Facing anger is like throwing darts at yourself. Your trying to hit the target but you know if you do it's going to hurt the most. Amazingly, when dealing with pain in this format, you can overcome it and the pain just kind of goes away. Minus the darts.
In preparing myself this way it allowed me to be more open and caring in the moment. I could see and hear the other person without feeling I need to win or protect myself. Pretty much is moving you up the ladder instead of falling down it when someone pushes your buttons.
Being challenged is not at all fun, certainly when you're a middle manager trying to create some sunshine on your side of the sidewalk, but if you've done the work you can be there in the moment without having to jump back at the person. It's basically a different existence. And so ultimately this process will take you up the ladder and bring best of you out to the world instead of the automated you.
I know a little self-help-ish, psychologist-ish type stuff. But given my deck of cards, if you're not doing the work you will not make it. Simple. If you are not going up the ladder, you are going down. There is no staying the same. Today you may be a middle manager and feel totally stuck in middle management. You ain't stuck. You just think you are.
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