Choosing chaos over malice 🌲👻
Are they mad at me, or just disorganised?
A few weeks ago, we discussed how to email like a human - and how showing up like a human in your communiqués has SUCH a big impact on how nice a workplace can feel. Especially if you do most of your work in an inbox or Slack channel. But guess what?
Showing up like a human also means we might have a busy, intense, or even a straight-up terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
We've all had one. We’ve all definitely worked with someone having one. This is a Normal Workplace Event and will be until our work is all done by robots. 🤷🏻♀️
Where normal turns into not-nice is when we start seeing the bad day, or weird message, or short email, or Google Docs comment for more than it is. In other words: we assume there's malice instead of recognising it's probably just normal human chaos slash existence. Life is MESSY, after all.
Here's where this might hit home for you:
Someone sends a Slack message without an emoji (and they normally use a lot of emojis).
Assuming malice: You stress they're mad at you or that you did something wrong.
Assuming chaos: You reason they're busy and needed to send a quick message - maybe they're on the go - or hey, they just forgot.
Your manager sets a meeting time at the end of the day.
Assuming malice: You just KNOW you'll get disciplined or fired, and you stress about it all day.
Assuming chaos: You assume they probably have no time to chat until then, and they booked for their freest moment, not realising how it looks.
You open up your project and see you've been left loads of comments on areas to fix.
Assuming malice: You think you're terrible at your job or see red and find reasons to dismiss their comments.
Assuming chaos: You realize that you forgot some areas, you reason you could have done more with the work, and/or recognise you now have a roadmap for completing your task in a stronger way.
Your client doesn't answer your email for a week or hasn't paid your invoice.
Assuming malice: They hate your work or don't want to pay you.
Assuming chaos: Your invoice is just in a stack of emailed invoices that all got sent at the end of the month. Or it has just been forgotten.
Your work wife eats lunch with someone else.
Assuming malice: They are super mad at you, and you’re not invited to join them.
Assuming chaos: They were hungry, and someone else was also hungry then. Or even! They had plans to eat with that person, and it doesn’t reflect on you at all.
Your client has someone else do your work (like ChatGPT, cough) and sends it to you.
Assuming malice: They hate my work, I am terrible at my work, or they are too dumb to realise my work is better, etc.
Assuming chaos: They needed something in a hurry. Or they’re curious. Or maybe they do think it’s good!
When we assume malice instead of letting there be room for chaos, we do three things:
1. We become less nice people to work with.
Even if we think we're hiding it well - we're not. There's a certain flavour to people who don't trust others, and that flavour is: highly defensive with a dash of uncooperative and a sprinkle of resentment. And once you pick up on that from someone you work with, you can’t not see it. 😬
2. When we see malice, we miss seeing our fellow humans as humans.
There's so much to learn from how people show up and rise through their bad, busy or chaotic days - including being more patient with ourselves when we have our own. If we never let them be human and instead make them all Disney villains, then - I guess we work with Disney villains. That's a bummer.
3. We allow less room for us to be a human-not-a-Disney-villain on our next busy, intense or bad day.
And that only perpetuates the cycle because if YOU start feeling that people are defensive and angry with you, you're going to get defensive and angry, and suddenly we're all Disney villains. Infuse enough malice, and we might even graduate to Marvel or Star Wars villains. And unless we're building the Death Star, I have a hard time seeing this as a net positive.
My point: These three things together make for a pretty malicious work experience, which makes it pretty damn hard to show up as a nice person.
Now, you might actually work in a malicious workplace. If someone is insulting you, if you're being bullied or ostracized, or if you work with people who think the best way to motivate you is to personally attack you or gaslight you - I am so sorry. Please get out of there at the earliest opportunity.
For all cases where they are not cosplaying as Maleficent, though, I invite you to see if you can make your own work bubble a nicer place to be this week by trying to assume more chaos and less malice.
To do so, we've listed 10 things that might be happening in our lives that could lead to a less-than-gleaming message, call, email or Slack message. Find it below 👇
So when someone comes to you with big "I am malicious today" energy, stop and read through the whole thing. See if you can find some reason, any reason, it might be chaos instead for them or for you!
If that doesn't work, then you gotta read through the next list, which is: "20 things that might be making it hard for YOU to see the chaotic forest for the malicious-looking trees." 🌲👻
I think what you'll find, after all of that reading, is - there are a thousand reasons someone could be showing up as a chaotic human today that have absolutely ZERO to do with you and a thousand MORE reasons that you might be accidentally making yourself the main character in someone else's show.
Let them be. Let yourself be. Don't make what might be a Brooklyn 99 precinct work vibe into an Ozark-themed nightmare casino place of employment. You deserve to be in a nice workplace working with nice people - give them AND YOU a chance to be one. 🙏
Me and the numerous pop culture references in this newsletter say bye,
Rachel
Links We Love
📚 The Daily Stoic - unlike the title sounds, it isn’t about repressing all feelings, but rather identifying them, feeling them, and letting them pass right on by 👋
Last week’s read on owning our part in workplace dynamics 💛
10 things that happen to humans that have nothing to do with you
These are the low-stakes ones - keep in mind there are hundreds more reasons ranging from innocent to life-altering that happen to us every day.
Their favourite sweater has a hole in it that they didn't see until they got to work
They misjudged the time of their dentist appointment this morning and were in a huge rush
Their favourite show isn’t renewing
Their upstairs neighbour was doing callisthenics last night
Their train, tram, bus, ferry and/or carpool partner was late
They just realized they forgot to take out the trash
Their internet connection is slow and you keep freezing
Their human in charge kept interrupting them this morning
They forgot to charge their phone last night and can’t find their charging cord
They’re back from holiday to 200+ emails 🫠
20 questions to help you see the chaotic forest for the malicious-looking trees 🌲👻
Have changes been made to your role recently that you don’t understand or might be stressed about? Have you discussed it with your manager?
Are you working on things you’re new to or not yet comfortable with? Have you verbalized these concerns?
Are you feeling defensive about another part of your work that you don’t want someone to notice?
Do you feel you’ve done great work recently that’s gone unnoticed?
Do you need this other person to show up as a cheery, happy person for you to be a cheery, happy person at work, and if so, why?
Are you over-assigning value to emojis, punctuation, or “writing style” to intuit their tone?
Are you responding at night, on the weekend, or at another time you might resent having to think about work?
Is something bothering you about them, their work, or your work together that you haven’t discussed?
Are you working on things at the best times for you, or are you fitting yourself into someone else’s schedule and feeling out of sorts as a result?
Are you setting good boundaries around your notifications so you’re not interrupted during focused times, or are you jumping from medium to medium throughout the day?
Is non-work life requiring a lot of your focus, emotional labour, and/or time, making you feel a bit overloaded while at work?
Has something happened recently in your personal life that has made it difficult for you to be able to perform well, be patient, or cooperate with others at work?
Have you taken enough days off recently, and do you regularly take holidays?
Is there something happening between you and a coworker? Have you told someone about it that can help?
Are you regularly capturing your own wins and things you do well?
Are you feeling replaceable or threatened by this person or someone else at work?
Is there a big cultural difference between you and this person?
Is there any reason this person would want to trip you up or see you fail?
What is your worst-case scenario for this situation, and how likely do you think it will happen?
How are these thoughts impacting your ability to see other reasons or possibilities?