
When a colleague annoys you and you have a genuine reason to be irritated, how do you deal with it?
What makes you annoyed at work? I’ve thought about a few of the things that can get me going – and I bet they raise your hackles too. How about these:
- When someone doesn’t do what they said they were going to do
- When someone lets you down at the last moment
- When someone blithely interrupts you to talk about something unimportant when you’re clearly very busy
- When someone insists that they’re right about something, even though you know to the contrary!
- When people turn up late for a meeting and then faff about and disrupt everyone else
So, what do you say when someone annoys you?
The first thing is to put yourself in their shoes. The other person isn’t deliberately seeking to annoy you! (How many times have you inflicted the ‘annoying’ behaviour on someone else?) The second thing is to ask yourself, is it reasonable for me to feel annoyed? And if it is, then you need to define what it is that you find annoying. What is the other person doing or saying that doesn’t meet with your expectations?
If you can state clearly and non-judgementally how the other person’s behaviour is creating a gap between what you expect of them and what you are actually experiencing, then you may well have grounds for feeling annoyed and you should seek to address the problem. If you can’t, then you may have to accept that there is a mis-match between your personalities or simply an illogical dislike that you have to learn to accept and work around.
So, the next time you feel annoyed by someone, ask yourself ‘why?’ And if your annoyance is based on a real problem, an identifiable gap between expectation and reality, then address it by speaking non-judgementally with the person concerned – and remember, it’s a dialogue and you have a responsibility to listen to the other person’s point of view.
But what exactly do you say, the next time someone annoys you? Take a look at this video to find out. It’s called ‘What To Say When Someone Annoys You’.
There are a million and one different ‘difficult’ or ‘awkward’ situations people encounter with their colleagues every day. And we tend not to be very good at dealing with them. Video is a great medium for illustrating behaviours. It shows clearly and quickly what to say and what to do – and learners are quickly able to pick up a practical phrase or concept and apply it to their everyday working lives.
What To Say When Someone Annoys You is just one of the many videos in Scott Bradbury’s WATCH & GO® video library, and one of 12 short cartoon-illustrated ‘What To Say When…’ videos.
You can see the full list of titles in the WATCH & GO® video library here.