I’ve missed a couple of weeks. I bet there’s still a way to get 104 blogs posted by the end of the year, though. One way is to talk about what I’ve been reading. I have somewhere around 30 books open and in process, but I’m a big sucker for smart sounding clickbait articles with titles like, “N Ways You’re Screwing Up Your ___________.”
I gravitate towards headings that offer the perspective that I might actually be the asshole in any given situation. (My success rate is about 50%.)
Today’s read was posted on LinkedIn: “8 Things Smart People Never Reveal About Themselves At Work,” by Dr. Travis Bradberry. Though I consider myself not only intelligent, but especially gifted with emotional intelligence, I had a strong hunch that I was likely to find myself in violation of all 8 things.
Sure enough, my intuition was correct.
I have violated every single bullet point in this article (which I beg you to read before proceeding with this horrifying post). My intuition that the piece would confirm me as a living, thriving example of how not to conduct yourself at work (that is, if you wish to be perceived as not only intelligent, but emotionally intelligent) stems from recent harsh disillusionments with my actual abilities.
Certainly, I have a capacity for emotional intelligence, and in some environments I’ve proven to have done a lot more reading and committed a lot more practice to cultivating emotional skills than my colleagues have. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make me the expert I thought I was becoming. And my battered ego is desperately trying to navigate the line between confidence in the skills I do have and those areas where I actually don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
Presented below for my own amusement, here are ways in which I have demonstrably failed to live up to a professional standard of emotional intelligence.
Political Beliefs. Courage is a prerequisite for authenticity and growth, as it takes courage to speak truth to power, to be transparent and accountable, and to voice dissenting, unpopular opinions. If you’ve read any of Charlan Nemeth’s terrific book, In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business, you know the world needs more courageous dissenters in the workplace. I’ve always regarded discussion of politics – something that touches everyone’s lives deeply if they hold any values at all – as a sort of practice ground for engaging with this sort of courage. But in light of this article, I need to reconsider.
Dr. Bradberry is right. We should be extremely discerning, as there’s really not a need to bring our whole authentic selves to work unless it’s in service of our team. That’s where the waters get muddy for me. In order to create a more inclusive space for marginalized coworkers, I feel a duty to express my support of their equitable treatment, and to call out shitty language and habits of othering – and that has often resulted in heated exchanges.
At that point, I’ve left behind concern about whether or not it’s appropriate to talk politics at work and have entered territory where I’m learning to navigate my own emotions. I think it’s vital to enter that space in a vulnerable and pioneering way, knowing others are watching and that everyone is hoping for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. It’s experimental social theater and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it unless it’s so disruptive others can’t focus on their work. But I’m a fucking weirdo with low emotional intelligence so don’t listen to me.
Incompetent Others. LOL, I have no counterargument to this whatsoever. I know it’s toxic because it’s schadenfreude/comparison/judgment at best and emotional/verbal abuse at worst. The whole spectrum is ugly. I’ve done it, but I’ve pared way back thanks to the wisdom of becoming a middle-aged fool.
Your Earnings. Ugh, this was a hard one to quit. The last time I did it, the result was to find myself triggered to the point of tears. It wasn’t so much that I was making way less than my colleagues as it was the sense of betrayal I believed I was experiencing. I felt so stupid for trusting a huge corporation to pay better attention to my wages than I was – I was having such a good experience working there that I didn’t even notice I was being taken advantage of.
Turned out, once I tearfully asked to clear things up with my supervisor, that I was making less than my colleagues because I was working fewer hours. And once I realized that, I didn’t particularly care to increase my hours after all. I’m okay with smaller paychecks if I have more time to pursue other interests and ambitions. The reason I was triggered, I later realized, was due to the trauma of an ex-boyfriend’s infidelity. I thought things between us were great only to discover two years in that he was happily having a relationship with someone else.
Same effect.
Job Dissatisfaction. Yeah, this one’s bad for team morale. Giving negativity a breeding ground has never been my bag but I’ve shared some harsh critiques of management and infrastructure with coworkers. It’s not really the same thing, though.
Your Sex Life. This one’s obvious AF, and in most environments I find it extremely easy and imperative to avoid. However…
It might be that my whole impetus for writing this post is so I can commit this sin all over again – this time committing it to the world wide web – because I think it’s ridiculous and it’s the only time I egregiously overstepped this line as an adult in a professional environment. I think as a blog post, though, it’s pretty fucking funny.
What’s ridiculous is that I thought I was being heroic for sharing this completely inappropriate thing. You see, a young lady I held in high regard had a tendency to overshare without consideration for how others regarded this oversharing. I, too, am one of God’s experiments-gone-wrong, so I admired this quality, even though she was driven by unconscious misperceptions about how well-received she’d be. She was surveying our huge warehouse staff about eating ass, and she proudly declared that she supported it as both giver and receiver.
Now, if you work in a white collar environment, you’re probably wondering how this got off the ground at all. But as I mentioned, we were working in a male-dominated blue collar warehouse where standards of professionalism were extremely relaxed. I was bothered by this lax attitude more than I wasn’t, but had adopted a “When in Rome” calibration to give myself more peace and conserve my conflict energy.
When I heard other colleagues gag in disgust when the surveyor chick was out of hearing range, I felt a strong urge to act. (This was my hero/martyr complex rearing its big dumb head and I have learned my lesson in the aftermath.) I asked, “What are you guys talking about?” Another girl answered that the other chick was a nasty-ass for not only bringing up the survey, but declaring her support of the act.
I saw this as my chance to be a big hero and jump on a grenade so that my little buddy didn’t have to blow up all alone in that foxhole. “I’d do it.” I boldly interjected. The other girl had a Wait, backup moment, thinking perhaps I had not heard her clearly. So I repeated myself. “Yes, I have been tongue-fucked in the asshole and I enjoyed it. I would also do it for a partner if they asked me to.”
God, why am I like this?
Naturally, the girl stood aghast. But she also reconsidered and softened her position. My dissent was having exactly the effect Dr. Nemeth had observed in her years of research. At least, it did that day. For a while, I was able to indulge in my own delusion that my martyrdom had been successful. Months later, this same Mean Girl shared this information about me in order to pile on damage to my once shining reputation.
And the other girl had no gratitude at all for my jumping on the grenade she unpinned on herself. We both looked like unsavory dipshits with disgusting bedroom proclivities, and in fact it may have been my unnecessary participation that made her disillusion so shocking and unpleasant. She was clearly embarrassed when I overheard her later that week trying to backpedal.
Their Sex Life. See above. Don’t be a creep, say not a peep.
Youthful Indiscretion. Yeah, I thought freely sharing the darker former aspects of my shadow self made me more relatable and gave me an attractive edge. The veil of delusions about my high emotional intelligence has been torn to utter shreds by this article.
Job Hunting. This is another obvious one but I’ve done it when I’ve grown to hate a job so much that my last fuck withered away weeks prior and I had zero concern about being let go.
And that’s all I’ve got. I hope nobody read this whole thing. I hope I provided enough distracting links to suck up all the time and attention of would-be readers. Will this blog post damage my future job hunts? For sure, especially if I share this address on LinkedIn while not looking for a job as anything other than a professional dirtbag.
BLOG OF RHIANNIMATOR 