CHAPTER 2

STOP, LOOK, AND LISTEN

“You see, but you do not observe”

—Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle,
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,
“A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891)

Imagine you're at an office party and you notice a conversational cluster of senior managers. One manager is hanging around the food and looks a little depressed. What's going on? Well, it could be anything. Maybe there's an impending reorganization and the left-out manager is about to be laid off. Maybe the seemingly depressed manager is actually stunned to find out he or she has received a major promotion and the other managers are wondering about their fate. And maybe the whole thing is about who won or lost the football pool.

Do you need to know what's going on? Absolutely.

If a reorganization is about to happen, your own career prospects could go up or down—or possibly out. If it's the football pool, you don't want to spend a sleepless night worrying for nothing. If it's your manager who's on the way out, his or her difficult behavior might get worse.

Forewarned is forearmed. Knowledge is power.

THE FARLEY FILE

There's an enormous amount of important and revealing information about people available to you, but most of us ignore it and treat it as background noise. People—whether difficult or not—reveal themselves in nonverbal communication, in their Internet or blog presence, and in a variety of other ways. Because what's going on in the organization can make people's difficult behavior worsen or lessen, being plugged in and knowing what's going on is vital.

Look for Information to Improve Your Understanding

Much information is available on people, organizations, and industries. A few years ago, you had to be a skilled researcher to get the information you needed, but online searching makes it relatively easy. If you're dealing with a difficult person, have you done a search on that person? Checked his or her involvement on social networking sites? Looked for basic biographical data?

People change their behavior when they're under stress, so knowing about stressors is important. If the company is being sold or reorganized, the behavior of those who are “in the know” changes. Keep a Google eye on news about your organization and your industry.

Keep Track of Personal Details

If someone you know gets promoted, make sure you say (or e-mail) congratulations. If it's someone else's birthday, make a calendar note for next year. Keep track of the names of people's spouses, children, and pets and inquire about their lives from time to time. People hunger for personal recognition, and taking the time to remember and congratulate (or commiserate) sets you apart from the crowd.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign manager, James A. Farley, had secretaries keep notes on everyone Roosevelt ever met. Whenever FDR was about to meet someone, Farley would pull his or her file and make sure the president was up-to-date. Imagine the impression it made when the president of the United States remembered the name of someone's dog five years after his previous encounter with the person. In The Devil Wears Prada, Anne Hathaway serves as a human Farley File (popularized by science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, in his novel Double Star [1956]) for Meryl Streep, discreetly letting Streep know about each person she encounters at an important social event. Keep your own notes, and people will be honored and touched by your memory.

Pay Attention to Nonverbal Communication

A series of famous research studies of human communication showed that we form our impressions of others and interpret ambiguous messages in a rough ratio of 7 percent from actual words, 38 percent from tone of voice, and 55 percent from nonverbal communication (body language, dress, grooming).

“That was smart of you” could be a compliment but could also be sarcasm, depending on the tone of voice or on nonverbal signals such as rolling eyes upward and shaking one's head. Sometimes it's difficult to explain to someone else why a certain person is causing you problems: The actual words are innocuous, but tone and body language give a completely different impression.

Interpreting body language and voice tone must be done with care. If you're asking someone to perform a task and the person crosses his or her arms, fidgets, and looks away, it may be that you're witnessing resistance or disapproval. On the other hand, he or she might be uncomfortably chilly.

An awareness of body language doesn't immediately mean being able to translate it properly; that takes years of training. However, simply paying attention will give you hints as to what may be going on underneath the surface.

Sherlock Holmes could deduce a suspect's history from the evidence of a single footprint and a cigarette butt. We normally have to settle for less profound observations, but paying attention will always teach us something.

Use Temperament- and Style-Sorting Tools

One person's difficult behavior is another person's normal way of communicating. We react negatively to some people's style and positively to others. From DiSC to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) (see the footnote on page 12), tools that help you understand another person's temperament and work style are commonly available. Although it's not wise and can be detrimental to assume people match their temperament type in every detail, it's usually the case that you can gain some insight by looking at ways people match and don't match their type.

Often, organizations offer training in such tools as MBTI and insist everyone take the test and discuss the results. The problem is that few of us remember even our own type after the training is done. Was I an INTJ or an LMNOP? Keep notes not only on your type but also on the types of people with whom you work.

Information vs. Nosiness

Of course, it's easy to take researching your colleagues to extremes. Clearly, you don't want to cross ethical or legal boundaries, nor do you need to. Midnight raids on file cabinets or hard drives go beyond the pale. Today, however, free, open, legal information is available in unprecedented amounts. As far as paying attention to nonverbal communication and type, that's something organizations often try to teach you how to do—and surely that's legitimate. Knowledge is a source of power, and one easily accessible. Watch out for temptation. Don't let your ego cause you to cross the line when gathering information on your colleagues.

BUILDING YOUR FARLEY FILE

You might set this up as a paper file, but it also works well in a (secure) computer environment. You'll need one file record for each person, but the amount of information contained therein varies by the importance of or frequency of contact with the person. Feel free to modify or add information; the value increases as you add to it.

Contact information

Names of spouses/family members (age, gender, birthday)

Names of work colleagues/bosses/assistants/etc.

Personality or temperament type (MBTI, DiSC, etc.)^*

Online search results (blogs, social-networking sites, e-lists, home page)

* MBTI and DiSC are two commonly used systems that name and interpret different ways people work and communicate. If you've learned these or other systems that help you get a quick handle on other people, use them as part of improving your daily understanding of those in your life, whether they're difficult or not. Although these systems have a lot of value, beware of overinterpretation. People are who they are, not necessarily who the system says they are.