Is someone really getting on your nerves at work?

Roger’s boss John is a very direct person and can sometimes be quite harsh with his employees. Roger has always had difficult relationships with authority figures and either worships or resents them. Roger’s relationship with John has been everything but easy and has left a lot of unspoken irritation and frustration hanging in the air.

On Friday morning Roger’s boss leaves the following curt voice message on Roger’s cell phone: “Roger, this is John. Check your program for next week. I want to see you in my office before Thursday.”

This short and blunt message sends Roger into a flat spin.

Already feeling overloaded with unmet deadlines after being off sick for three days, he immediately thinks the requested meeting means trouble. His habitual point of view is to focus on the worst possible outcome of situations. Roger unconsciously believes that this worst-case scenario thinking protects him against being caught off guard by unexpected events. So he starts imagining all the potential problems and complaints John could bring up about his recent performance.

But Roger’s catastrophizing habit makes him instantly anxious about the voice message, and this eventually leads to irritation and downright anger at his boss’s way of treating him. Shifting rapidly, and somewhat irrationally, from fear and defensiveness through to irritation and anger, Roger’s attribution of negative meanings to his boss’s curt message has lead to a great deal of inner tension… and potential conflict with his boss.

Although Roger’s defensive point of view – and catastrophizing cognitions – is unique to his personality style, we all have a particular point of view that shapes how we attribute meaning to others’ behaviour. Your point of view, like Roger’s, consists of habitual (and therefore unconscious) patterns of thinking and emotion that help you interpret and give meaning to your experiences. (See the Enneagram Personality System for more information about the 9 points of view people develop).

The thing about a point of view is that it is a view from a point, rather than the only point. Much like a partial map, our limited points of view can’t show us the full territory.

However, we can expand our perceptions to include not only other points of view, but also the experiences and emotional inner states of our colleagues. Neuroscience has shown us that we are hardwired for empathy. We have the capacity for a deep understanding and ‘affective imagination’ regarding other people’s inner worlds. All we need are the right conditions and strategies for developing this capacity for empathy.

Let us consider some practical strategies for developing empathy and a wider and more conscious field of perception.

Conscious Perception and Empathic States

Conscious Perception (CP) is an approach to workplace communication adapted from David Taylor’s Naked Coach: Business Coaching Made Simple (2007). When applied to conflict it encourages individuals to re-evaluate potentially explosive communication by looking at the

• negative
• neutral, and
• positive possibilities in a message.

Very importantly, CP is greatly enhanced by considering the possible states of mind of the other party. Back to Roger…

If Roger was to apply CP to his experience with his boss John, he could firstly ask himself what alternative interpretations of the curt voice message he can come up with. The negative interpretation is well covered! A neutral interpretation could be that John may simply want to check in with him after his long absence. Even better, a positive interpretation may be that John wants to further discuss the details of Roger’s upcoming promotion.

Furthermore, by remembering that John hates speaking into an answering service, Roger can consider how this may be the reason for his blunt voice tone. Instead of reacting defensively, Roger can in a sense ‘enter John’s state of mind’ (empathy) to develop alternative explanations for his curt message. Roger could further stimulate this ‘empathic state’ by imagining the upcoming meeting with John from John’s perspective.

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