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Stop the Witchy Kitties at Work
Catty people are workplace terrorists inflicting horrific collateral damage. They depend upon surprise attacks to gain control and power over other people.
Here’s what you can do to stop the witchy kitties.
The list looks long but read to the end. You need all of these steps in your tool box to deal with these sneaky critters.
1. Expect the surprise the attack. You know it’s coming. You just don’t know when.
2. When they attack, don’t take the bait or play their game. If you don’t react with surprise, hurt, anger or retaliation, there is no fuel for the fight. They loose their edge.
3. Identify their pay-off. What is the person trying to gain by being catty? More than likely the pay-off is related to increasing their self-esteem, control or power.
4. Don’t reward the catty behavior. With no pay-off, the person doesn’t gain anything by the behavior and, over time, the behavior will disappear.
5. Be respectful, open and direct. Talk your truth. Counter the attack with a simple and respectful statement that puts a spotlight on the offending behavior. “When you said you liked my presentation, your tone of voice sounded condescending. What did you really want to say?”
6. Don’t be distracted by their denial. Be prepared for the other person to deny that anything is wrong. It’s a strategic ploy to avoid accountability for their actions. If they own their catty behavior, they must also own responsibility for the impact of that behavior. Don’t be fooled by their feigned innocence.
7. State clearly and specifically what you expect from the catty person. “I want you to be a respected and trusted team member. When you gossip about your co-workers, it destroys your credibility with your colleagues and leads to distrust and disrespect. Gossip will not be tolerated. I expect you to stop it now.”
8. Ask a powerful, forward focused question that shifts personal accountability for the change to the other person. “What do you need to do differently so that the gossip stops?”
9. Don’t put up with or overlook even the slightest hint of catty behavior. Be calm and consistent.
10. Send this to everyone you know so they don’t become victims of these workplace terrorists.
One last thought. If your boss is the catty person, grab your backside and RUN to another job. I’ve seen too many top notch people turned into skittish zombies because they worked for a catty boss.
Are You Working with a Witchy Kitty?
Catty behavior is like cancer. It creates extreme collateral damage.
Unfortunately, some Type A top performers are witchy kitties.
Cattiness is mean-spirited nastiness intentionally meant to hurt or harm someone else. It destroys employee morale, productivity and engagement.
Put up with catty behavior and you’re throwing money, time and energy down the drain.
Catty people are workplace terrorists.
Do you recognize these witchy kitty behaviors?
• Telling lies and spreading rumors behind someone’s back
• Stomping off and sulking
• Snubbing someone
• Using ‘nice’ words with a ‘nasty’ tone of voice
• Clamming up and refusing to talk when upset
• Planting damaging information or insinuations about someone
• Taking revenge by sabotaging someone’s work
• Destroying property
• Shunning or ostracizing a specific person
• Refusing to include someone in a group activity like going to lunch
• Refusing to make eye contact
• Pretending the other person doesn’t exist
• Making faces or derogatory gestures to others about a specific person
What’s the big secret that catty people don’t want you to know?
These witchy kitties are really scaredy-cats. Their behavior is driven by a fear of being powerless and inferior.
Catty people are afraid to confront you in a respectful, open and direct manner. Instead, they launch roundabout attacks designed to throw you off balance and shift the power and control to them.
And, because they are masters at justifying, denying and hiding, it can be tough to corral witchy kitties. It’s even harder to put a stop to the nastiness if it’s coming from one of your super smart, Type A top performers. (FYI. If it’s coming from your boss, grab your backside and run to a better job.)
Stay tuned…. How to stop a catfight before the witchy kitties destroy your team.
Stop Internal Type A Waterboarding
“Give me a big order of high expectations and while you’re at it, throw in a double shot of stress topped off with whipped worry and sprinkled with frosted frustration…and make it quick. I’m in a hurry to get some whopper results!”
It happens to Type A’s all the time. Somewhere between high expectations and whopper results something goes haywire.
You fumble a key client meeting. A fickle schedule leaves your To Do List DOA. You can’t find your car keys. The dog barfs on the carpet just before your dinner guests arrive.
That’s when it begins. Internal Type A Waterboarding.
A small glitch morphs into a boiling stew of second guessing, hand wringing and teeth clenching. You lock yourself into your own little Type A torture chamber of coulda, woulda and shoulda.
Your high expectations ignite a downward spiral of personal collateral damage.
You begin to rust from the inside out as your high expectations slowly strangle your effectiveness. Holy smokes, Batman!
How do you stop this internal collateral damage without lowering your lofty expectations?
1. Get a grip. Lighten up. Laugh at yourself and the situation. It gives you perspective and activates your right-brained, innovative thinking. You can drive out of the problem instead of spinning your wheels.
2. Take your nose out of your navel. Focus on the next play. Stop replaying the past. That’s wasted energy.
3. Turn down the perfection meter. Expecting perfection leads to indigestion.
4. Trade in your super hero cape for a cool outfit. Prancing around in a bikini and a body leotard is so Gotham City yesterday.
The Deep, Dark Type A Secret
It’s no secret that high expectations are hard-wired into the DNA of Type A top performers.
After all, you seldom achieve eye-popping results without first setting eye-popping expectations. It’s just common sense. Like peanut butter and jelly, Olympian expectations go hand-in-hand with colossal accomplishments. To land on the moon you must first have the mojo to expect a moon landing.
But there’s a deep, dark secret tied to those super duper expectations that many Type A’s won’t admit.
They are rusting from the inside out.
Yep. Their powerful Type A infrastructure is being insidiously eroded by those very same high expectations that drive their extraordinary success.
Sad, but true.
For the Type A tribe, high expectations are a both a blessing and a curse. While high expectations inspire extraordinary accomplishments, they also frequently lead to an immense amount of internal collateral damage that is invisible to other people.
And just because the collateral damage isn’t visible doesn’t mean it’s not lethal. Remember, it was an unseen damaged o-ring that led to the Challenger space shuttle disaster.
Here’s how high expectations can cause internal implosions.
When we fail to meet our own lofty expectations… we tend to privately beat ourselves up rather than staying upbeat and relaxed. We lock ourselves into our own little torture chamber of coulda, woulda and shoulda. We get fixated on what went wrong rather than what went well. This internal waterboarding creates collateral damage that eats away at your gut, elevates your blood pressure and keeps you awake at night.
You begin rusting from the inside out.
Let’s be honest. It’s really hard to jump over the moon if you’ve got a coulda, woulda, shoulda ball and chain around your neck.
This leads to the gazillion dollar question: How do you put a stop to the internal collateral damage without sacrificing your stellar expectations?
Stay tuned for the answer in Thursday’s blog….
Motivating a Type A Superstar to Change – Part 2
Contrary to the old saw, you can teach an old dog a new trick. It just requires a tantalizing treat that captures and holds the dog’s attention… like freeze dried liver morsels or a hedgehog squeaky toy.
Same thing goes for motivating a Type A superstar to do something new or different.
You must tie the change to something the individual finds very enticing. Something so titillating that they are willing to break out of their success comfort zone.
Here’s where so many bosses go wrong. They fall into the trap of…
1. Explaining how the change is good for the company and stop there. (“So it’s good for the company but it sucks for my pocketbook. I’m supposed to want that???”)
2. Using veiled threats of unpleasant consequences if the change doesn’t occur. (“Yeah, right. You’re really going to fire someone who your most important customers trust. We both know you’re not that stupid.”)
3. Pulling out stale, generic WIIFM motivators that simply don’t pack enough punch to interest a Type A superstar in the long-run. (“Let me get this straight. In exchange for keeping my job during the lay-offs, you expect me to take on the additional work of the two people who were let go and that’s a sign of how much the company values my contribution? I’m already working 60 hours a week. I don’t need any more appreciation if that’s what it entails.”)
To motivate a Type A superstar to change his personal recipe for success, you’ve got to make the consequences positive, personal and extremely meaningful. That means as the boss you’ve got to know what ignites and excites each of your Type A superstars before you ask them to change.
Is it freeze dried liver, a squeaky hedgehog or some other tasty treat?
Motivating a Type A Superstar to Change
Here’s a brutal truth hiding behind closed doors in executive suites all over the country.
Motivating a Type A Superstar to change her magic formula for success can be the boss’s toughest challenge.
Think about it. When you’ve got a proven track record of bringing home the bacon, it’s a natural tendency to dig in your heels when someone tells you that you’ve got to do things differently.
Take outstanding results, mix in some power and whip with a hefty dose of ego and you’ve got a recipe for one stubborn Type A superstar.
Don’t believe me? Just ask a General Sales Manager who leads a team of top notch account executives in a constricting, highly competitive marketplace. Or ask the CEO who is trying to get the COO and CMO to stop playing office politics.
Here’s the deal. If your Type A Superstar thinks the proposed changes are going to negatively impact her pocketbook, her power or her prestige, chances are that you’re going to meet resistance.
So… How do you motivate a Type A Superstar?
Stay tuned…..
Squelching Moaning Minnies and Bellyaching Bufords: Part 2
During the 25 years I’ve been improving organizational and individual effectiveness, I’ve not encountered a nastier demon than complaining and blaming. It destroys morale, frustrates leaders and hurts productivity.
In Part 1, I identified 3 Type A traps to avoid when dealing with a workplace whiner.
Today, I’m sharing 3 tactics you can use to stop the kvetching for good.
3 Tactics to Silence the Moaning Minnies and Bellyaching Bufords
When complaining is deeply ingrained, it becomes a habit. Help break the habit by using these 3 steps.
1. Listen beneath the complaint. Shut off the internal chatter in your head and really listen to what the person is saying and, more importantly, not saying. Identify the underlying emotion that is driving the person’s complaint. Is it anger? Fear? Confusion? Knowing what emotion is fueling the complaint provides you with an important clue to the person’s mindset.
2. Ask the complainer for his solutions. What actions – other than complaining –can he take to change the situation for the better? Get him to identify at least 3 possible solutions. If he persists in insisting there is nothing he can do to help resolve the situation, offer one suggestion on how he can play a role in solving the problem. Then ask him to identify 2 other actions he could take to resolve the situation.
3. Hold the person accountable for being a part of the solution. This builds ownership and reinforces his ability to solve problems instead of complaining about problems.
Final word of caution. You must be consistent in how you deal with Moaning Minnies and Bellyaching Bufords.
Don’t overlook the small complaints. Use these tactics every single time you hear the person complaining. Eventually, the person’s going to realize you will hold him accountable for being a part of the solution instead of perpetuating the problem. When that happens, he’s either going to solve the problem on his own or find some other poor soul who’ll listen to his moaning.
P.S. Wicked Suggestion: Send this to all of your friends so they aren’t the poor souls who end up hijacked by the Moaning Minnies and Bellyaching Bufords.
Squelching Moaning Minnies and Bellyaching Bufords: Part 1
Newsflash! Type A’s can’t stand Moaning Minnies or Bellyaching Bufords.
When dealing with a co-worker who is a chronic complainer or blamer, don’t fall into these common Type A traps.
1) Debating or arguing the merits of the complaint. It’s natural to want to argue with the complainer if we disagree with them. A complainer feeds on opposition because it energizes his complaint. Sidestep the debate and stay focused on the solution.
2) Fixing the problem for the complainer just to shut them up. When you’re pressed for time, it can feel easier to just resolve the situation so you can get on with more important things. This is letting the complainer put the monkey on your back. All the responsibility for the situation now rests with you. Keep doing this and you’ll end up dragging around a mountain of problems.
3) Ignoring the person and the problem because you don’t have the time to deal with the situation. Don’t kid yourself. Ignoring a complainer is like ignoring a spark in a powder keg. While you’re busy doing something more important, all bejeezers will blow up in your face.
Fall into these Type A traps and you’ll bite yourself in the butt.
In Part 2, I’ll give you some tactics to silence the Moaning Minnies and Bellyaching Bufords.
A Reputation You Don’t Want
“When I see him coming I want to hide. I can’t stand his whining.”
“My boss is a real witch. She’s always looking for someone to blame if things don’t go as planned. We all cringe when we see her.”
Are your co-workers saying these things about you? Based upon what I see and hear in my work with Type A high potentials and executives, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance you may be getting a reputation that you’d just as soon not have.
Nothing derails a Type A career quicker than complaining and blaming.
In some workplaces, complaining and blaming has become a team sport that sucks out the drive and desire to excel. It’s tough to align and engage a team that would rather look for scapegoats than success.
What ignites Type A complaining and blaming? Frustration.
Word of Warning: Watch your mouth when you’re frustrated.
When you resort to blaming and complaining you are sidestepping personal accountability and responsibility. You are choosing to be a powerless victim.
Dropping in to a co-worker’s office to vent or let off steam is like engaging in Drive-By Vomiting. It may give you temporary relief from your frustration, but it leaves a nasty stench in the air and your co-worker splattered with your partially digested problems.
When things go wrong it’s also tempting to engage in a little Bazooka Blaming. You know what I’m talking about. It’s going ballistic in a frenzy of finger pointing and head chopping. After it’s over, there’s blood on the floor but the problem is still there.
When you become known as a Drive-By-Vomiter or a Bazooka Blamer, people quit listening to you, question your trustworthiness and discount your contributions. And… if you’re the boss, people won’t tell you about problems until…Oops!… It’s too late.
4 Steps to Handling Frustration More Effectively
1. Name your feelings. Anger or frustration is usually smoke screen for another emotion such as fear. Identifying the root emotion increases your self-awareness and helps you manage yourself better.
2. Ask yourself: “What role do I play in this situation?” If you care enough to complain or blame, then your actions – or inactions – play some role in creating and/or solving the problem. Own your responsibility.
3. Identify all of your options for action – even if you don’t like them. Complaining (or blaming) is just one of the possible actions you can take in response to the situation. What are the others?
4. Take positive action to be a part of the solution. Reclaim your power in a positive and productive way.
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It’s time to wake up and smell the truth. Like gas guzzling relics, traditional Type A’s are becoming passé. In the good ole’ days, with their steely-eyed focus and turbo-charged tactics, Type A’s could dominate the game by slicing, dicing and sacrificing. That pricey party is over. Award-winning executive coach Kay Cannon offers a funny insider’s look into the secret world of top performing Type A individuals and redefines how these talented and smart superstars can get great results without collateral damage.