143: Tackling Problematic People & Behaviors with Dr. Janie Fritz

Pete Mockaitis
Janie, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Janie Fritz
Well, thank you for inviting me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so looking forward to chatting with you because as I was doing our vetting processes that we do with guests, it seems like in your classes, you’ve got some students who say again and again that you’re a whole lot of fun and hilarious. So I’ve got to know, do you have any perennial favorite jokes or bits that you do in the classroom that seems to get a good response again and again?

Janie Fritz
Well, I will tell you that one of my signature moves is to jump up on the table…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Janie Fritz
Yes. And then jump down. Now, it’s been years since I taught. I am now in my 50’s, so I have to be careful when I do that. But the other thing I do is simply to look at students, to smile, to be expressive as much as I can.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun. That’s good. Good practices. And so now, since we’re kind of going back in time a little bit, I’d like to hear your take on why did you decide to focus on interpersonal communication matters in terms of your study and teaching? I’m wondering if there are maybe some troublesome characters that got you thinking and wondering about how to address.

Janie Fritz
Well, I will tell you. What happened to me was that I was, I think, a bit naïve in my own thinking about work relationships. When I was working on my dissertation, I was sending out questionnaires and asking people about their friendships in the workplace, their information peers and collegial peers and special peers, like the research that Kram and Isabella talks about.
And I got something back from somebody saying, “Oh, I have a dreadful boss. Oh, it’s so awful,” and I thought, “Oh, that’s very sad.” And then I realized that not everybody has good relationships in the workplace. Duh. You think I would know. I guess I’ve been very fortunate to have good relationships. So that made me think that I should study problematic or troublesome work relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s interesting. And so I bet as you’ve done so, you’ve gotten a chance to share that wisdom with real folks in the workplace or companies that have hired you for some consulting and such. So could you share maybe an example of people putting your good wisdom to work and seeing a transformation?

Janie Fritz
Yes. One example, of course, after I studied the problematic work relationships, I wanted to study how is it that we can be professionally civil in the workplace, because we’re not going to like everyone with whom we work. It’s just not going to happen. But we need to work and we need to get along, and so the focus of the tension has to be productivity. And in order to make that happen, we have to focus on the work.
Now, if you’ve ever had a relationship that you’re just developing, maybe a friendship, sometimes the relationship cannot bear the weight of direct confrontation, simply talking about each other. And so if you focus on something else, if you’re maybe both looking out the window as you’re on the bus and talking about things you see, then the relationship can develop in the periphery, if that makes sense. Work relationships are similar. If you’re focused on the work, then your focus of attention isn’t on the little tiny things that people do that may bother you, because people have different styles, different approaches.
Some are big picture people. Some are detail-oriented. And if you focus on the problems and the little details that bother you, then just like holding your hand in front of your face, if you hold your hand away from your face, it’s small. But if you move it in front of your face, it takes up the whole field. Your hand becomes as big as the sky, and all you can see is that hand. So if you push the hand back and look somewhere else, the hand is still there but it’s not engulfing the field.
That’s the metaphor of work relationships. When they’re healthy, you’re focused on the productivity. You’re focused on the work. You’re focused on the task, and you’re not staring at your coworkers, because the more you stare, the more little faults you’re going to see.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, interesting. So I’d like to hear. You say the relationship cannot bear direct confrontation, and so you’re talking not only about “Hey, this thing you do annoys me,” but also about sort of genuine feedback about the work itself?

Janie Fritz
It can. I mean, that was an interesting way that I put it, the issue of direct confrontation. And I’m not sure why that came out. Maybe there’s a reason for it. But when I’m thinking of direct, face to face focus and contact as we talk maybe about each other or to each other about who we are, that might work for interpersonal relationships as you get to know each other, as long as you’re balancing getting to know each other with focusing on things outside.
But the metaphor is the issue of how much of that weight, how much of that focus can a relationship stand if it’s new and if it’s young? So in the interpersonal realm, as you get to know somebody and you have activities to do, you gradually build your understanding of that other person. You build your understanding of the other person like a web or a tapestry. And the more you weave the threads, the stronger it becomes. So when you’re first weaving the threads, they’re fragile. So you don’t want to be standing on them or jumping on them. You want to give them time to build up and to grow.
And in the workplace, we may or may not build strong personal relationships, but we build strong work relationships by that focus on work, so that the relationship itself can then begin to weave threads together that eventually provide strength and what I would call trust that when I tell you something about how you’re doing your work that could be done better, I believe that you’re not trying to sabotage me. I believe that you really are having my best interest at heart. That’s the kind of trust that we’re talking about in the workplace that comes from focusing on work, getting to know someone as a work colleague, and coming to trust that person.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds great. And so, now, on the flipside of that, you’ve laid out a number of not so helpful behaviors toward that end, including hostility, bullying, incivility, ostracism. Can you share with us a little bit about how do these show up on a daily basis and if you have any data or research about the frequency or the harm associated with each of these? We’ll take them in terms of getting the lay of the land of the problems or obstacles here.

Janie Fritz
Sure. Some of the problems with bullying, with hostility, with saying negative things to other people, there are several harms that come from such behaviors. One is harm to the person herself. If somebody is attacking me and telling me bad things about myself, then certainly I won’t feel good. I’ll feel bad. I’ll have stress. But people witnessing that behavior also will have stress.
There’s some pretty good research by, I think, Christine Porath, for instance, and some of her colleagues about witnessed incivilities in the workplace. So I’m not the only one hurt. It’s others as well because those kinds of behaviors build up and create climates. They create cultures. They create environments of negativity. We behave according to the patterns that we see around us. So the more we see positive behaviors, the more likely we are to imitate those. The more we see negative behaviors, it gets hard to fight them. It also just creates unpleasantness around us as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I hear you.

Janie Fritz
Yeah. And I’m thinking of an example. Okay, let me say this. I’m convinced that even though it does appear as though there are problems in the workplace, it’s not all bad. Most of the problems in the workplace that we have with other people may simply come from differences in the way we approach work, in the way we approach other people. I want to share one example that may be helpful. It came from one of the studies we did over time where people in the healthcare profession were giving examples of problematic relationships in the workplace.
A nurse was giving a report. It’s from years ago, and so there’s no problem with anonymity here. She gave a report of a supervisor who was very controlling. The supervisor drove her crazy, constantly giving almost too many instructions, micromanaging, extremely controlling. We read week after week about this dreadful supervisor, until one day, one week, we received a very different report. The nurse said, “Oh my goodness. My view of this person has changed.”
Now, what had happened? A family had come in who had lost a child. It was very sad. They didn’t know what to do. They were falling apart. This nurse supervisor stepped in, and with all that structure that had driven the other person mad, she helped put that family back together. That’s what they needed. They needed that structure. They needed that careful attention to detail.
And the nurse suddenly saw her nurse supervisor in a very different light. It’s as though a light had come on and she no longer saw her with that negative understanding. Now, she still would prefer that the person not be quite as controlling with her, but she was able to see how those attributes, those characteristics could actually be helpful in particular circumstances. And that widened her view of that person. It broadened her scope. It helped her see her in a different light.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I really like that, particularly that notion that some things are just differences of preference and other things are probably, I imagine you’d say, universally sort of bad news.

Janie Fritz
Right. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
So could you share with us, when you use some of these terms (hostility, bullying, incivility, ostracism), I guess my brain immediately imagines a severe example, like bullying. I know someone who had a phone thrown at her.

Janie Fritz
Yes. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Whoa. That’s pretty out there, but could you maybe give us some more common examples of day in day out, hostility often looks like this or bullying like that?

Janie Fritz
Sometimes, bullying takes a form that’s hard to recognize, but you begin to see it because it’s a pattern. So maybe you’re in a meeting and you start to say something, and someone interrupts or says, “Oh, no, I’m sure that you really meant this,” or “Oh, no, you’ll take on that job,” or “Oh, no, I’m sure you won’t mind,” and then just talks over somebody.
Now, some would say that’s incivility. If it happens once, it might be incivility. If it happens over and over and over to the same person, then that may become what some would call bullying because someone is forcing an opinion on another person or forcing a behavior or preventing someone from accomplishing a task or preventing someone from making a contribution. There are many definitions of bullying, but the repeated pattern over time is one, and it’s not allowing the other person to accomplish goals or tasks, or to develop or grow.

Pete Mockaitis
That is a nice lineup of definitions for bullying and helps me sort of better identify “Oh. That behavior is not okay.” So could you lay out similarly some potential definitions for these other terms, with hostility and incivility and ostracism?

Janie Fritz
Yes. Just like many negative behaviors or problematic behaviors, there’s a horizon within which we could define these terms. And the reason I’m bringing this point up is that some people have very thin skin. And if somebody says, “Hey, could you try doing this a different way?” somebody may hear it. It’s like you’ve got a daughter. Imagine you have a daughter and you tell her, “Could you keep your room neat?” and the daughter says, “Why are you yelling at me?” and you’re thinking, “I never raised my voice.” But it was experienced as yelling.
So we do have to figure out how to define these terms so that we can understand the horizon within which normal behaviors may fall because occasionally we’re going to go, “Oh, hey, cut it out. Stop.” And is that hostility, or is that just a momentary expression of concern? “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I was in a bad mood.” So the hostility, the name-calling. I actually have some examples that might be useful.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Janie Fritz
Maybe someone is in charge of a project and you have information and you fail to share it with that person. That would be an example of withholding information. It doesn’t look hostile, but if you do it over time…
Not inviting people to meetings they should be part of. That would be an example. Calling someone a name in front of other people. Telling someone she’s stupid. That’s an example. “Why can’t you do anything right? Oh, I knew I couldn’t trust you to do that,” or “Wow. I’ll know not to ask you next time,” or “What’s wrong with you?” or things like that, examples of negative kinds of comments which we could contrast with some more constructive ways.
Here’s an example. You’re a supervisor, and someone is having trouble with the data entry system, and so you say, “This data entry system works just fine. You’re just not doing it the right way. I’ve showed you how to do it, but you’re not following my instructions.” That’s not particularly hostile necessarily, but it’s not very helpful because it doesn’t give the person a chance to consider what might work.
On the other hand, you could say something like this: “I know it seems like saving the forms until the end of the week in order to enter the data all at once seems like a way to focus your work, but it can actually cause problems in the long run. Some of the data you’re entering is time-sensitive, and at this time of the year, we’re making decisions several times a week, so we really need that information. I can’t access it on my end if it’s not entered. Setting aside a little time each day to enter the new forms will really help us all out.”
Now, notice the difference. The first one essentially says, “This is working. It’s your problem. It’s not the system. I told you.” The second one says, “Let me explain the context. Let me explain the situation, and then I’m going to give you a way to do it that I hope will be helpful.” Tone matters, too, doesn’t it? If you say something in a really negative tone, “Well, you think it would work that way, but let me just tell you how it works better.” I mean, that’s… The tone can also be very negative and give a message that you don’t think much of a person.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. And I imagine tone also shows up in your personal life in terms of just your daily interaction with all sorts of folks. And so how do you, I guess, do coaching or correction if a tone is out of place?

Janie Fritz
I haven’t done much of that, but if I were to do it, I would probably have people read out loud some different sentences or maybe lines from a play and record them and have them listen for gentleness of tone. Some people don’t have a lot of control over how their tone comes out. But you can learn it. It’s like singing.

Pete Mockaitis
I see.

Janie Fritz
Yeah. Learn how to temper the voice, how to put a smile in the voice, how to put humor in the voice, rather than a cutting sharp edge.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And I also want to get your take on gossip. That seems to be another workplace behavior that can be quite potentially destructive. Have you found some things in your research or your colleagues’ research on this matter?

Janie Fritz
It’s interesting. We talk about the grapevine as being a source of information for people in the workplace, and gossip is perhaps part of the grapevine. Gossip can be personal, about someone else’s private life that probably isn’t very helpful to share. Some people get their enjoyment out of sharing information that other people don’t have because it gives them a sense of power.
One of my troublesome peer types is what I call the soap opera star who always brings her own personal problems into the workplace. But part of that particular type is also sharing gossip about others because then someone gathers power from knowing things others don’t know. But what does that do? It focuses attention away from work. It takes away from productivity and is potentially damaging to others as well.
Gossip is going to happen. It just has to be controlled, right? And one of the things you can do, if you don’t want gossip, if somebody comes up and says, “Oh, did you hear about so and so?” you can say, “You know, maybe another time. Let’s focus our attention on the work here.” It’s harder to do when you’re in a group of people and everybody else wants to hear.
Sometimes, then, you can try to walk away. Or if you have any credibility with your coworkers, you can change the topic. You can change the focus. You can try to redirect attention by bringing up another topic. Or you can just listen and try to learn what you can, and then hope that you don’t do it again.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. I love it. While we’re talking solutions, any other kind of best practices or pro tips or big bang for your buck, things to do that could go a long way in boosting relationships at the workplace and healing problematic situations?

Janie Fritz
There’s some really good research by, I believe, Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik and her colleagues, discussing positive discourse in the workplace. People love compliments. Genuine compliments.
When someone does a good job, you can be genuinely happy for that person and give them a compliment and tell her she did a good job. If you know a person’s personal style, if somebody is working on a project and doesn’t want to be interrupted, then don’t interrupt. Use the knowledge that you have. Be very attentive to others. Find out what helps them work well, and then try to do that as much as you can.
We can’t always do that. There are times when we all have to work together and perhaps focus on the details. And someone who doesn’t want to focus on the details might not be willing to do that, but you try to help them and to make the condition such that it’s possible to do. So being sensitive to others, knowing how others like to work, trying to flex and adapt as much as possible.
Being willing to offer solutions, if you have a problem or a concern with someone, again depending on the relationship you have with them. If you’re a peer, if you’re a supervisor, being willing to work through those problems and to offer solutions and suggestions. Always supporting the person and focusing on the behaviors that “You’re a wonderful work colleague, and this is something that would really help me out if you could do this rather than that.” That requires trust as well that you build over time by showing yourself to be a trustworthy person.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, I’d love to ask. Perhaps the trickiest of situations to address is when the troublesome behaviors are coming from the person that you work for. So there’s a power difference there. Any special advice for navigating that one?

Janie Fritz
Yes. First of all, you have to decide how bad is the behavior, because that’s difficult. Otherwise, you’re going to find yourself having to go to Human Resources or maybe go over that person’s head. So what can you put up with? What’s the nature of the behavior? Is it a bad kind of harassment, or is it just something that troubles you? How well do you know the person? Is the person open to your comments and suggestions?
If that person is not open, and it’s not something you could change, one of the recommendations is to focus your attention on the things you can make better in your life and in your workplace, if you can’t change those things. Having a life outside of work, having other alternatives, trying to decide “Can I tread water for long enough to let this pass? Is it going to be long term? Is it getting worse?” If it’s something very problematic, you might have to begin to document it.
Some of the researchers that I have read suggest that it’s very tricky. If your boss is a bully, it’s very, very difficult sometimes to get help. The organization is all about keeping the workplace going. And sometimes, Human Resources isn’t your friend because folks don’t like people who rock the boat, even though the policies may be set up to try to protect. So you have to count the cost. Can you mount a good offense, if you need to do it?
In many cases, the things that are going wrong or the things that are problematic are bearable. You can live with them. They could be worse. If they’re truly problematic, then you count the cost and decide whether to move ahead. And then, of course, document everything you can. Other people may be able to help you if they are witnesses to some of the bad things going on. But then you’ve got to be willing to go the long haul.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, noted. And so, on the tread water piece there, do you have any perspectives on just the personal emotional management of treading well? It’s so funny. As I’m thinking about tone, you’re bringing me back because the recommendation you gave earlier was…
I recall I participated in some sort of community theater stuff when I was like 19 years old, and I had a director who seemed to have a really harsh tone with me all the time, and I was like, “My gosh. What is her deal?” And it kind of like freaked me out or got me out of my groove, and so I just sort of decided I was going to pretend that I was reading her comments.

Janie Fritz
Oh, that’s great.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know how I did it, but in my brain, I would say, “I’m not going to listen and react to you as a human, as I normally would, but I’m just going to visualize the words that you’re saying as though they were text.” And so I just shift my attention away from the emotional part of my brain toward the text language processing part of the brain.
And that kind of helped. I was like I could just take her feedback like “Pete, you’ve got to get on stage faster!” as like “Pete, you’ve got to get on stage faster.” I’m like, “You know what? I hear you. I understand. And I’ll get on stage faster.” And I’ll tell you, though, it really did feel good when she finally had some good things to say to me toward the end.

Janie Fritz
Well, you’ve just illustrated one of the most excellent ways. Reframing. Thinking about things differently. That’s an advice I gave to a colleague who came to me once who was just frustrated with a supervisor and she was almost at the point of wanting to quit. And then she had read the Professional Civility book. I think I gave it to her, and I said, “Take a look at some of these sections here because you don’t want to get out of your job right now. Think about how this person cares for you,” because the person really did care about her, but she was very directive.
I said, “Think about her in a different way. She’s trying to help you. Think about her as someone who’s trying to assist. Use this as practice for yourself in future situations where it might be much worse.” And so she began to think about it like that. “Okay, the person is trying to help. How can I respond in a way that’s ‘Thank you. I appreciate that suggestion,’ as opposed to ‘Oh, don’t tell me what to do.’” So it helped her reframe, and then she began to look at her life outside of work.
And gradually, the experience she was having of the problem in the workplace became smaller. It’s the metaphor of your hand. Again, if the hand gets pushed away from your face, it’s still there, but it’s not as big as the sky. There are other things in the field. And it really did help her. She came back later and said, “You know, things are much, much better. I’m thinking about it differently. I’m responding differently. I’m telling myself, ‘She’s trying to help.’ And I’m glad that I have the job.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good to hear. Thinking about it differently, certainly. It’s like there’s all kinds of reasons why a person says or does the things he or she does, and one need not sort of internalize that as “I am terrible.” That’s the worst. So very helpful. Thank you. Well, tell me, is there anything else you want to make sure that we get to cover before we talk about a few of your favorite things?

Janie Fritz
I think the summary here may be that we have to judge our circumstances and others charitably as much as we can. If two people go out to lunch without you and don’t invite you, you could say, “Oh my gosh. They’re going to talk about me,” or you could say, “They’ve got an important project going on.”
We make our own reality to some degree. There are limits to that injunction. But in much of our ordinary everyday life, things are as we consider them to be. They are what we make them. And we don’t want to be robbed twice. If something bad happens, “What can I learn from it? How can I make this work for me in the future?” rather than “Oh, no. My life is over.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so good. Thank you.

Janie Fritz
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote?

Janie Fritz
This is one from a proverb. “A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger.” That’s a proverb, I think, from the Old Testament. It’s saying if somebody comes at you, then you might be able to diffuse that anger with your own calmness.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. Thank you.

Janie Fritz
Yeah. It’s like interpreting what they’re saying not as an attack, but as a piece of information. “Oh, that’s interesting. Thank you for that. All right. I’ll look into that.” And that recasts what the person said because what somebody does or says isn’t set in stone. Your response defines what that initial utterance was in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. Thank you.

Janie Fritz
You’re welcome.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Janie Fritz
There are new researches always coming up. I think my favorite is the one by the researchers I mentioned, Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik and her colleagues Riforgiate and Fletcher, who studied positive discourses in the workplace. They’re a group of folks who got tired of studying all the negativity and said, “Let’s study how people feel good in the workplace. What makes people happy in the workplace?”
And most of it is colleagues. For instance, someone said, “I felt so good. I was a new employee. I’ve been there six months, and then one of my colleagues said, ‘You’ve learned that so well you can teach others.’” That made her very happy. And examples of people rejoicing with others in the workplace, people who can do work and say, “I’m making a difference in the world. I can see those results.”
That study I enjoyed because it focuses our attention on the good. There’s good and there’s bad. It’s like the half-empty, half-full. You’ve got to decide how to interpret it. And I thought that was a very helpful study because it helps us focus attention on what’s good without ignoring what’s bad. And that’s another one I’ll share with you.
The difference between optimism and hope. This comes from Christopher Lasch, the great public intellectual. God rest his soul. “The optimist doesn’t see the boulder in the road, and he crashes into it and hurts himself. The hopeful person sees the boulder and says, ‘How are we going to get around that? Can we climb over it? Can we make it into something? We’re aware of it. We can try to work with it. We’re not ignoring it, but we can make it work for us.’” And that was the difference for him between optimism and hope.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Janie Fritz
Well, I love all of the George MacDonald stories. George MacDonald, the Scottish author who wrote back in the late 1800s. I love those books. But a more contemporary book, oh, there’s so many. How can I point to one? I like the work of P.M. Forni, who is an Italian renaissance scholar who writes about civility. “Choosing Civility,” for instance.
I’ve enjoyed his work. I invited him to speak once to the Eastern Communication Association, and everybody listened to him. And I’m telling you, after he spoke about civility, people felt healed. It was amazing. But his books are very, very interesting, and I have used him in some of my own work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sounds like a future guest. Thank you.

Janie Fritz
You should get a hold of him, for sure. P.M. Forni. He’s wonderful. He works with the Civility Project at Johns Hopkins University.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, much appreciated. And how about a favorite tool, a product or service or app or just something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Janie Fritz
Wow. I think I’m a Luddite to some degree. I have a computer, and I love word processing because I can erase and start over and not have to use Wite-Out on my papers like I had to do back in the ‘80s. So something as simple as a basic computer. Gosh, that’s a sad answer.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, in a way, it’s not particularly innovative or striking, but it does have a lot of, I guess, hope, not optimism, to it.

Janie Fritz
That’s it.

Pete Mockaitis
There’s gratitude, I’d say. It’s like “This is pretty great that we have this.” So next time something is not working, just think about the alternative.

Janie Fritz
Oh, Pete, you just said it right there. Gratitude. We have a lot to be grateful for. We do. We really do. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that helps you flourish?

Janie Fritz
I have begun to work out in the gym, and I’m trying to do my cardio work. And it feels so good when I’m cooling down. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Stay healthy, live as long as I can, and be useful in this life.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And do you have a particular favorite nugget or message or a Janie original quote that seems to really connect with folks, from students to whomever you’re speaking with, that they seem to resonate with it? They nod their heads. They take notes. They really seem to be connecting with what you’re saying. Is there a particular gem you say there?

Janie Fritz
I do have one, and it’s something somebody told me. My horseback riding instructor. I didn’t even mention how much I love to ride horses.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Janie Fritz
But my riding instructor, Barb Dworkin, she said to me once, “Notice everything. Overlook much. Change a little.” I share that with all my classes and the light bulb comes on. You see everything, but there’s a lot you can’t do anything about or you can’t tackle it all at once. Change a little. And it’s the incremental change which connects to the good old George MacDonald saying: “When you have things to do, just do the next thing.” Do the next thing. Don’t do the second or third thing. Do the next thing because that will open the door to doing the thing after that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. Thank you. Well, Janie, this has been such a treat. I wish you lots of luck in all that you’re up to, and keep on keeping on.

Janie Fritz
Well, thank you, Pete. I’m honored that you invited me to be part of your project. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.