Sensitive Much
Sensitivity… Its a bitch!

You ever work with someone who is over sensitive? Don’t know how to deal with it? It comes with experience but I wanted to give a quick example and a solution of steps to try that work with me.

After working with a member on my team I realized that the person valued how “smart” they were. They valued being the smartest guy on the team. Rightly so they were the smartest in their own domain. Everyone has different skill sets that they excel at and being the smartest all around doesn’t always apply. What happened over and over however, the person would get upset with anything and anyone who tried to show him something that he didn’t know.  What I realized however, that a pattern was emerging. Steps I took:

  1. Started following the pattern
  2. Analyzed what was said and how
  3. Developed the timing and situation
  4. Came up with different solutions and tested them
  5. Analyzed them and Voila

What we realized is that he wasn’t getting upset over him not being the smartest, he was upset over how we said. The tone and words that were used.. I am a direct person and will tell you straight to the face not worried about how you feel. Why? This is how I was raised and this is how my culture is.

So I started working with sensitivity words. These words included “we”, “let us”, and so on; words that were group mentality, words that avoided the “you are not that smart” feelings.

Sensitivity is a big issue both in the work and social life of everyone. I have my theories but will leave them for another article. The point is that you can’t afford to not accommodate these scenarios. People by nature are negative and by this thought we need to focus on avoiding sensitive dialogue. By this I mean becoming aware of any sensitive words that a person may take differently and have a mood swing that ruins productivity for the day.

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