It’s not always about you

One of the biggest lesson I learned in recent years was that, when there appears to be an issues with a boss, a colleague, a partner or maybe just a friend, and you don’t understand why they are acting this way towards you,  more often than not –  “It’s not always about you”.

When I say learnt, actually I was taught this, by a great dear friends Jo Anna. She was Exec Admin to my boss, and often when I asked her what was going on, she would tell me “it’s not about you”.

I always used to find this message a bit cryptic, because when my boss was being dismissive of me, or others, how could it not be about us.

But Jo Anna knew what else was going on, things that we were not mindful of, she knew why he was acting the way he was. It could be that he had just had his ass chewed by his boss, and he wasn’t really available for a discussion about my problems as he had problems of his own to deal with.

Although to be fair sometime it was about me 🙂

It took a while for Jo Anna to get his message across to me before I finally got it, but once I had it made me look at things differently.

Firstly any time I had a meeting, a review, or an incident that seemed different to what I had expected, I always used to ask myself, “is this about me?”. Sometime it was, but not always.

If I could spot when it was not about me, I could control my reaction to it, and not take it too personally.

Secondly, and more importantly and the reason for this post, it also made me examine my own behaviours when dealing with people.

How often had I been a little bit less helpful that normal, been dismissive, or downright rude, when it had nothing to do with the meeting in hand or the individual themselves, and was more to do with something that was going on min my life.

Once you look at this and are aware of it, much of how we treat people is tied to how we feel about other things.

Once we know this, then we can look to try and make our behaviours relevant to the meeting at hand, rather than other influences that are nothing to do with what is going on in that meeting.

This is not something that is easy to do, but at least if you are aware of it, then we can look to try and mitigate it.

People deserve to be treated based on their own merits and not based on whats going wrong in our own lives.

So if you have an experience with a boss or a colleague where their behaviour was not what you expected, remember “it’s not about you” and look to see if there is something else going on, there may be another explanation.

And if you find yourself treating people differently to how you should, remember that what ever is making you feel off, “its not about them” and look to try and treat them as the situation deserves.

If we can do both of these, we will do a great job of reducing unnecessary stress both within ourselves and also for our teams.