Speaking before thinking or knowing…..such a bad habit to have.
Let me explain what mean; you are doing something at work, let’s say talking to a co-working about an issue or problem in the office and all of a sudden your boss jumps into the middle of your conversation, telling you why or why not something should be happening, (as if they know what you were talking about when they really do not).
Sound familiar? Well, I have to admit…I am guilty of having done this to my co-workers thinking that I knew what they are talking about and did not and jumped in with my opinion of what should be done and I was totally off the mark because I really didn’t understand the situation in the first place.
Then because I didn’t know the situation, they needed to take the time to explain to me what is going on and then I need to re-calculate what I said and either apologize for jumping in before I knew the true story or make up something that sounds good, at least to me, (certainly not them).
As a manager jumping into a conversation blindly makes us look unprofessional and possibly like a micromanager trying to know everything that is going on. Not that we shouldn’t know what is going on, but there is a better way to go about finding out what is really going on.
What if you hear something being said in the office that you do not think (key word is THINK) that is right. If you really did not hear all of it clearly you could be wrong and say something that would make yourself look bad. The smart move would be to ask “could you explain to me what you said to that patient/customer? I am not sure if I heard you correctly.”
By responding this way you give the person a chance to tell you what really (key word REALLY) happened and then you can REALLY make a judgment on that.
I hate to think about how many times I have over-shot what was really said in my career and made a fool out of myself by not really understanding what was happening. I also cannot tell you how many times I have been upset by my boss or staff members doing the same thing to me.
I would say it is time to learn, REALLY learn to ask before jumping to conclusions or saying things because we THINK (not really sure) we know what is going on or was said. If we just could STOP for that one second, just one second and think it through and then ASK questions about what we thought was said we could really save a lot of time and a lot of embarrassment.
08/08/14
Comments