Baggage in the Workplace

Foreign. I'm Nathan Thibodeau and I am your host for this week's episode of Contractor Radio. I have a few thoughts that have been on my mind that have been helpful to me in my life and in my career in, in regards to dealing with the other human beings that we have around us in the situations we find ourselves in. And I want to share some of those things with you in in hopes that you're going to find those things helpful as well. We're going to talk about the concept of baggage in the workplace. Baggage in the workplace. You guys, you know, you've dealt with it, you know, you've seen it. So we're going to, you know, ask a few questions and try to come up with some solutions. What is it? Where does it come from? How does it manifest itself and what do we do with it? So I want to dive into some thoughts and some concepts around this and we're going to do that right right after a word from our sponsors.

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Hey everybody, welcome back to Contractor Radio and this week's episode on Baggage in the Workplace. Now, now, there's a lot to unpack here for sure, number one. Number two, I am not a psychologist or a therapist, so let's just hold off on laying down on our couch while we listen to this episode. Just going to share some thoughts and experiences that I've had in my own life. So first of all, what exactly is this thing? What exactly are we talking about? A lot of people will refer to the thing that I'm referring to as emotional baggage. Emotional baggage is really the things that we have inside of us that are automatic. Oftentimes we don't even think about the way we view the world, the way we view other people. We don't think about our attitudes sometimes or our emotions and the impact that they have and their source. So where does this baggage come from? Comes from life. It comes from living your parents or parent, how you were raised, your own, your own personality, your own physiology, sometimes your own makeup and who you are, where you came from the way your brain works, what kind of experiences you had in school, middle school, high school, sports, what kind of coaches you had, mentors, leaders, maybe even relationships in the past that have left mental and emotional and sometimes physical scars that we carry with us in life. So why? Why is that important? Well, we don't leave our baggage at any door, just in case you don't know that. We carry our baggage everywhere we go. So we don't just leave these, this little pile of somewhat internal dysfunction at the door of the business we work at. We don't leave it at the door of our prospects if we're doing some sales. We don't leave it at the door when we go in to do some networking or when we go to an event or when we're meeting new people, friends, or interacting with our employees or our fellow team members. So this baggage comes with us everywhere and it comes out. So how does this baggage manifest? Well, it manifests in our thoughts, manifests in our behaviors. It manifests in how we see other people. It also manifests in how we treat others. And it manifests itself in the way that we receive communication from other people because we run into similar situations that we've dealt with in our past. And some of those situations might have gone well, some of them might not have gone well at all. And our experience with those things are going to impact the way we treat this new situation that looks eerily similar to the last one. So how can this show up? Well, let's talk about this a little bit. Maybe you'll identify with some of this, maybe you won't. But if you've got somebody in your workspace, and for whatever reason, this person is talented, they are bright, they have energy, but they just don't seem to want to engage. They don't raise their hand for projects. They don't really want to step in and do any leading. They. They don't want to take any empowerment. They don't want to take on projects or maybe pitch in and help out. So what's going on there? I mean, we don't necessarily know, but more than likely what you're seeing is a manifestation of probably their baggage. I'll give you an example. I know I've known numerous people who a company has asked them to step on, take on more responsibility, take on some projects, build some things and do some really good things for the company, and they decided to do it. And what they ended up doing is working themselves out of a job and the company let them go. Imagine that Somebody thought they were doing the right thing, they did some amazing work, and they got canned over it. Imagine somebody who, maybe, you know, somebody like this, or maybe you're a bit like this, really never wants to delegate anything. They hold on to all of their projects. They don't want anybody's outside help, and they're constantly inundated with a ton of work that they can never seem to get done. And they end up slowing things down a little bit. What's going on? There could be somebody that has some trust issues. Maybe they don't think anybody else is really going to do as good a job as they will, or they're worried that nobody else cares as much as they do. I've also seen scenarios where people will hold on to so many different components inside the business. This is the opposite of the person who won't step up. They step up for everything. If something needs to be done, they're the ones getting in there and trying to do it. But as a result, they end up becoming a choke point for the company. I had a really honest conversation with a guy who was kind of doing the same thing in his own way. And one of the things that he revealed to me was he was a little. He actually took a little bit of pride from the fact that so many things were dependent upon him. Created some job security. Or maybe you have somebody in your office who doesn't like to tell anybody that things aren't going well for them. They're struggling with a project, they're struggling with things that were given to them. They don't feel like they know what they're doing, but they don't tell anybody. And so they're constantly trying to put out these little fires that are going on in their life and in their world professionally without any help from anybody else. Could be that that person worked at a place prior where any sign of weakness would result in getting demoted or maybe losing some of how much money you make, or maybe even getting fired. And so these are examples of where some of this baggage gets pulled into our world in our. In our workspaces. And we see them manifest in the way that people work with others and communicate with others. You may have dealt with people who are very passive aggressive. That's probably not because they hate everybody around them. But there's probably some underlying thing that causes that to raise its head. Now, here's where this tends to turn into this vicious cycle. And believe me, I've seen it. It's very easy when we see these manifestations of people's baggage. It seems easier. Maybe I should put it that way. It seems easier for us as people to make negative assumptions about them in the first place. Well, they're not stepping up because they're lazy. Maybe they're not as smart as we think they are. They're not very motivated, or this person's greedy, or they're a schemer, or maybe they're trying to rip us off. Or we make these assumptions. And here's what. Here's what's funny about this. We make these assumptions about these people, number one, because I do think it's easier, for whatever reason, for us to make negative assumptions first. But also we tend to make assumptions about other people in these circumstances because of our own baggage. We may have dealt with somebody like this in the past and it turned out to go kind of negative, or we're not entirely sure how it ended up, but we didn't like that situation. And maybe we're pulling some of our baggage in and then making assumptions about that person based on our baggage. Here's what happens. Either A, we keep that internal and we have just labeled that person and their identity. And if we've done that, we're more likely to continue to do that. We're more likely to continue to treat them and respond towards them with a label that we put on them, especially if we haven't even talked to them. Now, God forbid you make this label that you're trying to give them public. Now, other people are about to label them the same way you are, especially if you're a leader. So now other people are treating them that same way, which only then reinforces some of the underlying things that are probably causing that behavior in the first place. And around we go in this vicious cycle. Does that sound somewhat familiar? Now, I'm kind of speaking at this from the workplace because this is contractor, coach, pro. But I'll bet you could probably see this in some of the other areas in your life. I know I have. I know I'm not. Not proud to admit it, but I know that there are times that I've been in a bad mood, I've been grumpy or I've been upset. And my attitude had an impact on how I received somebody else's communication. Say that again. My attitude impacted how I interpreted somebody else's communication. To me, that person is not in my head. That person does not know necessarily how I feel. That person may not even be aware because they're in their own world. They might not be taking any cues that Nathan's not in a great mood and they're just going about their business doing the same thing. But because I'm in a bad mood, I may now assume that that person is either attacking me or being nasty to me or being short with me, when in fact that may not be the case at all. Imagine that vicious cycle that nobody else is inside your head but you. And guess what? They're inside their own head. They may be responding to you in a short, nasty or temperamental way because of their attitude, deciding how you're communicating to them. Like I said, it gets a bit complicated and a bit nuanced when it comes to dealing with these things. We drag this baggage everywhere with us. So the next question which usually occurs in my mind is, okay, so what do I do about it? If I. If I understand that this thing exists and I can actually see some of these examples either coming out of me or coming out of some other people around me, how do we change it? How do we make some adjustments? How can we try to improve these situations and this communication with human beings? Right. You don't really tend to get a lot of attitude out of a piece of wood. Right. It's just typically people. Well, I'm gonna share a few thoughts I have about that concept. Right. Right. After another word from one of our awesome sponsors.

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To this week's episode of Contractor Radio where we are talking about baggage in the workplace. So we've kind of tried to define a little bit of what that means, try to talk a little bit about where it comes from, how it manifests itself, and then talked a little bit about some examples of where you might be seeing it. So how do we deal with it? How can we improve our situation? How can we battle against just human human interactions that are being influenced by scars and damage in our life? Well, normally when I go to attack something like this, the first thing I want to start with is the thing that I control the most. The thing that I have the most control over is me. So I got to start with me can't go running around the world telling everybody else how they got to treat me. I should probably be the example or work towards working on myself first. And odds are we'll probably see a change in others around us if we can improve how we are and how we see the world. Okay, so what are we going to do with this? So our baggage? What is our baggage? What kind of things do we have in our past, in our past? Experiences that continue to affect the way that we treat and work with other people going into the future? I would say that some of it's probably pretty positive. If you've had some really great leaders and some great examples in your life and you're trying to draw from that. And maybe that's good baggage. I don't know if anybody's ever used that term, but maybe you've got some good baggage. But honestly, the good baggage probably has good results. So what about the stuff that isn't so great? So what are some of the things that trigger those internal things inside of us that we barely think about? The things that cause us to feel insecure or unappreciated or maybe attacked, or maybe things that make us feel like people are snipping at us? Can we see some patterns in our life where it seems like I snap at people when they say this or. Or when they act like this or when somebody does this, it just brings up this stuff that I almost can't help identifying. That is going to be one of the number one components to making those adjustments. When somebody says something to us and like, ooh, I've heard that before. If we can identify that trigger, then hopefully that'll help us to give us that second thought. Okay, almost. I almost had that emotion. Almost had that feeling. Almost slipped back into that pattern. Let's think again for just a second. How can we modify the way that we see other people and try to think about getting outside of ourselves when we interact with those around us, especially when it comes to difficult or negative situations. I think the other component that would really help us here is to try to move towards assuming the best about the people around us. Okay. At the end of the day, if they're working at your company or working with you, they probably don't have it as their goal to sabotage everything we're doing. Let's be honest, they probably didn't accept that job and show up every single day so that they can try and burn the place to the ground. So what? What, in what ways can we make better assumptions about people? Especially when we feel a little bit of a. A little negativity, or maybe we feel a little bit of an attack coming our way. How can we modify our initial assumptions instead of labeling them and trying to put some sort of identity on that person? If we make a more positive assumption about them and then start from there. So if I make positive assumptions about the person in mind as I'm dealing with others and then go from there, what would be the result of my assumptions being correct? So starting with that positive assumption should hopefully have an impact on how we approach the situation. I guarantee it'll have an impact on the way that you then communicate with them. You think they're being short with you, let's assume first they're not being short with them. Let's check our own attitude and then maybe ask a few more questions or dive a little bit deeper with that. So building, identifying our own baggage, looking for some of those triggers, looking for some of our patterns, and then taking a second. Take a breath, take a beat, and take a second thought and then working towards making better assumptions about those around us and moving from that standpoint. Better assumptions. Believe me, this isn't a silver bullet. There may be some people in your world who don't have your best interest in mind and may not necessarily be on the up and up. I bet you that they're definitely the minority out of that group of people. So assuming the best about those people, now, the next kind of component to this, once again, we can only control ourselves, really. Let's become a human. Try that one on. Now, it sounds kind of weird, but let's try being a human. It's okay to be upset. It's okay to have a bad day. As a matter of fact, it's okay to struggle. It's okay to have some problems. If work was easy, everybody would do it. So maybe we become a little bit more of a human and we show a little bit more empathy and we try to dig just a little bit deeper and ask a few more questions as well as opening ourselves up to communicating with others. So, for example, if you're having a bad day, it might not be a bad thing to say, hey, look, Charlie, sorry, man. I'm just having a bad day and I'm just feeling a little grumpy, man. I imagine if you were talking to somebody and they said that to you, your first instinct as a person, especially if you like Charlie or if you like Nathan, would probably be to be to say, hey, man, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you. I don't want you for you to have a bad day. And sorry if I came off a little negative. So I made myself a little bit vulnerable in. By expressing my own humanity, which actually opened a little window for that person to see into my head, into my emotions, into where I'm at. It will also allow them to probably feel safe to communicate that themselves. The first place I heard this phrase was the village church out of Dallas or the Dallas area. So shout out to the village church. It's okay to not be okay if you work in an environment where it's not okay to be not okay. Believe me, there are people that are not okay at your work environment. They're just not telling you because everybody deals with these things. So let's try being a little bit more human. The next. The next component to this is probably seeking some ways to create. I know there's some. There's a hot button term if you want to go there. But a safe environment, a safe place where people can actually express that they're struggling a little bit, that people are having some problems that might create more context to our communication. And furthermore, if you're working on a team and you express to your team that you're struggling with something, odds are your team will probably be willing to come aside, come beside you and help you. Especially if you're dealing with some things that could turn into really, really big fires later on down the road. Remember, the only person inside your head is you. And if nobody else knows what's going on inside there, then they then that that miscommunication is going to be highly likely. So just in a little bit of a synopsis here, Everybody has their baggage. Some of it we can help, some of it we can't. We never leave our baggage at any door. Our baggage influences the way we see ourselves, the way we see the world, and our behavior. Furthermore, in order to come up with solutions for this, we actually need to address ourselves first. What is our baggage? What are our triggers? What are our patterns? Can we make better assumptions about others? Can we operate from those better assumptions? And can we become more of a human being and create a safe place for people to be able to communicate on a deeper and more productive level? If you guys want to dive a little bit deeper into this concept, there's a book out there called Leadership and Self Deception. I'll see if we can put a link down below to that book. Great book. And I highly recommend that if you're dealing with some of these things at your company, have everybody read it. All right, guys, that's it for this week's contractor radio. No, it was kind of short, but there was. No, not a whole lot to just jam in there in such a short period. But I hope that you guys did find this helpful, and we'll see you next week.