Don’t Be Hard to Get Along With
By: Anthony Aycock
Tags: Communication, Education, Management, Empathy, Teaching

Instructors get irritated at having to repeat information. But repetition is common in the workplace. When my boss holds team meetings, he often asks for information we have already given him. My boss is not disorganized. He takes copious notes at every meeting, but when he has a question, he finds it faster to ask than to look through his notes.

Could I say to him, “The answer to your question should be in your notes from last month”?

Hardly. If I tell him something and, within a week, he has questions about it, then the possibilities are: (1) early-onset dementia or (2) I didn’t make myself clear in the first place.

Now I give him midweek updates to refresh his memory, keep me on track, and shorten the meetings since he isn’t asking so many questions. I do the same thing as an instructor, starting each class with a syllabus review — five minutes of what’s coming up, what I expect, and what the students need to do. That minimizes confusion, and it models a valuable workplace skill. If my students end up with bosses like mine, they will be glad for the praxis of repetition.

Even when it comes to personal problems, the real-world sector takes a much more accommodating approach than many faculty members do. Professors call it “blurring boundaries” when a student brings up personal situations, and some consider it unprofessional to get involved. (I always want to ask, unprofessional of who? The students? us?) Yet those boundaries get blurred all the time in the work world in ways large and small.

Some time ago, my car’s transmission developed an electrical short. For weeks the car was in and out of various shops. Rather than feeling ill-equipped to handle a personal problem, my co-workers recommended mechanics, drove me to and from garages, sent me links to automotive Web sites, or offered to look at my car themselves. The assistance took little of their time, and it relieved me of having to brainstorm alone. Even the obvious suggestions — change your oil, check your battery — were a boon because, when you are inside a problem, the obvious can elude you.

I once had a student named Sarah who was in her early 20s and married. Sarah started the semester eagerly, but about midway through, she turned dour. One night before class, I heard her talking to another student about marital troubles. These two had always been friendly toward me, so I interrupted to ask if Sarah was OK. She told me about her husband, who, between work, beers with the fellas, and Xbox at the witching hour, paid her little attention. She said she had started feeling attracted to a male friend, and a few nights before — that was what was troubling her — she had cheated with the friend.

None of it was my business, but I could see Sarah was suffering, and she thought me approachable, perhaps wise. It didn’t matter that my specialty was along the lines of pre-apocalyptic British abecedarian books once owned by Edith Nesbit’s wet nurse. I had a chance to help her. So I advised her to confess the affair and then talk to her husband about fixing their marriage. By the end of the semester, the two were in counseling (“He’ll never do that!” she had said when I proposed it) and seemingly on their way to reunion.