Answering a criticism

What he actually did in a meeting where a colleague talked over him and then criticized him in front of the group. Reach for it when you are cut off mid-sentence, or when an accusation about your character lands in a room full of people.

How it goes

1. When the person interrupts you mid-sentence and talks loudly about something unrelated to what you were explaining, stop talking.
2. Wait patiently for the conversation to return to your topic. Do not fight for the floor. If it never returns — his did not — that is okay.
3. When the criticism comes, and his came to the whole room as “someone here has a trust issue and feels he needs to do everything himself,” do not take it personally and do not let ego take over the interaction.
4. Ask for clarification instead of defending yourself, and ask it in terms of behavior. His wording was: “What are you perceiving in my behavior that you interpret as a lack of trust?”
5. For every instance the person names, ask who in the group has the technical expertise to help, and say plainly that you want help and need help.
6. Work through the instances one at a time until the concern is settled there in the room.

A caution

He wrote this as a same-day addendum to the Magic Mirror post, and it concerns the same colleague. Before this meeting he had already caught himself judging the man’s steamroller behavior and asked whether it was something he recognized in himself and was still working to manage, and he holds throughout that the man is new in a tough role and is suffering on several levels. The clarifying questions worked in his case partly because the facts were on his side: his technical co-worker on the contract was away and he genuinely was the only person in the group with the expertise the project demanded. He is candid about how consistently he manages any of this — “Do I always act with compassion and empathy toward my fellow team member? I certainly do not” — and treats the whole approach as a practice with no clear terminal point.

My response was to stop talking and wait patiently for the conversation to return to my topic. It never did - and that was okay.

— Middle Way Management and the Magic Mirror