Unraveling a workplace mystery: Why is your employee snapping at you?

In this post, we’re going to tell the story of a real-life incident that happened several months ago in a local office. We’d like you to put yourself in the position of the supervisor, trying to figure out what’s going on with his employee. As you read, ask yourself what you can conclude about the employee’s personality and mindset.


The Problem
One afternoon last fall, this supervisor (call him Brian) was working closely with one of his employees (Amanda) to complete a straightforward, if somewhat tedious task — identifying, labeling, and sorting a long series of electronic files. The files were photographs, and only Brian could determine what they were and where they needed to go. Amanda’s job was to bring the files up on the screen for the supervisor to see, and then label and organize them as directed.

For the first hour things seemed to go smoothly. They managed to organize about 20% of the images before taking a break for Brian to attend a meeting. But the next time they met, after just 10 minutes Brian started noticing a change in Amanda’s attitude. Her answers to his requests (“Can you make this image larger?” “Can you show me that last one again?”) became increasingly curt and abrupt. When he tried to give her suggestions (“How about making a new folder for that?”), she snapped back, “I know!” or “Okay, I’m doing it.” After about an hour of this, Brian started becoming quite irritated himself. He suggested taking a break and went back to his office to try to figure out what might be happening. He had never known Amanda to be so rude, but then again, she did much of her technical work independently, without anyone telling her what to do.

Before we tell you what came next, try for a moment to consider what might account for Amanda’s behavior. What might she be thinking about this task or about Brian? What type of personality traits might lead her to respond so harshly in this situation? What might her intention be here? And how should that affect the way Brian responds?

Finding Answers
Do you have some thoughts? Good. If you followed our suggestions in thinking about this issue, you may have come up with some interesting hypotheses about Amanda — maybe she resents being told what to do; she thinks this task is beneath her; or she’s edgy in general and doesn’t work well with others. Maybe she wants to get Brian to be less directive, or even wants him to get so irritated that he’ll go away and get out of her hair. What should Brian do? Find a way to let her do this project more independently? Give her feedback about her attitude? Offer a stern warning?

Let’s look at what Brian actually did. First let’s look at what he didn’t do. He had some guesses about what might be happening with Amanda (based on his experiences working with her for a number of years), but he did not assume that any of them were true. Instead, he decided to engage Amanda in a conversation about what was happening. Also, he did not focus his attention solely on what was going on with Amanda; rather, he asked her to help him figure out what was happening in their interaction — which was a product of both of their actions. (Of course, this is the exact opposite of what we asked you to do; we wanted you to be able to compare the different sorts of conclusions these two methods produce.)

Talking together in this way, these two people came up with answers that surprised both of them. Initially, Amanda couldn’t explain what was going on. She was aware of feeling very irritated, but didn’t know why. It was only by thinking through the events together that they identified the factors that had led to her irritation — and there had been quite a few:

• Technical slowdowns: There were several steps to manipulating the files, and they took longer than Brian realized. As a result, he would often give instructions on a new task before Amanda had completed the previous one, so she had to rush to get both of them done.
• Perceived time pressure: Amanda interpreted Brian’s rushed instructions as an indication that he was in a hurry, which increased her level of stress.
• Actual time pressure: The second time they got together, they only had 30 minutes to work before Brian had to leave for another meeting.
• Phone interruptions: Several times, Brian answered the phone in the middle of the organizing work. When he was finished, it took them both some time to get re-oriented to exactly where they’d left off. This added further to the stress of the real and perceived time pressures.
• Startling interruptions: Periodically, as Amanda was scrolling through images, Brian would reach over to point at the screen and say, “Wait!” or “That one there!”, which startled Amanda and kept her stress level climbing.

This was a wonderful realization, because it pointed so easily to solutions — solutions much more effective (and pleasant) than a stern warning. For instance:

• Technical slowdowns could be anticipated. Instead of jumping ahead, Brian learned to wait until Amanda said she was ready to move on.
• Perceived time pressure was reduced by Brian explaining that he was not actually in a hurry. (In SAVI terms, Amanda learned that her Mind-read of him was inaccurate.)
• Actual time pressure was minimized by waiting until they had a longer stretch of time to work together.
• Phone interruptions were eliminated by simply ignoring the phone during this period of work.
• Startling interruptions were minimized by Brian holding back, keeping his interruptions quieter and less intrusive. (Just gaining some awareness helped; he hadn’t realized what he’d been doing.)

With these changes, the irritability problem was solved. Amanda apologized for being curt and rude, Brian apologized for unknowingly creating a stressful situation, and they easily moved on.

We like this story because it provides a good illustration of the value of a collaborative problem-solving approach (What’s wrong here?), as opposed to a solely person-focused approach (What’s wrong with her?). It also has some personal meaning for us. As we mentioned earlier, this is an entirely true story. Brian and Amanda are yours truly — Ben Benjamin and Amy Yeager.

Easy on the Ear: Cognitive Fluency and Communication

Think about this description:
The less effort it takes to understand something, the more they like it. Whatever comes most easily is what they find to be the most beautiful, trustworthy, and true. In fact, difficulty makes them nervous and uncomfortable — leading them to be less forthcoming and make harsher moral judgments.

Who are these simplicity-loving slackers?


Our brains.

A recent article in the Boston Globe explored the concept of cognitive fluency, the ease with which a stimulus — whether it’s a sentence, an object, an image, or a more complex experience — can be processed by the human brain. It turns out that cognitive fluency can bestow a wide range of favorable qualities on something, or someone. A woman whose facial features are easy to process visually will tend to look more attractive. A company whose name is easy to pronounce will sound like a better investment. And a catchy saying that’s easy to remember will be more believable than the same idea conveyed in more challenging language.

This phenomenon leads to some surprising results. For instance, just using a more legible font can lead readers to respond more honestly on a questionnaire, or to judge a moral transgression more leniently.

What does cognitive fluency have to do with SAVI? We were excited to learn about this research, as it applies to communication, because it helps to reinforce two key principles of SAVI:

1) What you say is often less influential than how you say it.
Factors that have nothing to do with the content or value of your message can have a tremendous impact on how other people will receive it. An idea might be a big hit if presented in bright, legible text, and yet meet with resistance if given in a font that’s hard to read. In the same way, voicing an idea as a simple proposal (e.g., “Let’s clean out the basement this weekend”) is quite different from presenting it through mind-reading and yes-butting (e.g., “I know you’d rather just forget about it [Mind-read], but [Yes-but] let’s clean out the basement this weekend”).

2) One of the most important aspects of how you say something is its effect on information transfer — how easy or difficult it is for information to get through.
In SAVI, we talk about ambiguity, contradiction, and redundancy as noise — features of verbal communication that interfere with the transfer of information. (For instance, a Yes-but introduces noise by giving two contradictory messages at the same time.) Noise tends to increase stress and frustration. However, it isn’t inherently wrong or bad; depending on your goal, you might sometimes want to use noisy communication. For example, even though interruptions add noise (contradicting what someone else is saying by moving in a different direction), they are sometimes essential for refocusing a conversation when it gets off track.

We can say similar things about other sorts of noise. For instance, as this article explains, any factor that interferes with the flow of visual information (like an illegible font) will tend to increase wariness and discomfort. However, this increased vigilance can be useful in certain circumstances. If you’re trying to get readers to think carefully and catch mistakes, cognitive disfluency may be just what you need. (See page 4 of the article for details.)

There’s one other important observation we could make here. Part of what makes fluency and disfluency effects so interesting is that they operate beneath our level of awareness. If you ask people why they invested in a particular business, they’re unlikely to mention the easy pronunciation of company’s name. Likewise, if you ask someone why she didn’t like her husband’s suggestion to clean the basement, she probably won’t mention the noise in the communication (e.g., “The contradiction in the mind-read and the yes-but left me feeling frustrated and annoyed”). Instead, she’s much more likely to criticize the proposal (“It’s a bad idea”) or her husband (“He’s so pushy”).

This points to the value of education and training. Learning more about the factors that influence our actions and reactions can help us to make more informed decisions. For instance, we might be a little wary of claims that have a “ring of truth” — which may have more to do with their catchy phrasing than their substantive value. And we might make a conscious effort to look beyond the way our spouses, or friends, or colleagues present their suggestions. There could be a useful proposal hidden inside their yes-buts. Maybe cleaning the basement is not such a bad idea after all.


A final note: As we talk about ease and fluency in conversations, it’s important to be clear about for whom things are fluent and easy: the listener. Cognitively fluent communication is easier to receive, but not necessarily easier to produce. In fact, it’s generally easier to talk in a noisy (ambiguous, redundant, contradictory) way than it is to talk in ways that reduce noise. Why is that? Stay tuned for details in our next post!