西部落：办公室生存法则（在线收听）

And welcome back, it's 15 minutes before the hour. Dealing with difficult people and situations at work got a whole lot easier.

That's because our next guest,Marilyn Puder-York,has written a brand new book called "The Office Survival Guide". And you are er, immanently qualified to write this, you got a PhD in this stuff.

A PhD in clinical psychology and I've been an executive coach for about 30 years.

And you've also been in the workplace and you've seen the mistakes that people made over and over again, and you have that out there. For example, you even mentioned yourself, you reacted emotionally once when someone talked about your company scaling down.

That's right.

You went into a rave saying why they shouldn't and you reacted as if it was a person. That's , that's an in er... that's an inanimate object. (That was...)

That was...I had a blind spot. I , I was raised to think I was supposed to rescue everybody and then they decided to tell me that my...had to fire my staff and downsize my department and I took it personally, which is one of the Achilles' Heels for what people do - they take things personally at work.

But in a working environment people don't come there, you know, they are not, they are not machines, so they do come, they come into a working environment carrying a certain amount of baggage, how they've been raised, the kind of experience they've had in the past and so everybody comes in here with a different set of issues. So how, how do you deal with different people in the, in the workplace to make sure that um, you know, it's not as challenging?

Well, number one, first of all, everybody comes with baggage and everybody has issues, and that's a given, but I think the one, the most important thing to do is to be as self-aware as you can about your own Achilles' Heels and your own vulnerabilities. First take responsibility for yourself, know your blind spots, you know, know what difficult situations you're gonna react inappropriately to so that you can control them, and you can control your emotions and curb any kind of impulsive actions on your part, so you don't, you know, inappropriately act with other people.

But you say, er, when it comes to co-workers, don't treat them like family members. What do you mean?

Absolutely. Well, the environment, first of all is not a family. It's a political entity. So your, your co-workers are not your siblings, your boss is not your parent (even though you might see them more), even though you might see them more, and even though we might feel as if they are. The truth of the matter is they are not, and you don't want to project whatever familiar patterns you had with your siblings, which might have been competitive or collegial depending upon your past history, but you don't want to project that which you had in your family onto the work environment because it is an objective rational environment even though sometimes it may feel irrational. You want to maintain rationality and you know, other people may react badly but you want to react as rationally as possible. So you want to curb your emotions and you want to make sure that you er, don't take, you know, everybody so personally.

She is the au..the author of "The Office Survival Guide", glad great tips here; how to make it in the world to hold on to that job you have right now and identify your weaknesses and strengths before you start any position.

It really is a fascinating book. It really is.

Thank you, thank you very much, thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here.

All right coming up straight ahead...