Do You Work With Any Selfish, Thoughtless People?


"How do I deal with people who only think of themselves, their immediate group/function and not the bigger picture? "

Who do you know like this? I mean the kind of people who make it harder for you to do your job because they are so focussed on their own tiny area.

This can be as simple as people who just don't respond in time to your urgent email with information that you need to meet a deadline. It could be someone who won't listen to other people's ideas, even though they are quite clearly better than their own.

It can be someone who turns up late to meetings, keeping everyone else waiting because their work is more 'important', or they just can't be bothered.

You know the kind of thing; they expect you to drop everything to help them, but are too busy when you need help.

Or it may be that they simply don't take your needs into account, like one department head that kept everyone in a meeting an hour and a half after the published finishing time. Then when some people had to leave to pick up their children from nursery, accused them of not being committed to the company.

It's the people who dump a task on you that soaks up your weekend whilst they swan off to enjoy themselves.

But it can also be people who moan about their bonus being cut when, even after the cut, it's more than you are paid in a year.

Why Do You Think People Behave Like This? A Controversial Reason

People of today are less empathic that people were 30 years ago.

This is the shocking finding of researchers at the University of Michigan. They analyzed data on empathy among 14,000 students from 1980s to today. They found a 40 percent decrease in empathy, the ability to understand the feelings of others.

So it would seem that things are getting worse. Very quickly.

What Can You Do?

You need to get them to start thinking about others and learn the skills they are lacking. The easiest way to do this is to use questions. You need to start from the assumption that the reason they are not thinking about others (you and your colleagues or the company as a whole) is not because they are deliberately ignoring you, it's more like they just haven't thought about you.

So it's lack of practice, not just pig-pigheadedness.

Why Is Empathy On The Decline?

The researchers think that too many violent video games numb youth to the pain of others and that making "friends" online encourages very superficial relationships that don't allow you to develop your empathic skills.


I Can't Help You

One woman I read about with had picked up the phone in answer to a client's call. After a few seconds the rest of her colleagues heard her say: "I can't do that now, it's my lunch break." And slam the phone down.


This was just one of many dreadful examples of her lack of consideration for her fellow humans.
Someone asked her how she thought the client felt, when she had talked to him like that. A look of surprise spread across her face. She hadn't thought about him for one second, just that she wanted to go to lunch.

She was then asked her how she might have felt, getting a response like that.
And that was it. No one had ever put it to her quite like that before.


The Problem

Insensitive people are just that, insensitive. So there's no way they will take a hint .The problem you create when you try hinting is that you feel you've told them, or they 'should' realise, but they never do. So you feel more and more frustrated.


The reason you aren't direct with them is that you don't want to offend them. This is very nice of you but it's an unnecessary concern. You see, you are imagining that they are like you. But they're not. So they haven't heard your request.


The strange thing is they are not doing this deliberately. That's a bit like accusing a person who is deaf of deliberately not hearing what you are saying. You just need to get your message into a form that they can understand. For insensitive people, that means you need to be very direct.


Go on, have a go.


So if you have some difficult people that are proving to be a pain for you at work, then you may want to get the book "Difficult People Made Easy". .........hold on a second......

Till next week