Have you met somebody lately who has been successful in making you feel miserable over a meeting at your workplace? Or have you walked out of a meeting feeling miserable lately?

I have today and as I share what it feels like I want you recall your moments.

If your work is like mine it might bring you across people from different walks in an office. Some tall, some short, some sneaky, some polite, some brash, some polished to the hilt. You can overcome most encounters, but one… a person who is not ready to listen. Of course it also talks about how I might not have been able to reach him, or rather speak his language. However that doesn’t take away the fact that I feel miserable at the end. Even if you accept the other person for who he is, you still feel miserable.

The question is where does it come from? While some people that you meet for the first time might sound very polite and collaborate positively in a conversation, there is this other kind as well. So why does the second kind arise? What’s the need in the second category as a person or as a situation to not be the contributor or a facilitator, especially if you are meeting on his turf?

Here are a few reasons with the possibility that he/she might across as such a person at this specific situation. There is no reason to generalize.

1. He might be one of the olden kinds where he wants to test your mettle before he lets you inside his circle or considers you worth what you claim to be

2. He might criticize you at every utterance, judging how you respond

3. He has his own standards of measuring people

When you have been working for an organization for a very long time you might lock yourself in that perspective. The perspective itself might seem to be very enlightening from the subject’s point of view (POV), however it can very often be a trap or the formula to being stuck in that cycle for an infinite time where every morning you appreciate your POV with your peers and every evening you feel heavy under the burden.

Very often I come across people who are so full with their work that they fail to notice anything else, a new idea or even a pothole right infront of them. If you too have such people around who:

1. Refuse to listen and gabble their own song

2. Expect people to laugh at their jokes

3. Expect people to appreciate the intellectual remark they just made

I expect you to feel miserable. At the same time please don’t make this misery a habit.

Sometime back I had a very young participant in my workshop whose boss threatened him on day ten when he displayed some innovative colors at his job.

‘I will make your life miserable and fu** your career while you are around here.’

Now he had real reasons for misery. He is still working at the same organization and has a good relationship with the boss. He got moved to a new team as well. And mind you he hasn’t gotten over the misery, he discovered that it was mere fiction.

Sometimes we feel miserable because that’s what we see at that point of time, the intent on the other person’s part to make me feel miserable. However I might be proven wrong in the long run. 

Thing about your ragging days (if you had any) and the kind of buddies you made out of the bunch you ragged you.

The other person has his own realities, please don’t make misery your definition for him. Sit and think beyond the misery, about him, about his realities if that person indeed is so important.

As I still feel miserable after the meeting I just discover that the person I met is also responsible for recruitment, meanings all new hires have gone through him. And if that has worked for ten years, then his small test definitely is a measure on whether or not you can align as a service provider/vendor, and most important, as a human being, even before you sell your products. And from his POV he is doing an excellent job.