In my role as ombuds, I encounter people whose chief issue is that other people are doing things that they don’t like. Reflecting on it, at its core about three-quarters of ombuds work is helping people whose main issue is that someone is doing something that is making them unhappy, while the other quarter concerns those who are unhappy about an organizational policy or process. With that in mind, you would have thought that I might have arrived at an overarching theory that explains this situation a long time ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I considered the question systematically. Join me as I share my in-progress thoughts on how to sort options when others are doing things you don’t like.
In drafting my theory, I was influenced by human physiology. While it is tempting to think of ourselves as beings of pure cognition untethered by the dross of physical concerns, as the climax of Old World Blues reminds us, our brains are very much part of our bodies; even as we try to rationally think through our options, we are still humans flooded with stress hormones whose effects we can’t discount.
In the spirit of embracing our physical selves, let’s consider a basic response to an unpleasant stimulus. If we accidentally place our hand on a hot stove, a reflex arc that curves through our spinal cord–not our brain–forces us to remove it. This is our most basic and instinctual reaction to something we don’t like: get away. And we don’t even have to consciously think about it.
Now let’s think of another stimulus that arcs up a bit higher, into our mammalian brain. Imagine we are sauntering down a pleasant forest path without a care in the world. Suddenly hear a characteristic rattle and see, about five feet from us, a rattlesnake. Boom! We get flooded with adrenaline as our body prepares for fight or flight. Do we run from the snake or find something to bash it with? Whatever our choice, our amygdala has already primed us for action by pinging the hypothalamus, which tells our adrenal glands to pump out epinephrine. Our peripheral vasculature constricts, our heart beats faster and stronger. Our lungs open up. Our eyes dilate. We are ready! Then, after we have led or fought, we can relax.
These two stimulus/response patterns, centered in the spinal cord and amygdala, have been with us much longer than complex human societies, with all of their niceties and subtleties. But our physiological response to an unpleasant stimulus–which, in essence, is what someone doing something we don’t like is–is the same as it has always been.
So when thinking about what we can do about people doing things we don’t like, I thought about what our biology primes us to do and concluded that, with some added nuance, it comes down to fight or flight, with a third addition. So, when faced with behavior by others that we don’t like, we can:
- Attempt to stop the offending behavior by involving others.
- Attempt to stop the offending behavior by changing our own behavior.
- Accept the behavior as disagreeable but tolerable after weighing the relative risks and benefits of 1 and 2.
Let me offer a scenario to demonstrate the three pathways in action.
Our scenario: Redd’s supervisor, Blu, gets flustered when Redd uses certain terminology. Redd doesn’t enjoy being the object of Blu’s flustering.
Let’s say Redd chooses option one, involving others. The most direct approach here is for Redd to speak directly to Blu, asking them to stop. If Redd doesn’t want to have that conversation, they could try formal channels–human resources or Blu’s supervisor–but ultimately it comes down to the same thing: Redd tells someone else about the problem in hopes that they will stop it.
But let’s say that Redd really needs their job and fears that involving others will uncomfortably escalate the situation, maybe even leading to retaliation. They now have two more options. The first is to change their own behavior, most obviously by not using the terminology that makes Blu irate. While this doesn’t involve any risks of retaliation, it does require some discipline on Redd’s part, and maybe a hit to their ego. They are choosing to accommodate others to achieve their goal (an end to the flustering).
But if accommodating Blue is too much for Redd, there is another potential path. The third option is, essentially, for Redd to let go of feeling uncomfortable when Blu reacts to their terminology. No one’s behavior changes, the situation remains the same, but Redd is no longer bothered by it. This can work if Redd really likes using the terminology and isn’t too concerned about Blu’s outbursts.
Thinking more deeply, here we are drawing on an option I have long presented to those I speak with. The basic question, I like to say, is whether they want to keep the status quo or change it (and usually, because they are talking to me about the issue, they are not fans of the status quo). Option three is, essentially, preserving the status quo while reframing things so we feel differently (and hopefully better) about them. It is the “freeze” that we often hear bundled with “fight or flight.”
Sticking with our amygdala-inspired response, option one is a civilized version of “fight,” while two is a dressed-up variation of “flight.”
I like thinking along these lines because instead of denying our physiological reactions or fighting them, we are using them to help us be thoughtful about how we respond. Fortunately, in social situations we usually have more time to react than a rattling snake or charging bear would give us. But while our range of options seems almost paralyzingly huge, it really is consistent with our prehistoric–indeed, pre-human–physiological response to any threat: Fight, flight, or freeze.
So until next time, expect the unexpected, stay informed, and I’ll stay informal.
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