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Brianna Parkins: We should all come with instruction manuals at work

Everyone should have a ‘how to work with me’ presentation prepared for their colleagues

We all must find ways to stay in gainful employment by adapting to each other’s working styles. Photograph: iStock

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Brianna Parkins
Sat Dec 16 2023 - 05:00

Personality tests have crept their way into companies over the last few years. I suspect it’s because management and HR consultants need to run down the clock on their billable hours. Like substitute teachers trying to fill class time, they’ve realised they don’t have to do much talking if we’re all occupied filling out multiple choice worksheets for a bit.

So now in addition to having to do our jobs, we also have to know what colour our parachute and/or thinking hat is, what DISC we are and what our Myers-Briggs type is. The aim of all these is to recognise who are and what we’re like in order to engage with our colleagues better.

That team leader isn’t a micromanaging weapon who gleans joy from shoving others under the corporate bus. She’s just an IGHDBTAL, or whatever Myers-Briggs alphabet soup she’s been prescribed. If conflict arises you should ask her to share how she feels and communicate your position with empathy instead of criticism. Approach her making soft clicking sounds like you would a wild dog.

In reality, you are within your rights to threaten to reef her out of her desk by her cheap hair extensions if she tries to make you look bad in front of the big boss again with made-up stories. While it might be the appropriate and satisfying response, it would be what HR professionals call “a career-limiting move” resulting in the sack or maybe even a court appearance.

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So we all must find ways to stay in gainful employment by adapting to each other’s working styles. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when workplaces are realising the benefits of providing reasonable accommodations to employees dealing with different diagnoses. For example, allowing neurodiverse employees to wear noise-cancelling headphones when loud open-plan offices get over-stimulating is a small ask from the employer, with a big impact on the employee’s productivity. This would probably help out neurotypical employees who find it hard to concentrate when Steve from accounts insists on conducting his conversations with his iPhone held horizontally in front of him on loudspeaker, instead of holding it up to his ear as per the Good Lord’s intended use.

Once a friend of mine, who had just become a manager, was treated to a 30-minute presentation by an employee on “how to work with introverted extroverts”, because that’s what the employee considered himself to be. My friend later realised the PowerPoint display was not actually a guide about introverted extroverts, but was instead an instruction manual on how to work with the individual employee instead. On reflection, this was actually quite a wise and sensible thing to do.

We could stop the passive-aggressive emojis, the gritted teeth when reading “as per my last” emails, and the notes in shared kitchens about how your mother doesn’t work here so clean up after yourself. If people knew what annoyed us and how to get the best out of us before they found out through awkward incidents, we could eliminate so much stress. We could have a day of slideshows where each colleague takes turns telling us in black and white how to stay on their good side, which would be so much more efficient than having to read hints and rely on unshared assumptions.

Everyone’s boundaries and preferences would be different, but to kick us off, here are some of my suggestions for consideration.

  1. CC’ing someone’s boss into an email to try to get them to do something you want will only have the opposite effect. It’s an open declaration of war, and unless you enjoy lifelong blood feuds, a stupid move to make especially over something as trivial as not getting an instant reply to a non-urgent question.
  2. If you have a problem with a colleague they should be the first person to hear about it. Don’t tell everyone else around them but not take it up with them directly. Sort it out. Give them a chance to address it. Move on. Tomorrow’s a new day. Don’t be a dibber-dobber (unless it’s a serious transgression).
  3. Colleagues should avoid snorting mucus back up their nasal passages all day at random 10-minute intervals when they could just BLOW THEIR GODDAM NOSE.
  4. Don’t interpret someone’s unwillingness to continually donate their time for free to a company that makes millions as laziness. Refusing to do repeated unpaid overtime should not be confused with a lack of ambition or dedication.
  5. No reheating fish in the microwave. Come on.
  6. Don’t bombard people with Microsoft Teams messages or Slacks or emails or any other instant communication channels looking for “updates” or telling them things they don’t need to know right at this second while they’re concentrating on something else. Just because we have the means and it’s become normal to chat to people informally and straight away doesn’t mean we should. Instead, ask yourself: in the old days, would I have picked up the phone or walked over to someone’s desk to tap them on the shoulder to interrupt them about this? Or would I have waited to make one phone call at the end of the day to tell them about next week’s roster, the new bin schedule, my thoughts on the new website design, Susan’s mat leave cover and a reminder to email a client instead of firing at them a stream of consciousness slam-poetry-style all day while they trying to get work done?
  7. Lastly, don’t expect everyone to share the same sense of exaggerated urgency as you. You might tell your team-mates to treat this client report as a matter of life or death, but don’t expect them to if you work in sales rather than, say, medicine. They know that nothing will actually die, unless it’s a tiny bit of respect for you for telling them that in the first place.
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