Dealing With Put-Downs In The Workplace

Hi guys and welcome to my second post and today I will be discussing the topic of put-downs in the workplace. Have you ever had to deal with being put down in the working environment by colleagues or management? Well I'm sure many people have and it can be a very unnerving experience, having someone directly targeting you in a manner that is purposely set out to harm your emotions or to make you feel like your presence in the workplace is ineffective. The key to tackling these put-downs are discovering the underlying meanings from which they have come from. I am now going to use a personal experience from my brother who is a car salesmen at Vauxhall as an example.

"I was talking to a customer, we were discussing about a product I was trying to sell, at this point one of my managers was walking around the area. I could sense he was listening in to our conversation, he then corrected  me in an undermining manner on something he thought I was explaining, however it was a different topic and the customer looked at me with confusion. I however think that my manager was trying to show his level of authority whilst customers were present, I thought this was very unprofessional and embarrassing as it threw me off my trail of thought and heavily lowered my confidence".

After analysing this situation I can understand why my brother didn't do anything about it because at the time it was in front of customer and it would've looked unprofessional for both parties to have a confrontation. But now after addressing these emotions, my brother should have not let this happen by responding immediately to this unwarranted criticism and stood up for himself, being assertive upon the situation and calmly told his manager that he was incorrect.

Being put-down in the workplace by your peers can be very strenuous on your emotions, especially when it involves different levels of authority, it is always recommended that you stand up for yourself and respond to unnecessary conflict, if you deal with the situation in a calm non-aggressive manner you will effectively feel good about it afterwards.

Feel free to get involved in this discussion in the comments below giving your own experiences with put-downs and how you possibly would have dealt with my brother's situation. Josh :)