How to stop overreacting at work

Hello and welcome to Working It.

I am fresh from moderating a panel discussion in my own office (what could be better?) with three of the best in the work business: Gabriella Braun, author of All That We Are, Andrew Scott, professor of economics at London Business School — and author of The Longevity Imperative — and Helen Tupper, co-founder and CEO of Amazing If.

We were talking about some of the themes in my book, The Future-Proof Career, and I came away feeling optimistic that things can get better as we go through our working lives. As Andrew told the audience at the FT Women in Business Forum members’ event, we evolve and change. Sometimes, though, in the rush for status and promotion, we forget who we really are and what we want. And it holds us back from fulfilment. What suits us work-wise at 35 may not be right at 45 or 70.

Read on for some tips to get past challenging/meltdown moments at work. And do email me — isabel.berwick@ft.com — with your thoughts on what makes a future-proof career. (It doesn’t even have to involve AI 🙄.)

How to stop overreacting at work 🤬

How often have you overreacted to something that happens at work — and not known why? 🙋🏼‍♀️. It might be crying when a manager gives some critical feedback (however mild) or dreading any interaction with a senior colleague whose curt manner makes you feel worthless. I’ve been shocked at the strength of my own reactions to seemingly small things (special apologies to the FT colleague who had to “hold space”, as the jargon goes, when I choked up over our lunchtime soup this week).

To find out why overreaction happens, and what we can do about it, I spoke to Alice Sheldon, creator of an approach called Needs Understanding. I talked to her after reading her book, Why Weren’t We Taught This At School?, which outlines a way to build better workplace (and life) relationships based on the idea that we are all on a quest to meet our own underlying needs. By understanding what is going on beneath the surface, Alice suggests, we can learn to take the heat out of the moment — and stop avoiding difficult work situations that provoke strong reactions. (My issue is confrontation with people senior to me. I get tongue-tied and can’t bear not pleasing others, so I am — or was — very avoidant.)

Everything we do in life, Alice says, relates to this basic human desire to have our needs met. Some of these needs are what she calls “fingerprint needs”: embedded and personal to us. These are areas where we didn’t get our needs met in childhood, and that triggers a strong reaction — even though we don’t understand why — as adults. An example might be having had a parent who had high expectations for you and criticised freely. You might feel you aren’t “good enough” and these feelings would be activated again by a perfectionist or critical boss.

This is an under-explored area at work, says Alice: “We have got a lot better at talking about ‘empathy at work’ and ‘compassion at work’ but we are not very good yet at talking about these trigger situations at work, which are huge. Part of that is the shame attached to them, and part of it is that a lot of it goes on under the surface and can get ‘lidded’ and not talked about.”

What can we do at work when you find your “fingerprint needs” being activated? You will recognise it by a rush of emotion, such as shame, judgment, anger — or even not being in control of your emotions at all. We don’t need to delve into what’s causing the reaction. As Alice says, “you can choose how far along that road you go” but, in the moment, it’s enough just to know how to react. “The best thing you can do is equip yourself with whatever works for you. We think about mindfulness or breathing, or going to the loo and splashing some water on your face. There are lots of things you can do to help you reset your nervous system.”

Beyond that, we can learn preventive action. In my situation, where I’m avoidant of difficult meetings, especially with superiors, Alice suggests a strategy: “Choose people you love to take into the meeting with you, so they just stand at your back in your imagination. You know ‘these people totally rate me’ — so there is immediately that sense of redressing power.”

Interestingly, it’s not the teams with a lot of overt tension that tend to see overreaction outbursts. “The safer you feel, the more you can let rip because you know the relationship is more solid, in a way. It is often teams who have been together longer who have these moments.”

Got a good strategy for dealing with that colleague who shouts at you? Email: isabel.berwick@ft.com

This week on the Working It podcast

I loved talking to this week’s podcast guests about creativity and AI. If you think that generative AI is just the sum of all the data it’s been trained on, or just good for doing the admin . . . think again. The genius is all in the prompts we give the AI (and “prompt engineer” is going to be a key job for the future). Dan Sherratt from Poppins, a digital creative agency, tells me about the practical ways he’s using AI in pitching and creating new work, while Oxford university professor Marcus du Sautoy says the future of creativity may lie in human/machine collaborations. Together, we can be more than the sum of our parts.

Five top stories from the world of work

1. Chinese tech companies push staff to the limit: An eye-watering account of working life for staff at Chinese tech giants from Ryan McMorrow and Nian Liu. The famous ‘996’ working pattern (9am-9pm, six days a week) looks outdated. Staff in some workplaces attend meetings in the middle of the night.

2. LinkedIn’s makeover lacks one thing: humour. I love LinkedIn, but even I think it could be funnier: Emma Jacobs writes eloquently about the platform that took a “vulnerability turn” in the pandemic and now hosts a lot of heartfelt but very non-amusing content.

3. Should employers monitor more than mouse clicks of remote staff? After some staff at Wells Fargo got fired for simulating keyboard work, Anjli Raval takes on the new surveillance culture and the blurred boundaries between work and home life for many of us.

4. Mining’s push for gender diversity marred by ‘Andrew Tate’ effect: A fascinating analysis from Harry Dempsey of the effect of backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in one male-dominated sector — but it could stand for many others.

5. The FT’s guide to the best books to read this summer: A comprehensive round-up of the best books of 2024 (so far) including business book picks from Andrew Hill, and fiction titles to take to the beach.

One more thing . . . 

The Girlfriends was one of the standout podcasts of 2023, winning the prestigious US Ambie audio award for “best true crime podcast”. I am not a big true crime listener, but the format here is different: it brought together a group of women who had investigated the 1985 murder of their friend — and the sister of one of the group — Gail Katz. Season two follows the team as they try to find out the identity of an unknown murder victim whose body was misidentified as Gail for nearly a decade. The women manage to track down her identity, and give her back the dignity of being remembered and named.

Bonus: our first producer on the Working It podcast, the talented Anna Sinfield, is series producer, writer and on-air team member for The Girlfriends: Our Lost Sister.

A word from the Working It community

Bethan Staton’s newsletter last week about AI and learning skills — tl; dr: we may lose something when we let the software do all the searching and legwork — prompted some interesting responses, including this one, from a leader who wants to remain 🤫.

“While many tout customer service as the first best place for AI, as a veteran of leading very large service organisations, I see it as a potential trap.

“If AI solves all the easy problems, how do the customer services specialists build the skills to become expert problem solvers? AI does well on the “happy path”. Where we need service is when we are in the ditch. The miracle workers on service lines have generally put in years and tens of thousands of calls to build the skills and instincts and relationships necessary to solve thorny, idiosyncratic problems.”