Taming the Abrasive Manager: How to End Unnecessary Roughness in the Workplace

Chapter 10. Limits on How Management Can Make Them Care

In the last chapter I described the steps managers must take to take the blinders off:

• Collect the perceptions of abrasion.

• Present the wounded feelings as facts.

• Disarm defensiveness.

You've collected and reflected the wounded perceptions that are now disrupting work—you've done your best to pry off the abrasive boss's emotional blinders with the irrefutable fact that he or she is perceived as abrasive. These individuals may attempt to continue to debate the facts of whether or not they behaved abrasively, but because you've shifted the focus from a fact battle over what they did (or didn't) do, to the facts of how they are perceived, you've increased your chances of disarming their defenses. ...