Donna Flagg

Peeve of the Week: The Silent Treatment

What is that when someone becomes nonresponsive toward someone else in a working relationship? To simply clam up, shut down and suddenly ignore the outreach of another person? There must be a reason why these folks go from being perfectly normal to withdrawing from all forms of contact. Yet no one ever finds out why because the person has chosen to dodge the issue and ignore it rather than to say what he or she is actually thinking or feeling. I find it perplexing.

In fact, the whole concept of how, why and when people avoid having conversations has been on my mind more than ever lately as I am nearing the end of writing my first book about difficult conversations in the workplace. What I’m learning is that many, many people dread saying what’s on their minds for reasons completely unrelated to what needs to be said in the actual conversation. They make themselves sick with stress only to learn after the fact that it wasn’t nearly as bad as they thought it was going to be. It reminds me of something a friend told me once who used to dance for Bob Fosse on Broadway.  She said, you have your first few auditions that are really painful, but when you get past them, you’re fine.  

Posted by Donna Flagg on January 16, 2009 | Comments (0)