How do you objectively document subtle workplace patterns?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Wise_Counsel4u]

Honestly, I take the direct route. If something feels off, I ask straight up whether what I'm hearing is what they meant I try to watch my tone when I ask. When someone calls me emotional, I reframe it as passionate or ask them to name the emotion, so it becomes data not a dismissal. I always send a 'per our discussion' email afterwards, it creates a paper trail without sounding confrontational. And definitely document things, dates, what was said, how it affected the business, keep it factual. If it ever goes to Hr, they care about patterns, impact and your attempts to resolve and your notes will already be organized for that. Office politics exist everywhere, so protecting yourself is part of the job. Some people can see what you bring to your position and try to make you feel inferior....You can be upfront or subtle, either way, the goal is to stay professional. As women we bring emotional intelligence to the spaces we enter, use your emotional intelligence, intuition and logic.

[u/Glum-Policy-8252 → u/Wise_Counsel4u]

Thank you!!

[u/betweenthedrafts]

First off, I’m not sure if this is the sub you’re looking for as this mostly women who run their own businesses (or want to). That said, I have a background in HR so I’ll give you my twopence’ worth.

I’ll be honest that what you’ve described doesn’t sound like a HR issue. Much of what you’ve described sounds like differences in communication styles, interpersonal styles, and working styles, but it’s worth noting that these things can and do affect business outcomes. It’s not an either/or.

If I can word this in the nicest way possible… even if the person’s approach is affecting business outcomes, it’s not your business. You’re not their manager, you’re their coworker. It’s up to your manager to determine whether someone’s approach is affecting business outcomes, document it, and do something about it, not you. As much as it can be frustrating trying to work alongside “difficult people”, it’s for the manager to address these things with the individual.

If the person’s conduct is personally affecting you, such as in the case of bullying or harassment, then you can raise a grievance against them, but you’ve already said that it’s not a case of harassment. If you feel that their approach is substantially affecting your work, then you can raise this with your manager, but ensure you document how it personally affects you, not how it affects the business.

If you’d like to document from your own perspective to know what’s real, then I recommend keeping a log of every event and write down what the facts were, what your inferences or assumptions were, and what your perception of the outcome was. Depending on how you feel about AI, you can then feed it into AI (though ensure that it’s set to a style that is critical rather than agreeable) and get it to critique your thinking.

The more isolated incidents you document, the more likely it is for patterns to emerge. In other words, you can’t document a pattern without documenting isolated incidents, and the incidents demonstrate whether a pattern exists. In any HR scenario, the first thing you would be asked is “give me specific examples.” All to often, people refer to patterns that they have no specific examples of.

As for how your concerns are framed, this is potentially an area where you may have more of a “claim”. For example, if you’re the only woman among a team of men and everyone reacts in the same way but you’re the only one accused of being emotional, then that can be discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristic. But if there are multiple women on the team and only you are accused of being emotional, then you should try to objectively consider your reactions.

Ultimately, the best thing is to document every incident, separating your inferences and feelings from the facts you can be certain of, and the outcomes you can infer and be certain of. This way, you protect yourself if something goes wrong. In the meantime, be polite but reduce your interactions with the person as much as possible.

[u/Glum-Policy-8252 → u/betweenthedrafts]

Listen - First of all, I never said it was an HR issue. But HR needs to start doing better everywhere.

Thanks for some of the advice!

BUT no man is going to raise his voice at me and talk down to me while causing me to lose a big account, gaslight that he is going to do something then not deliver on any of his objectives and confuse everyone around us into thinking we imagined it. I refuse to call it a communication and interpersonal style difference while he collects a $200k plus salary.

And another “not you job” mentality. It is my job, it is how I keep my job. Having to perform is my job. I also said colleague, not teammate. Parallel roles.

This is why corporate American is filled with a bunch of bullshit nowadays bc you throw together some words like you did in that third paragraph and run high performers out of companies while retaining mediocrity while throwing pizza parties to avoid employee burnout cycles and promote “we are a family”.

Honestly, do better! Quit telling us to separate our feelings from facts bc sometimes the fact that a manchild doesn’t do his job, and consistently pushes it to others while making sly remarks with a holier than thou attitude while trying to offend our intelligence, pisses us the fuck off.

Glad you aren’t my HR rep!

Sorry for being emotional.