“Rodrigo, I need you to put together a report for tomorrow.”
Another pointless request. This guy clearly doesn’t trust our work.
What else could I expect from someone that treats us like firefighters, putting out technical fires every single day? When everything’s urgent, nothing is.
And he’s not the only one. There are several guilty parties here, dragging us into countless useless meetings, complaining about the problems of an outdated system, and demanding magic solutions in record time. We’re surrounded.
I screenshotted the conversation and shared it in the dev team’s private chat so everyone could witness the absurd request.
“Look what he’s asking for now…”
I closed my laptop and headed down to the office kitchen, trying to escape the frustration—as if it would stay trapped in the digital world. When I got there, I found Sebastian Martinez. With a simple “everything okay?” he discovered that frustration had followed me down the stairs…
“This person asked me to make him a report. Can you believe it? I’m sick of his requests, each one more ridiculous than the last. He changes our meetings, our work processes, and doesn’t listen when we propose better ways to work. And now, at five in the afternoon, he asks for a report.”
Sebastian, leaning against the counter, looked down at the apple he was eating. With his knife, he cut a slice and held it suspended between his thumb and the blade, ready to eat. He looked up, curious, let three seconds pass, and asked:
“How crazy is that request?”
I went quiet for a few seconds. It was like a switch flipped in my brain, and suddenly I could see light where there had only been darkness. There was nothing strange about the request. It was just a report. A simple report.
But somehow, I couldn’t see it that way…
“Negative thoughts compound. The more you think of yourself as useless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a loop. The same thing happens with how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unfair, or selfish, you start seeing those kinds of people everywhere.” — James Clear (Atomic Habits)
I’d convinced myself this person was against us.
Everything he decided was meant to hurt the team somehow. He didn’t want us around.
But as James Clear says, when you get used to seeing people a certain way, you start seeing signs of it in everything they do. If you think someone hates you, you’ll read all their messages with an aggressive tone. If you believe they don’t trust you, you’ll feel an interrogation in every conversationThe danger is that this thought loop, whether positive or negative, can be completely wrong.
And contagious…
Sebastian’s question made me aware of the cycle of negativity that kept me from seeing things as they really were. If I wanted to make better decisions and spread better work habits in my team, something had to change. I had to find a way out of that cycle.
Drawing from two books, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and The Coaching Habit, I designed a simple mechanism to exercise my self-control. I developed small habits to help me whenever this person managed to irritate me:
- When he asks for a task and I feel anger rising, I’ll ask for 10 minutes to process the request before responding.
- If he asks for something that seems irrational during a meeting, I’ll tell him we’ll analyze it with the team afterward and get back to him right away.
These simple changes let me stop the impulse to respond in the heat of the moment. I realized that if I gave myself a few minutes to let emotions settle, I started seeing things more clearly. I understood the reasoning behind each request better and, in many cases, could offer more effective solutions.
With each step, I escaped a bit more from that cycle of negativity.
That new perspective changed everything. Not only could I manage my emotions better, but I also understood that behind what I’d interpreted as constant annoyance, this person had always wanted the best for us.
He was someone who, like me, was looking for solutions. And I’d finally learned to see him that way.
— Rodrigo
Clarity & Leadership at WyeWorks.
Navigating uncertainty?
I host free 1:1 Clarity Sessions—a calm space to think through complex decisions.
→ Learn more and reserve your spot
This article was first published in The Clarity Journal, our WyeWorks newsletter on leadership, uncertainty, and the craft of self-management. If you’d like to receive new editions as they come out, you can subscribe below.