A few years ago, in my last job, I worked closely with a woman who made projects difficult.
At the time I worked as
a content creator. I wrote the words and came up with the messaging, packaging
and direction of campaigns and someone else (this woman) took care of the design
– tasked with turning the words into something tangible and visible.
Every single time I
worked on a project with this person, there would be stress, accusations that I
had miscommunicated and dissatisfied clients.
This
never happened with anyone else.
Getting
to the nub
Quite quickly, I picked
up that:
1.
This person found any deviation from or
adaption of the product from early discussions incredibly unsettling and would
act aggressively and defensively to any suggestion of developing, building on or
altering an initial idea. To me, an initial idea being shaped and honed into a
final product is the creative process.
Ideas develop, take shape and form as you go. To this person, you decide what
you’re doing, then you do it, exactly that way, no matter what else happens along
the way.
2.
This person missed vital parts of
conversation. They would swear blind you’d never told them things that you knew
you had. Even when other people had been present to witness that you’d said
something, she’d swear she’d never heard you. This didn’t just happen with me –
in team meetings where, for instance, one of our team would state where a
project tracking spreadsheet was stored and how it should be used, a week
later, everyone would be using it except this person who would say no-one had
told her anything about it.
3.
People avoided challenging this person,
or even gently questioning her, as it would result in disproportionate confrontation
and aggression. This meant that I often found myself stuck in the middle of
this person and others – who wouldn’t want to confront her directly and would
instead give me their feedback to give to her.
During the couple of years
I worked with this person, I’d often offload onto Ethan at the end of a stressful
day – about all of the above behaviours, which caused real stress for me. And
he would sympathise, often tell me what to do about it (of course!) and be angry
on my behalf.
But what I realised –
also quite quickly – is that Ethan does exactly the same!
The perfect trio of aggression, confrontation and selective hearing
Tonight, we were having
a discussion about mobile phones.
Ethan suggested we buy Oliver
a new (second-hand) phone for Christmas. I mentioned, just as another possible option,
that a friend of ours had taken out a plan for his son where he paid about £18 a
month for a phone and SIM and that, after two years, they could either keep the
phone or trade it in for a better model and keep paying the £18 a month.
Ethan
reacted exactly like my old colleague would have done – aggressive,
confrontational and missing key details of what I‘d said.
It’s like he didn’t
have the bandwidth in his head for any interpretation other than his own.
That kind of rigid
thinking, in both the workplace and in a relationship, can be both a strength
and a source of destruction. Which is why, I guess autistic colleagues – and autistic
husbands – can be both absolute gems and complete pains in the arse!
But it’s also this kind
of single-mindedness that makes Ethan utterly devoted, completely on my side,
endlessly loyal and my greatest advocate – he simply doesn’t have the bandwidth
to see me any other way.
Thankfully for me, I
can talk to Ethan about issues like the aggression over me having a different
point of view, and he will see it, apologise and we’ll try again (not that it
always runs that smoothly, sometimes I’m too tired and pissed off to explain –
again – and will sulk or blow up instead).
Unfortunately for me,
that same kind of self-awareness and drive to find solutions wasn’t there with
my colleague.
I don’t work in that
job anymore.
