Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello everyone, it's me with a question again.
I find professional relationships very hard. The main reason is because I feel that they seem so fake to me.
Small talks? People who don't really know me or care about how I feel nor have time to hear my real answer still ask me "how are you today?", "How was your weekend?".
Lunches and team activities?. People whom I don't know but I can't actually get to know or ask personal questions because we are just colleagues and not friends. Still it's expected to find something to talk about for more than an hour?!. Most topics in that setting don't interest me and seem superficial.
Team work? Ok, that one is easier because we actually talk about work and it fits our relationship description "colleagues" and it doesn't seem like a superficial talk, but they confuse me at times when they change their opinions about the same thing or it comes across as if they want to push their views and opinions over others. I become very unmotivated to share my view because I know that most probably eventually it won't be applied anyway and it's just waste of my power and energy.
Sometimes I say things that cause their face expressions to suddenly dramatically change. I spend hours trying to figure out where the misunderstanding was. In one occasion they were talking about an awful accident and I found something about it funny and I started laughing and everyone looked at me as if I'm a psychopath. I'm actually hypersensitive and have overwhelming high empathy.
The style of talking as using formal sentences and professional words to sound smart and so on. Dressing in an office suitable manner which is so damn superficial because it serves no real cause other than sounding and looking in a certain way even if it doesn't reflect your true self in anyway. I can't present myself as a professional. I can present myself as Ree...
How do you manage professional relationships? Any tips on how you make it true to yourself and not exhausting while thriving in professional relationships?
My job involved packing in as many meetings as possible into each day. Ditching the small talk made me far more efficient at my job and others knew they would not have to waste time on it. Meetings were all on my pet subject. Meetings were usually all in different places so driving between meetings gave me the me time to recharge. Knowing my subject so well and my inability to lie gave me a reputation as a reliable source of information. My ability to think outside the box gave me an ability to problem solve quickly.
Now tell me my Autism was a disability!
VLD said: my inability to lie gave me a reputation as a reliable source of information.
Being a manager, this can often lead to issues.
I found myself being ordered to tell only the management authorised version of the truth (sometimes as accurate as Fox News sadly) for stuff I knew was going to impact my team.
I would push back, highlighting the issues that this would cause the people I was responsible for but this led in several cases to the management not renewing my contract.
My autistic moral compass proved a liability for myself in my management career, so it can be a disability.
Good point, well made Iain.
Having a very strong moral compass is a frigging nightmare when you find yourself embroiled in complex socio-managerial issues in a commercial context. Like you, I too have found myself ostracised for trying to do the only "right" thing available to me.