The Suckers Around Us !

By all accounts, I have had a charmed life ?? ..

I worked for some great companies, with some really talented people in a lot of those places and even made many friends … some of who are still an integral part of my life today. But this post is not about any of that.

This post is about three kinds of people I met, who could have derailed that charmed life.

Before I decided to step out on my own, a large part of my work-life was spent in working for other people (& companies). A key part of that job was to deal with stakeholders, employees, bosses and partners. And the medium of interaction was usually called a meeting.

I took the time to look back and through these endless meetings, I realized something about me that the HR evaluations never told me. That I am a people person — in the sense that people affect me and my work. So, I tried to put down as many instances of interactions with people as I could remember. And I tried to recall what those interactions did to me.

What follows is a sneak peak into the three kinds of people that I discovered affected my work adversely.

1. Solution suckers

There is this special class of people, who want to have solutions to all the sequential problems before embarking on tackling the first one. They live in the comfort that you can solve their problems, even if, in real life, that problem doesn’t exist yet.

It is easy to identify them, especially in your workplace or a circle of friends. Some people jump hoops, others jump jobs. But solution suckers, jump problems! The moment you provide a solution for one problem, they bring up another problem. In most cases, solution suckers don’t really add any value to their workplace, because they see life as an endless series of problems. That itself isn’t a really bad thing. But while most people can differentiate between hurdles that exist in the path of the problem and the problem itself, solution suckers focus only on finding problems. If you provide solution to one problem, they throw another one at you, while doing nothing to implement the one you just solved.

The best way to deal with solution suckers is to ask questions. Instead of offering solutions, frame them into questions and ask them why they did not do so-&-so in that situation. That way, they have to take up a larger share of voice in the meeting and often get bored of hearing their own voice.

But I don’t think they are bad people to start with. Many of them probably admire your capability to see things differently and come up with answers, when they themselves are struggling even to re-frame a problem. So, the way to use a solution sucker is to seek one out when you need to rethink something. You can use the conversation the way some people use white boards and markers. It helps you reorganize your thinking and come up with something new. And they are happy to be an audience in your show.

Try that sometimes ??

2. Time suckers

Time suckers suck your time. A simple conversation that can happen in 15 minutes will go on for at least twice as much with such people. You often notice that you are going over the same stuff with them again and again in the same meeting or interaction. There is nothing new to add, all the discussions are done and yet, they are still sitting there in front of you!

I think I am a time sucker myself. My partners, co-founders & teams most certainly think I take way too long on everything. My meetings are longer than most people. My phone calls are long and so are the Skype or Hangout sessions with my students. Even with founders that I mentor, my conversations are longer than most. My way of justifying this to myself is that I am trying to discover a new side to them and the issue they are discussing. People rarely give you all the facts to the case -Sherlock Holmes would have said. I try to pry out what they haven’t told me yet but that takes time. But like I said, all of this could just be my bias and a vain attempt at justifying myself.

The best way to deal with time suckers is to keep them on a clock. You use the phone’s stopwatch and tell them that you only have that much time to give. It helps people like me to focus and craft sentences that get to the heart of the problem.

Next time we meet, try that on me ??

3. Energy suckers

These are the most dangerous kind of people to have around yet they seem to be the most harmless among all of the above. They tend to present scenarios and situations which sound like problems that they want to solve with your help — often sounding like the solution suckers. But this is far more dangerous, because they drag you down with their version of how the world is and how it works against them all the time.

It is easy to identify them. A typical energy sucker will start off telling you about a situation and if you aren’t really watching out for it, very soon you can get dragged into listening to their life story. This story is just a series of incidents, narrated to keep showing you problems. But they have no intention of solving these problems. They thrive in a problem world, because that is comfortable to them. Their story to themselves in one of being the victim and so nothing you say, can make them see things differently.

Another quick way to identify an energy sucker, is to see how you feel immediately after the meeting. If you feel low or sad or tired, that is almost a sure sign of having just encountered an energy sucker.

The best way to deal with energy suckers is to actively avoid them. Don’t ask them open ended questions about themselves or offer help on something you think they are struggling with. Just avoid talking to them entirely if you can. But after reading this post, if you realize that a few of your close friends or colleagues are in this bucket and you don’t really want to avoid them, then you have to try plan B.

Plan B, in this case, would be to become a listener. You let them pour out their woes to you while you hold yourself back from any making suggestions. Don’t tell them to look at it differently and don’t give them any solutions. Remind yourself who they are and steer clear of having your energies sucked away.

Most people go through their careers like it’s a punishment. The salary & perks they get, is only part compensation for what they go through. And while the salary is actually the need that got you in that job to begin with, the truth is that our work-day is as much about the people we spend it as it is about the work we do. The idea of this post was to share what I saw and what perhaps can be done about it. The hope is that you can identify these three kinds of suckers around you and even figure out if you are beginning to become one of them!

And if you are one of the lucky few who has never encountered people like this, then maybe this helps you realize just how lucky you have been ..

… so far ??

This post was first published on https://medium.com/@adisave