How to Work With a Know-It-All

Recently I was practicing my lines for a role I was playing in a community play with several great actors and actresses. As we were trying to decide on a final song to sing to close our act, I mentioned a song title that I thought would be perfect. Immediately, Susan, one of my fellow actresses, told me how that would not work because of the year the song was written and that she had a better suggestion.   This is the same woman that knew all of our speaking lines, as well as her own, and did not hesitate to correct us along the way.

Initially, I felt shut down by her words and actions and began to question my own intelligence as she seemed to have a quicker, smarter reply to everything. After realizing my ideas had validity, I began to get angry and then, believe it or not, I felt sorry for her. She was such a busy body trying to make sure everything was perfect and that she was in control. I soon remembered that trying to continually control one's environment is really about being afraid. For some reason, this woman feared something. Could it be that she had a controlling parent, spouse or boss that made her feel the need to be "on top" of everything. Maybe she feared that we would "see through her" and know that she really was on the edge of not knowing anything? Whatever the reason, her insecure actions were shutting myself and the others down and creating a tense work environment.

So, if you find yourself in this situation, what can you possibly do? Well there are many choices. As with my previous newsletters, I will mention again how lucky we are as humans to have the ability to STOP and PAUSE before we take action on a stimulus. Where animals usually react immediately through fight or flight, we can hit our internal PAUSE button before we act.

If this person is someone you interact with on a daily basis, you have several choices:

• Ignore them and their suggestions and hope they get the message that they are an irritant. This is called avoiding the problem and may work if you have limited interaction with them. But, soon you will find yourself avoiding any and all interactions with them which will affect your work performance, if you need this person.

• Try to mirror their behavior by dishing it back. As with an angry child, sometimes they need to see their own behavior mirrored back to them before the light comes on and they realize their disruptive behavior is being displayed. This may backfire as well for those that never see the light and again is a more passive aggressive approach.

• Share how their actions make you feel. While this approach seems the most threatening for us "passive aggressive" types, it really has the greatest long term potential. Become aware of how their actions make you feel and then suggest how you would like them to interact. So, with the example above, I would tell my fellow actress.

"Susan, I feel hurt by your continual discounting of my ideas for your ideas. It makes me feel put down and angry. What I need from you is to consider that my ideas are just as valid as yours. Instead of using no, but or however, try to use the word "and."

• Become aware of your own "know-it-all" behavior. Recently, I found myself using these three discounting words, no, but and however with my spouse and we chose to play a game that would help us both stop using these damaging words. Every time we used these three words we owed each other one dollar. It was amazing how many times we rattled these three words off in a twenty minute conversation. If a dollar is not enough pain, increase the amount until you feel the heat. The other day, I was with a client that had this same discounting problem on his team. He tried a new activity with them that involved finding as many reasons why an idea was great, before mentioning why it wouldn't work. So, if a suggestion was made about a possible solution to a problem, the team had to come up with one to three reasons why the idea was valid before critiquing it. I know that my natural tendency is to find out three reasons why it won't work first and then think about the possibilities.

No one likes working with a "know-it-all". Having our ideas continually shut down or invalidated is a miserable experience. I would also bet the know-it-all is miserable trying to "one up" other people and losing relationships over it. You have many choices in handling this type of situation based on you natural tendency of fight or flight. If you choose to confront by telling them how the behavior makes you feel, and then offering a suggestion for future conversations, you are on your way to a healthier conversation with this person. Oh, and if you are the one acting as a "know-it-all", try putting your money where your mouth is to change this ineffective behavior.