can I just let difficult coworkers be wrong?

A reader writes:

I have developed a stance over time that my friends, partner, and colleagues all say is unprofessional: I let people at work be wrong, especially if it’s not going to impact our bottom line, due dates, or project quality. I particularly stay out of things if they’re trying to get someone in trouble and it bites them in the butt afterward.

When I was younger, I would over-explain myself, which made things worse/made me look unprofessional, so when someone’s wrong now I just let them be wrong, especially if I’m met with rude pushback, which can be typical in my line of work.

Some examples of this include a mix-up with a client meeting due to time zones. I pointed out the time difference and got called a know-it-all. For the record, I didn’t dance around banging a pot and spoon yelling about how smart I am, I professionally and politely pointed out that there was an hour time difference and we could still make up lost meeting time and got told to shut up and stop acting like I know everything.

My not engaging often backfires for the individuals involved. There was a big client escalation while I was on vacation. The person covering for me ignored it and passed it on to our boss as my error. When I was back, my boss, asked why I ignored the escalation, informing me they were moving the issue to HR. When I tried to remind him I was on vacation, he put his hand up and said, “No excuses.” HR dismissed it because the communication sent in as proof of my “mistake” included multiple pages of my out-of-office reply with steps on how to contact me during vacation and how to handle escalations, with evidence that my boss and coverage openly ignored it. My boss got mad at me for making him look bad.

Recently my coworker “Leslie” spent a lot of time during an important staff meeting critiquing an old logo we don’t use anymore that she attributed to me having designed, saying, “I’m sure LetterWriter did the best she could, but this logo is unusable. LetterWriter’s not ready for this kind of responsibility.” A few people looked at her like she was bonkers, and after a good chunk of time basically calling me incompetent someone else finally said, “LetterWriter didn’t design that logo, a contractor did. And we don’t use it anymore anyway.” Leslie then spent the afternoon openly complaining that I set her up to make her look stupid, which I didn’t.

My partner says I’m being a pushover, I say I’m just letting people dig their own graves. This is a small part of our company culture that doesn’t reflect the whole thing, it’s just annoying and I’m not the only one they do it to, I’m just the only one who doesn’t rise to the bait. I still speak up, I still ask for clarification and politely course-correct if something’s really off but if someone’s digging themselves a hole, I let them.

Today a designer was going off about how something wasn’t the right color green. If you look at the hex code, it’s correct. His screen settings are the problem. I recommended he adjust his screen and he ignored me, so I just let him go off about it and complain up the chain until our project manager told him to knock it off. I think this saves me mental energy and peace, but is this professionally wrong?

Well, first, what is going on in your workplace that people are so routinely rude and adversarial? Telling you shut up and to stop acting like you know everything because you noted a timezone difference?! That response would be out of line for nearly any provocation, so if they’re responding that way about something so minor, something is seriously weird in your work culture.

Also, your boss cutting you off with “no excuses” before you could even respond to his concern? And then sending the issue to HR, instead of just … managing you, as your manager? Why on earth?

And someone hectoring a colleague in a public meeting for “not being ready” for their responsibilities?

All of this is bizarrely adversarial, and not normal for most workplaces. So I’m not surprised that you’ve landed on just shrugging if someone is wrong and figuring that they can handle the natural consequences on their own without help from you — particularly when your help is so likely to be thrown back in your face.

I don’t think your solution is unprofessional, generally speaking. It does have the potential to make you look bad in certain situations if you apply it across the board, like if you clearly had the opportunity to prevent a mistake from being made and chose not to. But speaking up once, getting shut down, and then shrugging and not pursuing it further, like with the hex code? Completely reasonable in an environment like this. In fact, it’s an inevitable result of this kind of work culture.

My one caution for you is that if you move to a company that doesn’t operate like this, you’ll need to readjust at that point; this isn’t a habit you should carry over to a more functional company. In a healthier environment, what you’re doing would come across as disengaged/uninvested. In your current environment (where people frankly seem unhinged), it makes sense.

The post can I just let difficult coworkers be wrong? appeared first on Ask a Manager.