Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

When confronted with non-sensical information, first ask to know what the other person knows.

This first happened to me over 20 years ago. I was sitting in a medical office at a government agency. A doctor was reading my file and talking to me about my health. He made a few comments that didn’t make any sense to me. Then he looked at me, looked at my file, looked at me again, and said, “You’ve lost a lot of weight recently.”

Something clicked in my mind out of no where and I asked, “Whose file are you reading?”

The doctor’s response led us to discover that he was reading the file of another Dwayne Phillips – not me.

Fast forward a dozen years; I am sitting in an internal job interview. A person on the interview panel tells me, “We are a bit concerned about your stability. You changed jobs three times in one year.”

Flashbacks to the doctor’s office led me to ask to see what the person was seeing. Sure enough, my official file showed that I had changed jobs three times in one year. I explained that I had not changed jobs, but that the organization had changed its name three times in one year.

These are silly misunderstandings, right? They don’t happen often, right?

I answer “wrong” to both questions. Misunderstandings happen often. Whether we label them as “silly” or “serious” is a matter of opinion. It is silly when it hurts you, but serious when it hurts me.

If you are sitting in the same room with a person who is judging you, you are fortunate. Take advantage of your good fortune and ask to know what the other person knows. Often, they are holding incorrect information in their hands.