Stop, Think, Respond: Marsha Petrie Sue's 'The Reactor Factor'

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WE'VE ALL FANTASIZED about telling off our Mr. Burns-like boss or putting that idea-stealing, credit-hogging co-worker in his place. And the stress we're feeling amid corporate layoffs, shrinking salaries and rising unemployment only adds fuel to those fantasy fires.

But before we open our mouths and say something we can't take back (we're talking to you, Kanye West and Serena Williams), workplace communications expert Marsha Petrie Sue advises we stop and think about just what hissy fits really accomplish. In her new book,"The Reactor Factor: How to Handle Difficult Work Situations Without Going Nuclear" ($24.95, Wiley, out Oct. 26), she offers tips and techniques for keeping your cool no matter what comes your way.

» EXPRESS: What should we all remember before reacting to any workplace situation?
» SUE: Every time you make a choice, the outcome is yours. If you don't like your outcomes, make better choices. It's personal responsibility. If people took more personal responsibility for their choices, life would be so much easier for them and for everybody else. I am so tired of people not taking personal responsibility.

» EXPRESS: What's the difference between reacting and responding?
» SUE: Reacting is knee-jerk; responding is learned. People react because they're too lazy to dig into their tool kit of skills and figure out what's the best approach or what's going to work best. Responding is taking a minute to think about all you've learned and just making a better choice.

» EXPRESS: What kind of reactions will always get you in trouble?
» SUE: When you let your mouth overshoot your brain. People just don't stop and think what the repercussions are going to be. They open their mouth and get in trouble. For some reason, we've gotten to be very lazy thinkers, and we don't really think about what's going to come out of our pie holes when we open them. Then we wind up having to apologize, and that's crazy.

» EXPRESS: How is it possible to stay positive when so much of what we hear right now is negative?
» SUE: The first thing to do is to validate information. So many people, when they hear rumors, they don't validate the information; they expand on it. That becomes the grapevine, the gossip, the office politics. When you get entrenched in that, it drives your negativity into a downward spiral. When people get involved in gossip and the grapevine, they're cutting their own throats.

» EXPRESS: So, how do you avoid getting caught up in it?
» SUE: It's really very easy to get pulled into it, because it's interesting. But we just have to make a decision with ourselves. I had to do this in my corporate life, because you can get sucked into the spiral so quickly. Every time someone would come up to me and say something like, "Did you hear what Joanie did?" I said, "Let's get Joanie and ask her; let's validate that." If you do that, people stop bringing up that garbage to you, so then you don't have to worry about getting sucked in, because you're not a party to it.

» EXPRESS: Why are there so many difficult people in the workplace these days?
» SUE: I think it has a lot to do with leadership. Any time leaders don't have or make time to give true appraisals, they get in a hurry and ask the person to write their own and they'll approve it. We're all going to give ourselves glorious appraisals, and then we feel entitled because we've been validated. A lot of it is caused from people's feeling that they are owed their job, that the company owes them, which is not true.

» EXPRESS: How can you handle a layoff gracefully?
» SUE: It depends 100 percent on your self-confidence. My stepdaughter, who's in banking, has been riffed because of acquisitions and such four times. Every time she gets laid off, she says, "It's a great opportunity for me to find a better job." She goes into it with a positive attitude. If you do get laid off, make sure you understand what a really good resume is. It's not about what you've done but about what you bring to a potential new employer. What is the talent or skill that you are going to bring to them to help them run their business more effectively?

Written by Express contributor Beth Luberecki
Photo courtesy Marsha Petrie Sue