I can't believe she just asked me that. What do I do?
Nosy coworkers. We face them at some point in our careers,
which is why you need to know how to deal with those nosy coworkers.
Stay tuned.
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Few things make someone more difficult to work with than being a nosy coworker.
When you have a rude coworker asking you nosy questions,
you might feel like doing this. "That's not your business!"
But you know that's going to create a whole bunch of office gossip.
So how do you deal with a nosy coworker with tact,
and maybe even grace? With these six strategies of course.
And you'll want to make sure you stay all the way to the end,
because I haven't heard any other career coaches talking about tip six,
which is actually going to turn the frustration into an opportunity.
If you're ready to find out what those strategies are,
click that like button and let's jump right into it.
So first of all, and I guess this is kind of a strategy,
it's something you definitely need to know before you move on,
and that is to know what kind of nosy coworker you are dealing with.
Really this breaks down into three categories. First is Bored Betty.
Bored Betty is generally not a malicious or a mean person.
She just doesn't have a lot going on,
and this is how she's dealing with her boredom.
Bored Betty's pure motivation is simply to keep herself entertained,
and to make the day pass just a little bit faster. Next, we have Rude Ruth.
Rude Ruth doesn't necessarily have bad intentions,
but she does lack tact on social skills, pretty much entirely.
Rude.Ruth is actually super easy to spot. She tends to be really pushy,
and she's one of those people that might just be a minor annoyance all of the
time.
Finally, we have Malicious Mark.
Malicious Mark is gathering information in order to weaponize it against you.
This nosy coworker is gathering information in order to gain more power
by trying to take yours. And side note, this is the worst one to deal with.
Once you've identified, if you're a nosy coworker is a Bored Betty,
a Rude Ruth or a Malicious Mark,
it's time to move into the strategies to actually deal with them.
The first strategy is to avoid them.
You want to avoid your nosy coworker no matter what type they are
like a hot car in summertime with leather seats when you're wearing shorts.
However, that might be easier said than done. Because let's face it,
you're at work. You work with this person,
they might even sit at the cube or the desk next to you,
so avoiding them entirely might not be possible.
But what you want to do is minimize your personal interactions with them.
The reason why avoiding them is so effective is minimizing
your actual time with them is minimizing their opportunity to ask you nosy
questions. However, in those circumstances where you do bump into them,
you need to move on to strategy two which is to an exit plan.
When you haven't been able to avoid your nosy coworker,
and you're faced with their awkward questions,
you want to have an exit plan in place so that you can get away as quickly as
possible. When you bump into them at the coffee machine,
and they choose to indulge their tendency towards TMI questions,
be ready to need to reply to a really important email right away and quickly
excuse yourself. Because unfortunately strategies like this won't work...
But something like this probably will, "Oh, apologies.
I need to get back to this question from my customer right away.
I'll talk to you in a little bit. "
You don't want to wait until you're actually in the circumstance.
In order to find new an excuse to get away,
think about the scenarios where you encounter this person,
and different strategies that you can undertake in order to get away. The email,
excuse a safety call from a friend. However,
in some circumstances you are going to be stuck
and that's when you're going to need something like strategy three,
which is to answer their nosy question,
just not the question that they actually asked. For example,
did your nosy coworker ask a super personal, incredibly invasive question?
Answer it, And by answer it,
I mean completely misconstrue it and answer that misconstrued question.
And feel free to be incredibly detailed here. For example, "
"You've been marrired a while, when are you going to have babies?"
"Well,
we've talked about it a lot and I don't think we're going to have a Mercedes.
I mean, we live in the city. Parking is so sparse..
We really take the subway everywhere and whenever we need a car,
we just rent a car or something along those lines.
So I just don't think a Mercedes is in our future.
We're going to stick to the subway for now." In most instances,
this is going to completely veer the conversation away.
And your nosy coworker won't be willing to re ask that
overly invasive question that they just asked you again.
You will encounter the odd nosy coworker who will double down and ask it again.
And that's when you need strategy four, which is to deflect like a politician.
If you've ever paid any attention to anything political,
you've seen something like this. Not only do they answer a different question,
the question that they actually want to talk about,
kind of like what I just showed you in the last strategy,
but they also actually segue into the conversation that they actually want to
have.
They assert the question that they want to answer. S.
o in my last example, since I started talking about a Mercedes,
when asked about babies, I can start asking about import cars and,
what their preference is or some sort of detailed thing.
I don't know anything about cars, so I can't really go down that rabbit hole.
But I hope you get my point. Ideally when you do do this,
you are going to bring the conversation into a professional realm.
So if you do have the ability to misconstrue the conversation
and then bring the conversation into a place within the professional realm,
say about a project or an initiative that you are working on together,
it is going to be really effective in changing the conversation. Plus,
this actually gives you opportunity to showcase things that
you want to showcase to that nosy coworker who's probably an office gossip as
well.
This my friend is actually giving you an opportunity to expand your profile and
your status at work.
If you can bring the conversation into something that you actually stand out
for, chances are this is someone who is having conversations
about these topics with multiple people.
And if you are trying to raise your status at work to stand out,
I highly recommend checking out the new resource that I have coming out soon.
The link is in the description down below.
The fifth strategy is to actually confront it.
Now there's actually two flavors in two different ways of doing this.
First is with humor. Being funny about something is magic.
It's approachable, it's non-confrontational.
Even when you are being confrontational
and it diffuses the situation in a way that doesn't make anyone feel bad.
For example, if you come out of your performance review meeting,
and your nosy coworker asks you how it went, y.
ou might respond with something like, "I'd love to tell you,
but it's top secret. " [laugh track]
Everyone has a merry laugh and goes on about their day.
And I'd love to hear from you.
Do you have a humorous way of saying it's not your business?
If you do drop it into the comments down below. Unfortunately,
the humorous way doesn't work in all situations. And honestly,
sometimes we need to be a little bit more serious
when we are actually confronting the issue.
Because sometimes you do need to be more direct. For example,
let's say that a tragic personal event has just occurred,
and your nosy coworker immediately comes up to you
and starts asking questions that you don't really want to answer about it.
This is something that actually happened to me recently,
when a friend passed away and I was repeatedly asked by peers about how he died.
It wasn't a conversation I wanted to have with anyone professionally.
In situations like this, something that is simple,
elegant and effective to say is, "I really appreciate your concern,
but I don't want to talk about it right now." And just leave it at that.
Unless you're actually dealing with a Aalicious Mark who wants to inflict pain
on you, they are going to drop the topic like it's a hot potato.
And that actually brings me into strategy six, which is to use it in your favor.
Nosy coworkers aren't always just nosy about your personal life.
Often they're nosy about the work stuff as well,
and this is something that you can completely use to your advantage,
and this is something that I don't see being discussed enough within the career
success industry.
Your nosy coworker is just trying to be in the nosy so that they can disseminate
information,. So keep them in the know.
Tell them what is going on,
and use this as an opportunity to highlight your success, your impact,
and your potential.
Sure. Maybe malicious Mark isn't going to let anyone know
all the awesome things that you've been up to.
But I bet that Bored Betty and Rude Ruth will.
And what better way to deal with a nosy coworker,
than to actually turn them into an advocate and an
ally for your own career advancement and opportunity?
Because if you're going to be part of the office gossip,
you might as well make it productive.
I know that nosy coworkers are generally coinciding with a lot of office gossip.
If you do want a deep dive into how to deal with office,
I highly recommend you click the subscribe button because
that's a video I'm putting out next week and I know you won't want to miss it.
Dealing with nosy coworkers is just one of the elements of dealing with office
politics. If you're like most and you can improve your office politics game
to help you deal with the office gossip and nosy coworkers,
go and check out this video right now for more strategies to help you become
more office politics savvy. In the meantime,
I want to know what strategy you're going to put into action right away.
Let me know in the comments down below.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.
[bloopers]