Smirking in Meetings 8

[ivymike]

I was in a fairly serious meeting yesterday, and one of my esteemed coworkers seemed to be smirking constantly and inappropriately throughout the meeting. I've never met the guy before, so I don't know whether his face always looks like that, but to me it seemed that he was going to giggle out loud at any second. It looked as though somebody was whispering dirty jokes in his ear the whole time. We were discussing a potentially serious product issue with an extremely short window for resolution. Anyone else ever seen this sort of thing before?

It's my impression that regularly giving the wrong body signals will be in impediment to ones progress.

 

[wes616]

Did you look at his ear to see if he had one of those tiny radio headphones? Maybe he was listening to howard stern.

Wes C.
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Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

 

[MadMango]

It might have just been a nervous twitch. I've seen that before.

[green]"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."[/green]
Steven K. Roberts, Technomad
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[Comcokid]

You're not talking about me, are you ???


Of course you're not, but I was smirking in a meeting the other day. Sometimes meetings are just impossible.

Sometimes it's just too hard to sit through a meeting and not think about how Dilbert-like the discussion is.

Sometimes I feel like an anthropologist observing another culture and trying to figure it out.

Sometimes I feel like a psychiatrist trying to analyze what a person is really thinking or fearing, and not really stating outloud.

Sometimes I feel like a neurologist trying to diagnose which part of a person's brain must be impaired.

And, sometimes I am the paranoid basket case in a meeting, because I'm realizing "Oh No! the consensus is making the worst decision possible, and it'll be up to me to implement it!

 

[0707]

ivymike


You said on your post that your “esteemed coworker” behaves inappropriately?

And then you said you’ve never met him before?

Was the meeting really important? Or it was one of those bla, bla, and bla meetings? If so maybe the guy was still laughing about the last joke he was told

luis

 

[wes616]

i do think ivymike's meeting was an important meeting guys... it said so in his o.p.

But maybe we should ask if the meeting was as important to mike's colleague as it was to mike himself.

Wes C.
------------------------------
Light travels faster than sound. That's why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

 

[ctopher]

Watch him in other meetings. If he continues to still do it, it's a nervous twitch.
I work with several people with strange nervous twitches. Drives me crazy!

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-06)

 

[Latexman]

Maybe he had beans to eat before the meeting.



Good luck,
Latexman

 

[KENAT]

Maybe he just knew something you didn't .

 

[ivymike]

if the meeting was as important to mike's colleague as it was to mike himself

There's the crux of the matter - if he didn't understand the importance of the meeting (my interpretation of his expressions) then somebody a step or two up his chain of command is probably overdue for some redirection. If he DID understand its importance, then what the heck did he find so funny about it?

esteemed... you've never met him before
The company I work for has LOTS of engineers. This guy sits in a different building than I do. He is, from what I gather, well regarded within his own circles.

I've gotten feedback on multiple occasions that my facial expressions and body language indicate frustration with the conversation at hand... that's not always what I'm trying to get across... I've been advised that I should avoid appearing frustrated, even when people JUST DON'T FRIGGEN GET IT. It's a related difficulty.

 

[Vaporware]

Probably behavioral rather than a sly put down of the meeting.

If it's a serious thing to you, Why not ask? It's ok to be frank with people about their behavior, I know I do things that other people have asked to be clarified. If it's not a big enough deal to ask, then let it go. Maybe he heard a great joke that day and couldn't get it out of his head.

 

[IRstuff]

I agree with that. If you don't ask, you'll never know for sure.

You could couch it as something more like, "It appeared that you had some unvoiced concerns at the meeting we had. I'd like to address them if you're willing."

TTFN

 

[kontiki99]

ivymike,

Not to be contentious, but it sounds like your problem. You just need to get over it. Who cares, stay on task.

 

[KENAT]

ivy mike,

Is yours the kind of place with a lot of politics. Not everyone is up front etc?

If so then Kontiki99 he may well have something to worry about.

At my latest place learning to understand what isn't said is vital for this reason.

Ken

 

[FACS]

He probably gets nervous sitting in a big conference room; he was imagining everyone naked to make himself feel better.

Did he drop his pencil a lot?

Charlie

http://www.facsco.com

 

[waskillywabbit]

Next meeting...scratch your nose and give him the finger.

Brian

 

[tygerdawg]

If you don't know him, don't judge too quickly. He may be a complete unprofessional jerk, or he could have the Peace of Christ, Contentment of Buddha, or something similar in him. I had a similar recent experience.

I was my company's sole onsite representative for a very contentious machine problem that was costing the customer lots of money per day. Over the course of three weeks' investigation using Six Sigma methods, I proved the major cause was due to the customer's own people & processes. They fought this notion tooth and nail, but I ultimately proved it through patient experimentation and data analysis and took them from 35% scrap to 0%. But every day we had to have a conference call across two continents and three companies with High Level Managers attending. The very first day I was in the Plant Manager's office with him, the Tech Services Mgr, and the Mfg Engr for the process. During the course of the conference call, the Plant Mgr was screaming at the phone, and all three of the customers were smirking, rolling their eyes, chuckling under their breath, etc., in response to discussions from my company's engineers, managers, and salesmen. Very inappropriate, unprofessional, and disrepectful behavior that had no place in this very serious situation. When I was asked for my opinion on a particular point, I started my response by saying, for all to hear, "Well, I am having to endure a lot of smirking, eye rolling, and other unprofessional behavior in this room, but I think blah blah blah."

Gutsy, maybe foolish, move on my part in retrospect. But it shut those clowns up and exposed the situation I had to endure every day. I joined the remaining conference calls from my car in the parking lot every day after that. After it was all settled and done, I got praise from the Parent Company's Director of Purchasing and a "pat on the back" bonus from my president. Now that same Jerk Plant Mgr likes it when I show up at his site.

Two morals: (1) don't judge too quickly, that is the job of Someone Else. (2) Stay professional always. You will be remembered for a few years for grace under pressure, but no one will know or care in a hundred years.

Besides, it's just work.

TygerDawg

 

[ivymike]

In that meeting, I was sitting in the back of the room keeping my mouth shut. There were several managers multiple org levels above me doing a bit of "serious debating."

I didn't respond to Mr Smirky's behavior, nor would I have if I was a speaker in the meeting. It's up to him to look good or bad on his own. This is often a "political" place, but my position w/respect to this particular issue is not one that gives me great concern.

My goal in mentioning the event here was not to solicit advice about how I could better handle the specific past event, or future ones like it, but to start a discussion about the importance of making sure that one's body language sends the right message.

I gather that gossiping about possible intentions is the natural course of the thread in this forum, so have fun with it. Maybe he was delighted to see the object of his conspiracies come to fruition. The world may never know.

 

[JStephen]

I have been specifically asked to attend meetings that had absolutely nothing whatever to do with my work. Hopefully, I had more of the bored/Peace of Christ look than a smirk, but who knows?

 

[kontiki99]

The way I see it, it doesn’t matter what the political environment is.

I think trying to read peoples minds is a waste of time.

Forming false impressions and obsessing about what might be going on with other people is a loosing game.

If you stay focused on the work at hand, and do it in good faith and that's the best you can do.

If that’s not enough, so be it.

If the firm you work for profits from your work, they should reward you to keep you there.

If they play games by testing your willingness to leave or accept substandard wages or conditions, get your ducks in a row and leave.

If they loose money on your work, you need to be fired or relocated to a position you can handle.

If people just don’t like you, who cares? Get a dog!

You need to keep your skill set up and your finances in order so that you don't become a slave to worrying about every one in the office with an attitude or an odd looking face.

I respect the abilities of my co-workers and they are nice enough people, but beyond common humanitarian concerns, I don’t really care too much about what’s going on with most of them. The chances are, they have some problems I’m glad I don’t have and assets I wish I had.

I like my job, but my decision to go there every morning is driven by the fact they pay me. They keep renewing the two week contracts, giving me raises and treating me fairly with regard to training, promotion opportunities and time off.

If they stop, I reevaluate the situation.

End of story. Why make it hard?