go easy on my friend!

[aroraborealis]

Sometimes, people around me say really terrible things about themselves. I mean, okay, we all do it, right? But sometimes people say them out loud, to me, in a way that I think is meant to be apologetic, but also seems to be seeking at least an implicit agreement. "I'm such an idiot!" you might say, after making a mistake, or "Wow, I'm a jerk,"

Comments

[traballenguas]

You are a good boss.

I had this experience last night. Went out to dinner with my mother and some dude left his iPhone on the table. I went out after him, and he thanked me and said "I'm an idiot", which caught me completely off guard. I think I said "No problem", but it was awkward.

In the workplace environment it is, of course, embedded in a relationship that you can build on and work through. I like your thoughts on this.

My boss made a huge error a few weeks before I left the job in CA, and I found it. It was awkward, and I felt bad for him, but I didn't really know how to express sympathy, other than vague things like "there are always mistakes, that is why it is important to build fault-tolerant systems". Kinda not about feelings at all, but it was a very testosterone-fueled place in some ways, and something else would/could have made things tricky for me. Sometimes sympathy can be interpreted as indirect criticism, if someone is really touchy.

[amber_phoenix]

With my employees, I will often casually rephrase something, but I tend to leave it at that rather than directly discussing the issue of self-denigration. I spend some considerable effort coaching people in productivity and great communication, and this work into that conversation as well.

If someone does this in communication with customers or other managers, I do address it more directly in a "please don't make the team look bad" way.

[sunstealer]

This is similar to what I did when supervising staff. I tended to pass by the "wow i'm stupid" comments and simply address the facts of the actual (or perceived) problem and make sure the person in question knew I was happy with their overall work. If the self-denigration was frequent, I'd bring it up, but not in a moment when they were saying or feeling the bad stuff. Wait a bit until they're past the negative mindset. It's easier for people to absorb positive feedback when they're not actively feeling bad about themselves.

[kcatalyst]

I think, possibly wrongly, there's a useful distinction to be made between self-denigration and self-critique or self-acknowledgement. When I forget something, it's not uncommon for me to say "I'm such an idiot." or "I'm not very smart." But it's not at all the case that I think I'm a stupid person about everything. I have a faulty memory for specific kinds of things and it bites me on the ass a lot in ways that I try to manage. But I'm good at other stuff and am lucky enough that a lot of that stuff falls into Smart Person territory that people give me money and respect for

I think that's a very important point

[drwex]

What I read you to say is that there isn't a good generic response - that the response depends on what one knows of the speaker.

My own personal style is to acknowledge and move on. I'll usually respond with something like "don't sweat it, let's figure out how to..." I imagine that it helps the speaker to hear me respond directly but not dwell on it, and being positive- or forward-focused is usually something people can agree on, regardless of what they've done.

[lillibet]

I think that this is a very damaging habit and, as you note, particularly relevant for women--in the workplace and other spheres.

At the theatre, which is somewhat different from a workplace, but where I have a similar managing role, I find myself often dealing with this. One of the responses I find useful is a positive contraction, like "Actually, I think you're pretty clever." If it's a pattern, then I try to bring it up at a non-vulnerable time, saying something like "I've noticed you run yourself down fairly often and that's a pattern you might want to think about." In a more friendly context, I often pull out the quotation about "If a friend said things like that to you, would s/he still be your friend?"

May we all treat ourselves more kindly.

Three thoughts

[harimad]

I interpret these statements as an apology, to which one is expected to say "Not at all" or equivalent. IOW, the speaker expects to be contradicted rather than agreed with