By Amber Bradley, Editor-in-Chief | TalkLPnews
There’s something uniquely awful about being misunderstood. Not the small stuff, where someone mishears a joke or takes a text the wrong way. I mean the real kind, where a person has decided who you are and no evidence to the contrary is going to move them off that belief. You can over-explain. You can show up differently. You can produce receipts. Doesn’t matter. They’ve already written the story in their head, and you’re the villain in chapter two.
If you’ve worked in this industry long enough, you’ve lived this. The peer who thinks LP is out to get their department. The executive who decided early you were “difficult” and built every interaction on that foundation. The vendor who convinced themselves you torpedoed their deal. The former colleague who tells a version of a story you barely recognize.
It’s exhausting. And if we’re being honest, it hurts. We spend a lot of our careers building credibility one investigation, one case, one honest conversation at a time. When someone tosses all of that out because of a preconceived notion they formed in a ten-minute meeting, it feels like a gut punch.
I was reminded of this reading a CNBC piece by communication experts Kathy and Ross Petras about how to handle rude people. The phrases they recommend are useful (“I see your point,” “Could you repeat that?” “You seem frustrated, is something wrong?”), and yes, they work. I’ve used a few myself this year. But reading through their list, I kept thinking about the harder version of this problem. The one the phrases don’t quite reach.
Because most rude behavior isn’t random. It’s downstream of something. Somebody has decided something about you, and the rudeness is the symptom, not the disease. You can de-escalate the moment with the right words, absolutely. As LP professionals, we’re trained for that. Slow your breathing, lower your voice, acknowledge the person, redirect the conversation. We teach this to our teams.
But what do you do about the story they’ve already written?
Here’s what I’ve come to believe after almost twenty years of watching people navigate this industry. You can’t argue someone out of a belief when they’re not open to any other truth. If the preconceived notion was built on feelings, logic won’t dismantle it. If it was built on one bad interaction, a hundred good ones might not outweigh it. And if it was built on someone else’s story about you, you may never even get the chance to tell your side. Which is most likely.
What’s left? A few things that have helped me.
- Stop auditioning. Over-explaining yourself to someone who has already made up their mind just gives them more material. Answer the question, do the work, move on.
- Let the work speak. Not in a martyr way. In a patient way because reputations are built on actual results. Results always outlast opinions built on assumptions. It just takes longer than we want.
- Find the one person who will tell you the truth. Sometimes the misunderstanding has a kernel of truth you can’t see on your own. A trusted peer can help you separate the fair critique from the unfair narrative.
- Protect your own story. Be careful about the version of yourself you rehearse in your head when no one is watching. If you start telling yourself the story they believe, it becomes harder to show up as the person you actually are.
- Accept that not everyone gets to know you. Some people will walk through their entire career with the wrong idea of who you are. That is their loss, and it is allowed to be their loss. Move on because guess what? You’re not for everyone – and that’s ok.
The Petras phrases will get you through the meeting. They’ll help you keep your composure when someone is being a jerk in front of your team. They’re tactical, and they matter. Use them.
But for the bigger stuff, the stuff that keeps you up at 2am replaying a conversation from six months ago, the answer isn’t a phrase. It’s a decision. The decision to stop spending your finite energy trying to correct a record some people will never read.
Your challenge this week
Think of one person in your professional life who has you wrong. Then ask yourself honestly: is it worth another minute of your energy trying to change their mind? If yes, go do the work. If no, let it go and pour that energy into the people who actually see you.