Have you ever watched a pot-stirrer at work?
Yeah, they exist everywhere and in almost every organization, and they really can bring down the spirit of everyone around them because pot stirrers make it unsafe to just have great days and lots of sanity and things that work. They say things that sound innocent but aren’t intended to be innocent at all like “do you know Julie just got that project, do you think that’s fair?” or “gosh, I don’t mean anything bad by this, but Jim Bob just got promoted and I sure think he doesn’t have what it takes to make that happen”.
Those kinds of statements create all kinds of craziness within an organization because they’re not direct requests of someone who can make a difference. Ask yourself if you ever stirred the pot and, if you have, forgive yourselves of everything from the past because you can’t change that. But what you can do, alternatively, is decide never to be a pot-stirrer again.
Your workplace needs you to bring the highest level of integrity to what you do. And so, it can’t just sound like it seems innocent, it must really be innocent – and you know the difference.