Help! I Can't Stop Insulting My Co-Workers

Writing in the Globe and Mail, David Eddie hears from a reader who is brutally honest with his co-workers and always paying the price.  The reader writes:

I put my foot in my mouth all the time, especially at work. I told my last boss that one of his newly hired executives was a dummy – and I got fired. A month into another job, I humiliated a partner in front of the whole team. I didn't intend to personally attack any of these people. I just saw the damage they were doing to the company and didn't respect them for that.

I am, however, tired of coming across as arrogant and a loose cannon. Sometimes I just get blinded by a moral superiority complex. My current boss has offered to hire a coach. But I am so embarrassed that it has become hard to go about my (high profile) job spontaneously and well.

One executive who fired me told me I was the most competent person he’d ever worked with, which, without social skills, is clearly not enough.

Eddie responds:

This question was signed “the unvoluntary bitch,” and of course there are all kinds of tart-tongued remarks and acidulous observations I could make here. But that’s too easy. (Though I have to bite my lip so hard it hurts re: “unvoluntary.”)

Instead, I’ll merely say: Madam, I feel compassion for you.

You clearly have a monkey on your back – a monkey called pride, hubris or, to use more biblical terminology, “vainglory.”

Speaking of the Bible, you know how it says pride goeth before a fall? My own version, for your Eddiefication™, is: No matter how much of a hotshot you may think you are, hubris will turn you into an Icarus, and you will find yourself frantically flapping your melting wings in vain as you plummet to the cornfields before you can say: “Outplacement counsellor? Why would I, of all people, need an outplacement counsellor?”

By your own testimony, your career has been Icarus-ized before. You’ve been fired for calling someone a “dummy.” But who would you say is the real “dummy”? You, or the object of your contempt, who may be laughing it up, popping bottles of Cristal on the poop deck of your ex-boss’s yacht as we speak?

And now it looks like it could be happening again.

Okay, I’ve got some bad news, some good news and some just plain news.

Let’s start with the just plain news: Humiliating people in front of others is not “putting your foot in your mouth.” It’s a willful act of aggression. Foot-in-mouth disease (which I’ve “lived with” all my life) implies a lack of intent. You are clearly full of seething intent. ...

Click here to read the rest of Eddie's advice.