My boss told me 'stop trying to be the smartest person in the room' and it really stung

Last week during my quarterly review, my manager said I need to stop correcting people in meetings. She said I come off like I'm trying to prove I know more than everyone else. I thought I was just sharing good ideas and catching mistakes before they became problems. But she showed me an example from a Monday standup where I cut off a junior dev to point out a flaw in his plan. I honestly didn't realize how it looked from the outside. Now I'm wondering if I've been shooting myself in the foot for the last 2 years at this company. Has anyone else gotten feedback like this that made you totally rethink how you act at work?

2 comments

2 Comments

patricia_hayes11d ago

Yeah I read somewhere that some people just talk to think out loud and others take it as a personal attack or something like that.

brian_coleman10d ago

Oh man, that reminds me of my buddy Dave... he does that all the time during poker nights. He'll just blurt out something like "well that hand was garbage" while he's still figuring out what to do on the table... and the rest of us just stare at him like he's talking to ghosts or something. I'm pretty sure he's just working through the math out loud, but it comes off real passive aggressive sometimes. Actually caught myself doing it the other day driving home from work... muttered something about the traffic and my wife thought I was mad at her when I was just talking to myself about the highway.