I have dealt with this in every professional job I have had (all 3 of them) except the last one. It always came up on my reviews: I exceeded expectations in every area but I needed to work on not being so "condescending" to co-workers. It baffled me as I never felt that I was being condescending to anyone.
At my last job, I was surrounded by brilliant, self confident and productive professionals and in 5 years the issue never came up. My last year, our company was purchased by a huge bureaucratic international company and many new faces showed up in our building. Once again, the comment came up in my review but it was couched in a "I don't agree with this comment from my observations of you, and of all of the participants in your peer review, only one person said this, so take it with a grain of salt but...apparently you appear to be arrogant and condescending at times".
From this I take it that people who are less motivated, brilliant, self confident etc, etc, see me as a bit threatening and they feel inferior around me so they assume I am intentionally making them feel that way. (Wow, that does sound arrogant!)
My personality type is such that I find the majority of typical office "chit chat" almost insufferable - phony and pointless. After researching aspergers syndrome for my daughter I have found many traits that I identify with, and that is one of them. Unfortunately, some people think something is wrong with you or that you are snubbing them if you don't make an effort at this and that is one area I have learned to "mask".
I tend to be a very blunt, to the point, no nonsense person in the workplace so I resent having to tiptoe around "sensitive" people but I learned that it is necessary in order to get the best product from the team. We all participated in the "DISC profile" and posted our results on our office doors for a month. I learned which people need buttering up with a question about their weekend or a joke before being asked for assistance and which people (like me) would rather dispense with such time wasting banter and get straight to the point. It was very enlightening and did make a huge difference in how we all related to each other. The best part...that guy that stopped by my office every single morning and asked "working hard or hardly working?" ahahaha, finally stopped when he realized how annoying that was to me.
You wouldn't know how blunt and to the point I am from my lengthy posts would you? ;-)
Nik
