One day, while venting about an employee to my husband, he stopped me mid-sentence and said, with a chuckle: “Silvia, this is your pattern. When you first start working with someone, you love them — you sing their praises. But after a while, all you can see is what they’re doing wrong.”
Ugh. That one hit me.
I knew it was true. And because I’m me, I had to dig into the why of it all.
I was a psych major in college. I eventually realized a career as a therapist wasn’t for me, but I never stopped studying human behavior. And what I’ve come to understand over the years is this: our patterns are built from a carefully constructed web of beliefs and values, reinforced by years of lived experience.
What shows up at work is simply the natural reaction of all that inner world bubbling to the surface. When an employee annoys us, often, it’s because they’ve triggered something in us — some behavior that sets off a chain reaction, leaving us frustrated in the moment.
The good news? We can change. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly but the key is understanding that we have far more control over our reactions than we think.
So let me say it plainly: if an employee is “driving you nuts,” that’s usually a you problem, not a them problem.
Here’s the thing — you can’t change them, and frankly, it’s not your job to try. Your responsibility is to set clear expectations* about their role: what they’re accountable for, and how they’re expected to operate. The rest — the quirks, the personality, the “them-ness” of it all — is just being human. And as I always say, you can’t take the human out of the human being. So you need to figure out how to let it go.
How do you let it go?
Start with the neuroscience.
When we get annoyed or “triggered,” it’s often because we’re operating in survival mode. Survival mode kicks in when we’re overloaded and dysregulated — and the more dysregulated we become, the less tolerance we have for the little things. That proverbial pebble in your shoe goes from a mild annoyance to something that stops you from walking altogether.
I cover more of the neuroscience behind this — and five practical tools to use when you find yourself stuck in survival mode — in my post, Triggered by Triggers.
For me, it started with pausing. The moment I noticed myself getting annoyed with my employee, I used the tools in my toolkit to reregulate. And slowly, my relationship with him began to shift. I started to see him as a whole human being — and let his idiosyncrasies simply be his.
But the deeper work was still ahead.
Over time, I realized this wasn’t really about him at all. It was a much older pattern — one rooted in early experiences of feeling like I was never quite enough. Achievements were celebrated for a moment, then quickly overshadowed by whatever “deficit” came next.
And somewhere along the way, I’d started measuring my employee the same way I measured myself.
The bottom line: when an employee is driving you nuts, treat it as a signal. Not that something is wrong with them — but that there’s something worth working through in yourself.
Had I not taken the time to reflect on why this pattern existed in me, I might still be letting it quietly drive my leadership today.
*Listen to E8: You don’t have a Talent problem (Yet) dropping June 22, 2026 for a how to guide on setting expectations.
