Thursday, July 24, 2025

Iceberg Behaviour—There’s More Going on with People than What We See

If someone judged you on your worst day at work, what would they think?

I recently caught up on the British mystery series Unforgotten, which follows a team of police detectives as they investigate homicide cold cases. In the most recent season, the team gets a new boss, who finds out the morning of her first day that her husband has been having an affair. Ouch.

Understandably, she’s not exactly on her game and ends up starting off on a very wrong foot with her new team. Only when she and her second-in-command (who’s been dealing with his own personal issues) open up to each other about what they’re going through can they start building a more productive working relationship so they can move forward and close the case.

It’s not ideal if your worst day on the job is also your first day! But it’s important to remember that when you’re interacting with people at work, they may be dealing with any number of things in their personal life that you’re not aware of.

Just like you can only see the tip of an iceberg, there might be a whole lot going on beneath the surface of their bad behaviour. Maybe they just received a difficult medical diagnosis, or one of their personal relationships is on the rocks. Perhaps something from their past continues to impact their present in ways they may not even fully realize. Or maybe they’re just having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and you just happened to get caught in the crossfire.

Now, none of these things is an excuse to act rudely to people, and an ongoing pattern of disrespectful behaviour may need to be addressed. But if your coworker, or your boss, or the client, customer, or resident you’re working with is unusually irritable—or even if grumpiness seems to be their default setting—it’s worth reminding yourself that the behaviour you see is only the 10 percent of the iceberg above the waves.

Being mindful of the 90 percent that you can’t see can help you to show grace, patience, and compassion to those you encounter in your day to day, knowing that we all have days when we bring things to work with us that we’d rather check at the front door.

It’s not always easy to respond to someone else’s poor behaviour with empathy and kindness. In fact, it’s a lot easier to rise to their attitude and snap back with some choice words of your own.

But when the momentary satisfaction passes, you may regret it—especially if you find out later that there was a reason behind the rudeness. And even if you don’t ever get the full picture, showing grace in the moment may mean more to the other person than you’ll ever know.

Because sooner or later, you’ll be the one who’s really going through it. And when you’re at your worst, you’ll be grateful for the people in your workplace who extend you the same benefit of the doubt.

Iceberg Behaviour—There’s More Going on with People than What We See

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