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And thanks for listening. Welcome to the HBR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green.

Today I'm talking with Muriel Mengon Wilkins,

co-founder and managing partner of Paravis Partners, an executive coaching and leadership development

firm. She is the co-author with Amy Jen Sue of the book Own The Room and is a frequent contributor

to HBR.

Muriel, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Thank you, Sarah. Glad to be here.

So over the years, HBR has published a number of items on sort of what I think of

as the big three personality irritations at work,

micromanaging, passive aggressive people, or dealing with someone who has, you know, very

little emotional intelligence. But recently you have opened up some new ground for us, which is helping readers understand when

maybe they actually are suffering from, they may harbor one of these sort of irritating

traits. Why is it so difficult for us to recognize

when we ourselves are the problem? Well you know that we can go back in history and

see that that's been a quintessential problem for a lot of people. The ability to

observe others is sort of a past time for many people, right? It's so easy to do, it's so

easy to recognize not only the nuances that others have, but also their faults and at times even

know what their successes are. But looking at yourself in the mirror can be quite

...