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[quote=Anonymous]In a job at a senior executive level (i.e., the type of job where you have to be there bearer of bad news, tell people things they might not want to hear, etc.).  Recently, the head of another department (but a "boss" nonetheless) told me that a more junior person felt I was "aggressive" and that I should be "nicer."  Yes, I am a woman.

I'm not one to reflexively suggest sexism…but in this case I simply cannot imagine a man being "accused" of being aggressive and actually told to be "nicer."

A little backstory:  I knew of the incident he was referring to - after a system crash, a staffer came in to "help" solve the system problem (after multiple attempts to get this staffer to be bothered to help) but instead of fixing it, staffer made comments about the history of the systems etc.  In that moment, I said - in an authoritative way (not aggressive at all in my opinion) - that the history didn't matter, but I just needed to get the document out quickly.  (I've worked in truly aggressive environments and, for the sake of this conversation, let's just agree that there was nothing "aggressive" about it.  It was a more senior person setting a clear and direct expectation.)

I'm a relatively new employee.  This same staffer has been unwilling from day one to provide basic company information necessary to ramp me up (at a fairly high level).  I've hit my personal limit with this employee, but have simply tried to "work around" this person rather than engage/discuss/argue.  However, I found out today, that this staffer went to a senior executive and characterized our meeting as "aggressive" and clearly planted the seed that there was an issue with me (without, of course, accurately describing the events in question).

How would you handle this? [/quote]

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