How Do I Deal with Difficult Colleagues?
What to do when coworkers make work difficult
Recently, I had an unpleasant interaction with someone in my office park. Their tenants were making so much noise that it disrupted my sessions with clients.
I reached out with the assumption that they would agree that the noise was unacceptable and work for a solution. Instead, the response was aggressive and condescending with some weirdly formal turns of phrases, suggesting that ChatGPT was involved. They informed me that the issue was mine to solve and I just needed to get used to a lot of noise.
My blood was boiling. I felt belittled and helpless, and I stewed in anger for a few hours, trying to decide my next move.
Feeling so dismissed brought up memories of dealing with difficult colleagues in previous jobs.
Wonderful coworkers make your job easier – maybe even make work fun. But those difficult colleagues can make meetings tense, team projects a nightmare, and increase your stress so much you consider leaving your job.
Here are just a few of the ways coworkers can be difficult:
The Aggressor who lashes out in anger and speaks rudely and meanly to you.
The Passive-Aggressor who rolls their eyes and makes rude comments under their breath.
The Belittler who puts you down and makes you feel stupid for sharing your ideas.
The Procrastinator who pushes tasks out to the very last minute, creating stress for everyone on the team.
The Blamer who throws you under the bus and refuses to take responsibility for their actions.
The Gossiper who criticizes you behind your back, creating a lack of trust.
The Interrupter who speaks over you, not letting you finish your thoughts.
The Stresser who makes sure everyone knows how stressed they are, but never asks how much work is on your plate.
You might recognize some of your colleagues from this list. (And if you are honest with yourself, you might recognize yourself on a bad day.)
So how do you deal with difficult colleagues?
Understand Your Reaction
Name what you are feeling and understand why you are having this reaction to your coworker. Are you annoyed, frustrated, angry, worried, fearful, overwhelmed, stressed?
We all bring our past experiences with us into our jobs and those past experiences influence how we respond. Given my experiences with some angry, condescending people, my initial reaction was to feel overwhelmed, frozen, and unsafe.
Also, you and your colleagues are likely to have different reactions to the same difficult behavior of a coworker. Imagine you are on a conference call and one team member says, “This whole meeting is stupid. None of you have any good ideas and you’re all wasting my time.” One person might feel personally attacked, another slightly annoyed, and another might be happy that this sentiment is being expressed.
There is no right or wrong way to feel. But knowing what your emotional buttons are can help you stay calm and thoughtfully consider how you want to respond.
Consider Why They Act That Way
The next step is to channel your inner psychologist and consider what is motivating them to act like such a jerk at work.
When people feel threatened, they respond in ways that help them feel in control again. And because it is painful to feel threatened people work to avoid feeling those emotions, which means they are often acting out of fear.
Some common work fears are:
Fear of not knowing what you’re doing
Fear of letting people down
Fear of looking stupid
Fear of not knowing how to handle a situation
Fear of making a mistake
Fear of getting fired
When you imagine what is motivating a coworker’s negative behavior, you can have empathy for why they might act in difficult ways.
The coworker who threw you under the bus and blamed you for not meeting a deadline may be trying to avoid feeling incompetent. The colleague who blew up over small changes in the slide deck may be trying to avoid looking stupid.
In my situation, I imagined that they were afraid of getting in trouble with the Association or being told that they needed to put more money into renovations. This didn’t excuse the behavior, but it helped me understand why they might be trying to shut me down quickly. I could then take the behavior less personally and step back and consider my next move.
Identify What You Need
When someone acts like a jerk, it is tempting to act like a jerk right back. (I imagined snarky responses with great zingers like, “This email was written all by myself – I didn’t need ChatGPT.”)
But responding unprofessionally rarely makes the situation better, and more likely will increase tension and you’ll feel like a jerk for having stooped to their level.
Consider your end goal. Determine what you need from this person, or the best outcome for the situation. What do you need from them to do your job effectively? Will you need to communicate to get information? Will you need their collaboration?
Stay focused on the goal of the work task, and not on the way they acted.
In my situation, the main goal was to reduce the noise issues. I crafted a response that was professional, with no snarky comments, and identified the problem that needed to be solved.
There may be times that your colleague’s behavior is getting in the way of the goal. While a supervisor might be the one to address the behavior, here are a few ideas for talking to them:
Speak with them individually, rather than in a team meeting.
Name the behavior and your reaction to it. When you said/did ___, I felt ___, and it had the effect of ___. “When you said we were wasting your time, I felt offended because we have all been working so hard, and it had the effect of stopping us from moving forward in that meeting.”
State the goal and ask for what you need. “We need to finish this slide deck by Friday. Can you send me your comments by this Wednesday?”
Working with difficult colleagues can be soul sucking and demoralizing and spill over to affect your mental health. If you are struggling to deal with a difficult colleague, consider working with a career or mental health professional.
Want more information on dealing with difficult colleagues? Check out Dealing with Difficult People a short, easy read by the Harvard Business Review.