3 Tips for Handling People You Clash With

Every time he comes toward your workstation, you cringe. When she speaks, the sound reminds you of fingernails scratching the blackboard. When he speaks in staff meetings, you feel like rolling your eyes. These three difficult coworkers rub you the wrong way, and you know it’s mutual.

Does your workplace include individuals you can’t stand and clash with? Try these three strategies to gain the upper hand.  

Learn how to really win
We want to like or at least respect everyone in our work environment. When that doesn’t happen, we wonder – is it this person’s fault or mine?  Because we’ve done our best to like these coworkers and haven’t managed to, we assign blame to them. Except – that leaves us in a no-win position. 

Here’s how to win – realize you won’t like everyone, and rise above it. Act with respect toward everyone in your work environment, even if some of them haven’t earned it. Take responsibility for your own actions and attitude, knowing that the effort you put in makes you an even better person.

Work on yourself
By focusing on yourself, you influence the relationship with those you instinctively clash with, because you change the part you can control – you. Ask yourself, “How come this person gets under my skin?”

After you pinpoint the trigger behaviors and identify what really bothers you, take the next step and think “what do I want from this person or situation?” Once you decide that, you can adjust your behavior. 

In one of the conflict management workshops I teach, I ask participants to make a list of the individuals in their network that they get along with well and those they don’t. Next, I ask them to describe their own behaviors toward these individuals. In all cases, their behaviors toward the two sets of individuals radically differ. 

I suggest they try an experiment and for one week interact with those who they don’t like in the same way they treat those with whom they get along well. For example, I suggest they greet their problem coworkers in the morning and ask “How was your weekend?” Workshop attendees report being shocked at the end of the week by how much the changes they make impacted their formerly problematic relationships.   

Take the hard, high road
When we clash with others, we often travel the low road. We complain about those we view as problems, recruiting allies to our “camp.” 

What if you instead took the harder road and didn’t talk about the person with whom you clashed but instead asked this person, “Can we work out a better work relationship?” What if you and the person with whom you clashed identified the problem issues and resolved them or at least agreed on civil ways in ways in which to treat each other? 

Do you clash with others in your workplace? Could you invest the energy you expend clashing in other ways, by learning how to win, working on yourself or working it out?

 

 

 

 

 

© 2016, Lynne Curry, executive coach and author of Solutions and Beating the Workplace Bully. Follow her @lynnecurry10 or on workplaceocoachblog.com or on bullywhisperer.com™