A busy professional asked me this question:
How do you deal with working with a coworker that you cannot stand but you two are working on a project together?
This is a great question. Being able to work with all types of personalities is a critical skill in a high-performing professional.
Everyone is Different
The first step is to recognize that everyone is different and everyone comes with idiosyncrasies and quirks. We all get along great with some folks, and others just rub us the wrong way. That doesn’t mean the other person is bad or unprofessional. It just means your personalities may clash or you don’t have the right chemistry together.
On the other hand, to succeed and advance, we need to know how to work with all types of people.
Carl Jung said: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves”. Everyone is our mirror. The imperfections in other people often trigger the items that we don’t like about ourselves. Our own reflection in others shows us not only who we are, but also how to be better.
Acknowledging the above is the first step toward being able to work with them and becoming a better person.
Practice Your Soft Skills
Look upon this as a learning opportunity – a skill that you need to develop to be able to work with difficult individuals. Here are some skills you can develop:
- Appreciate and focus on their strengths and good points.
- They are on this project because they provide a valuable contribution to the project and team.
- Identify and appreciate their strengths and work around the other habits
- Go out of your way to compliment them on their successes and avoid pointing out their short-comings.
- If an error is made on the project, focus on the next steps to correct the error instead of blaming or focusing on the error itself.
- Continue to focus on next steps. Keep the project moving forward.
- After the project is completed, you can do an object project-lesson learned session, to introduce procedural changes (or automation) to avoid the error in the future
- Focus on making life/work easier for both of you.
- Consider automating tedious tasks that both of you have to deal with. Automating the tricky issues that bring you together in frustration – will eliminate some of the pain-points that you have to deal with.
- At meetings, sit next to them versus opposite from them.
- Sitting next to that person actually reduces the tension between the two of you, because you tend to work on issues together. You become partners in finding a solution that works for both.
- Sitting opposite from each other creates an adversarial attitude (even if it’s subconscious).
- Be empathetic
- Showing an ability to understand and share the feelings of another – is a great skill set to acquire.
- When working with others, take the time to see their point of view. Then state the issue in their perspective, before suggesting alternative.
- Study up on Active Listening techniques and start practicing them on this person
These soft-skills are critical to advancement and career success. Use this as an opportunity to practice those skills.
If you need want to discuss in more detail, please setup a one-on-one consult session.
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Written by Laura Rose
Author of the business and time management books: TimePeace: Making peace with time – and The Book of Answers: 105 Career Critical Situations . Laura is a business and efficiency coach that specializes in time management, project management, and work-life balance strategies.