4 Tips for Dealing with Difficult Colleagues

Do you struggle working with a Brand Manager or Finance Manager who you just can’t seem to see eye-to-eye with and who places obstacles in the way of what you’re trying to achieve? Or perhaps you feel like they don’t have the same level of urgency or passion as you when it comes to actioning critical steps for your customer?

Regardless of the size of the organisation you work for, it is inevitable that you will encounter frustrating colleagues who seem to make the completion of even the simplest of tasks a real chore.

The reality is that despite the misalignment in values of working styles between you and them, you will need to positively influence difficult colleagues to achieve your targets.  As an Account Manager, no important task, whether that be hitting your monthly revenue target, clearing your invoices, or landing best-in-class in-store execution can be accomplished on your own.

If you don’t find a way to at least foster a civil and functional relationship with difficult colleagues, then this will seriously hamper your success in any organisation.

In this article I will give you 4 suggestions on how to deal with challenging colleagues.

1. Stop mirroring their behaviour and fuelling their Saboteurs.

The worst thing that you can do when the difficult colleague in question directs negative behaviour towards you is mirror them.  This creates a negative spiral between the two parties, which only worsens the situation.  However, in the heat of the moment, this is easier said than done. 

The brain has “mirror neurons” which emulate the behaviour of others.  To be able to self-command the brain to stop and choose a different action is difficult and often requires extreme effort.  Depending on your mood on a certain day, this may seem impossible!

This is where an awareness of Saboteurs can help.  There are 10 Saboteurs as identified by the research conducted by Positive Intelligence™.  These nasty characters live in the left regions of our brains and are responsible for generating all negative emotions.

Perhaps a difficult Finance Manager has rudely rejected your request for a meeting to work through outstanding audit claims on your account? That rudeness is likely to be a manifestation of their Avoider Saboteur. 

Or perhaps a Brand Manager has berated you for your customer’s lack of adherence to their brand guidelines on a header for an FSDU? That aggressiveness could be generated by their Controller Saboteur hijacking their mind.

Once you are aware of how their Saboteurs can impact their behaviour and LABEL IT in your mind, it becomes easier to not take their behaviour personally and move onto stage 2.

2. Take a positive approach to engage their Sages

After you’ve identified the difficult colleague’s Saboteur-generated behaviour, you are at choice as to how to respond.

It goes without saying that a positive response will always be preferable to diffuse any combative or negative situations.  Positive Intelligence™ identifies the Sage, which lives in the right region of the brain as your true, resourceful self.  The Sage is responsible for generating positive emotions like curiosity and empathy.

The mirror neurons I mentioned earlier work the same way in copying positive behaviour. 

In the previous case of the Finance Manager, get curious as to why he or she is reluctant to help you with the audit claims.  When you get to the deeper why behind their behaviour, you are more likely to be able to come up with a creative solution that works for both parties.  It could be as simple as emailing the evidence you’ve compiled a week before the meeting, to give them the chance to digest the information at their own pace.

Regarding the aforementioned shouty Brand Manager, inject empathy into situation.  Put yourself in their shoes, and ask why might they be so annoyed about the FSDU header? You might discover that the Brand Manager will be reproached by the Global team due to your customer’s mistake, thus triggering their anger and anxiety.

If you bring this curiosity and empathy to your dealings with difficult colleagues, there is a strong possibility that you will engage their Sages, which will in turn lead to more positive interactions.

3. If you think that you have a read on their Saboteurs, delegate less critical tasks to appease and distract those Saboteurs.

If you think you have a read on a difficult colleague’s top Saboteurs, then you can tactically throw those Saboteurs a bone.

This tactic is easiest to describe by referencing the Controller and Stickler Saboteurs. 

For a colleague with a strong Controller Saboteur, you might wish to delegate to them a low-value task within the project which they can completely own.  Promise them that you will not interfere with their management of that task, which will appease the Controller within them.

If you have a colleague with a prominent Stickler Saboteur who is always picking holes in everything you do, you might assign to them the task of creating the Powerpoint slides for the selling deck.  You can be confident that their perfectionist trait will drive them to produce a presentation of high quality.

The true benefit of this tactic is that when you keep difficult colleagues’ Saboteurs occupied with tasks that engage them, you are less likely to encounter their negative behaviours.  In addition to this, they are also more likely to feel like you’ve addressed and met their needs, which can in turn improve your relationship with them.

4. If all else fails, accept that these difficult colleagues will not change and reframe them as people who will be the greatest teachers in your career.

However, you will inevitably encounter circumstances where a colleague refuses to acknowledge your efforts to bond with them.  They continue to be the bane of your professional life.

If this is the case, all you can do is accept that their Saboteurs control their minds and try to find the gifts and opportunities in the working relationship.  These types of colleagues can become your greatest teachers in developing the necessary soft skills to be the best leader you can be. 

For instance, you can learn to be a more patient, empathetic and creative person as you search for new ways to connect with them.  And who knows? By continuing with your positive approach, you might have a contagion effect which eventually allows you to achieve a break through with that difficult colleague.

How building Mental Fitness can help you deal with difficult colleagues.

Building your Mental Fitness is very useful in helping you deal with difficult colleagues.  Having the psychological tools to stop yourself from mirroring their negative behaviours will serve you well in these scenarios.

However, the development of these mental muscles takes at least 6-weeks of intense work.  If you are interested in this game-changing program then take the Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment https://www.positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/ and then book a free 30-minute coaching call with me at https://www.expcoaching.co.uk/ to find out more!