In her book, “Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People),” author and workplace expert Amy Gallo identifies types of difficult co-workers and offers strategies meant to help people handle each type constructively.
Harvard Business Review shares the following common tactics Gallo says you should avoid to prevent you from making things worse when handling a difficult co-worker.
- Suppressing emotions. When you believe you have tried everything to improve the situation with a difficult employee, people may encourage you to ignore it and move on. However, this only works if you truly can let the situation go. Instead, people often will silently stew or obsess about the situation, suppressing their emotions and raising their stress levels. Suppressing emotions is associated with poor memory, difficulties in relationships and physiological effects. And even if you believe you are hiding your emotions from your difficult co-worker, they likely are sensing the tension.
- Retaliating. If a person believes they are being treated badly, it can be tempting to want to respond to the offender in a similar way. However, doing so typically does not work and can strengthen the feeling of being on opposing sides while also making you look bad. Commit to behaving in line with your values so when you are planning your response to the co-worker, you can ensure you are sticking to your beliefs.
- Shaming. Trying to inspire shame by calling someone out for their behavior often will backfire; instead of making things better, he or she will want to lash out more. Making your co-worker feel as if he or she is a bad person or labeling them as a jerk likely will not improve your relationship. Rather than demonizing someone, remind yourself you are dealing with a fellow human.
- Hoping for an exit. Many people try to just make the situation work until the difficult co-worker gets fired or moves to another job. However, it may not be as simple as removing a person. There could be an underlying organizational issue that needs to change to prevent bad behavior. There is no guarantee the culture will shift when the person is gone, so it is best to work on improving the relationship.
