How to handle a difficult colleague?
24 June 2013
Read by 2113 persons
Aggressive colleague, in bad faith, spreading rumors: they harm you. Tips for protecting yourself from difficult personalities.
Your priorities
Your work team has a difficult personality. A pain in the neck that diplomatic language will prudently prefer to call an assertive personality (AP) or a difficult personality. Negative, grumpy, absent, contemptuous... If the AP is a colleague of equal hierarchical level, your room for maneuver will be reduced since you will not be able to reframe it, move it or find other functions for it. Your priorities: identify the AP, protect yourself and alert your superiors. Your objectives: keep your motivation and the confidence of your N+1 intact.
Talk
As soon as the first symptoms appear (aggression, silence during meetings, spreading rumors, etc.), go directly and talk to the AP. Stay cordial, eager to understand, without the slightest animosity. Gently feel out the situation. The goal is to put on the table a detail that you might have missed, an attitude that was misinterpreted. If the atmosphere immediately relaxes after this clarification, false alarm! It wasn't an AP, just a misunderstanding. However, if the situation persists or worsens, you are dealing with a difficult personality and the first protective measures are necessary!
Protect yourself
Difficult personalities weaken your mental state and even the success of your work. Therefore, you must keep a good distance (physical and professional) from them and ensure that the situation does not turn against you. Never leave any written trace of your exchanges that do not directly concern the work. Even at the end of a professional email, in a little phrase, refrain from the slightest reprimand. However, carefully keep any contentious/aggressive/inappropriate messages from the AP. They will be useful later, when you want to have the situation recognized.
Alert the hierarchy
It is important not to remain isolated when faced with an AP. Before alerting the hierarchy, carefully consult your other colleagues about the nature of their exchanges with the AP: without revealing your grievances, try to find out how their working relationship is going, if they eat together at lunchtime, if the rest of the team is affected by this behavior. Once you have done your rounds, alert your direct superior by first pointing out the negative effects on the work: delays in files, etc. If necessary, join forces with other colleagues: your N+1 will only be more convinced of the urgency of dealing with this "case" so as not to harm the morale of the troops.
Act quickly
It is essential not to let too much time pass between the first symptoms and the alert. Because the purely professional impact risks gradually transforming into a personal impact, which would discredit your alert in the eyes of your superior. The interest of this mediation is, of course, not to try to resolve the situation alone: only a mediator, placed higher in the hierarchy, can help you manage this difficult personality...
Beware of abuse
The term "difficult personality" (or AP) can cover abuses... Because it may simply be that the said pain in the neck is only a manager who works differently, a "strong head" who refuses the standardization of work standards requested by the hierarchy. A case that management wants to resolve by stigmatizing it. Therefore, beware of the instrumentalization of such a term, the use of which should not be taken lightly, you could also be the victim of it...
Jean Chabod.
Apec.fr
Posted online on June 24, 2013.
Your priorities
Your work team has a difficult personality. A pain in the neck that diplomatic language will prudently prefer to call an assertive personality (AP) or a difficult personality. Negative, grumpy, absent, contemptuous... If the AP is a colleague of equal hierarchical level, your room for maneuver will be reduced since you will not be able to reframe it, move it or find other functions for it. Your priorities: identify the AP, protect yourself and alert your superiors. Your objectives: keep your motivation and the confidence of your N+1 intact.
Talk
As soon as the first symptoms appear (aggression, silence during meetings, spreading rumors, etc.), go directly and talk to the AP. Stay cordial, eager to understand, without the slightest animosity. Gently feel out the situation. The goal is to put on the table a detail that you might have missed, an attitude that was misinterpreted. If the atmosphere immediately relaxes after this clarification, false alarm! It wasn't an AP, just a misunderstanding. However, if the situation persists or worsens, you are dealing with a difficult personality and the first protective measures are necessary!
Protect yourself
Difficult personalities weaken your mental state and even the success of your work. Therefore, you must keep a good distance (physical and professional) from them and ensure that the situation does not turn against you. Never leave any written trace of your exchanges that do not directly concern the work. Even at the end of a professional email, in a little phrase, refrain from the slightest reprimand. However, carefully keep any contentious/aggressive/inappropriate messages from the AP. They will be useful later, when you want to have the situation recognized.
Alert the hierarchy
It is important not to remain isolated when faced with an AP. Before alerting the hierarchy, carefully consult your other colleagues about the nature of their exchanges with the AP: without revealing your grievances, try to find out how their working relationship is going, if they eat together at lunchtime, if the rest of the team is affected by this behavior. Once you have done your rounds, alert your direct superior by first pointing out the negative effects on the work: delays in files, etc. If necessary, join forces with other colleagues: your N+1 will only be more convinced of the urgency of dealing with this "case" so as not to harm the morale of the troops.
Act quickly
It is essential not to let too much time pass between the first symptoms and the alert. Because the purely professional impact risks gradually transforming into a personal impact, which would discredit your alert in the eyes of your superior. The interest of this mediation is, of course, not to try to resolve the situation alone: only a mediator, placed higher in the hierarchy, can help you manage this difficult personality...
Beware of abuse
The term "difficult personality" (or AP) can cover abuses... Because it may simply be that the said pain in the neck is only a manager who works differently, a "strong head" who refuses the standardization of work standards requested by the hierarchy. A case that management wants to resolve by stigmatizing it. Therefore, beware of the instrumentalization of such a term, the use of which should not be taken lightly, you could also be the victim of it...
Jean Chabod.
Apec.fr
Posted online on June 24, 2013.
