7 Ideas for Dealing with a Difficult Colleague

Use these strategies to coach others and support yourself in successfully navigating conflict.

Amy Gallo, author of Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People), provides seven ideas for navigating in conflict in her recent article in Harvard Business Review.

She discusses her personal experience being frustrated by an overbearing, petty, undermining, disparaging, and unreasonably demanding boss. Her response was to complain to colleagues, which she regretted doing after the fact as such behavior violated her values.

Such toxic behavior, however, is not uncommon in the workplace. One survey shows that 94% of people report having worked with a toxic person in the last 5 years. An article in the New York Times reveals in “a survey of more than 4,500 doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel, 71 percent tied disruptive behavior, such as abusive, condescending or insulting personal conduct, to medical errors, and 27 percent tied such behavior to patient deaths.” 

Gallo, having studied conflict management and resolution over the past several years, offers these strategies (summarized in Marshall Memo # 949, August 22, 2022 — subscription required — and included below with permission) to help us show up our best selves in the face of stress and adversity. Note the questions posed by Gallo can be used both to self-reflect and to coach staff.

1. Remember that your perspective is just one among many. People in an organization will disagree on whether it’s okay to be five minutes late for a meeting, on acceptable ways to interrupt, and on appropriate consequences for making a mistake. But we tend to think our view is the correct one (what social psychologists call naïve realism). “It’s important to recognize and resist this gut reaction,” says Gallo. “What assumptions have I made? How would someone with different values and experiences see things?”
2. Be aware of your biases. One of the biggies is the fundamental attribution error – the tendency to assume that other people’s behavior has more to do with their personality than the situation they’re in – for example, this person is late for a meeting because they are disorganized or disrespectful. But if it happens to us, it’s the traffic jam or the other meeting that ran over. Then there’s confirmation bias – the tendency to interpret things as proving the truth of our existing beliefs – including ethnic and racial stereotypes. And there’s affinity bias – the unconscious tendency to feel aligned with people of similar backgrounds and beliefs. One way to confront these tendencies, says Gallo, is Flip it to test it; if the person who’s annoying you were a different gender, race, sexual orientation, or position in the hierarchy, would you make the same assumptions?
3. Don’t make it “me against them.” Where there’s disagreement or conflict, we often think in polarizing ways. “To break out of that mental model,” says Gallo, “instead imagine that there are not two but three entities in the situation: you, your colleague, and the dynamic between you.” The last might be a project, a decision, a task. “Rather than work to change your colleague,” she says, “try to make progress on the third thing.”
4. Know your goal. This helps avoid drama and stay focused on the work. The goal might be something as simple as not grinding your teeth every time you think of a certain colleague, or something as ambitious as finding a way to solve a seemingly intractable personality clash. Gallo recommends writing the goal on a piece of paper; one study found that writing objectives by hand increases the chances they will be realized.
5. Avoid workplace venting and gossip – mostly. Gallo cites research that gossip and venting can actually help colleagues bond over shared travails and feel validated and less isolated (Yes, he is being difficult!). But gossip can also feed confirmation bias, reinforcing a negative narrative about someone and preventing problem-solving steps. Gossip can also reflect badly on the gossiper and get them in trouble. “It is perfectly legitimate to seek help with sorting out your feelings or to check with someone else that you’re seeing things clearly,” says Gallo. “But choose whom you talk to (and what you share) carefully. Look for people who are constructive, have your best interests at heart, will challenge your perspective when they disagree, and can be discreet.”
6. Experiment to find what works. There isn’t one right way to deal with an abrasive person, a know-it-all, or someone who is passive-aggressive. Gallo recommends experimenting with one approach – for example, ignoring the tone and focusing on the underlying message. “Keep trying, tweaking, and refreshing experiments or abandoning ones that don’t produce results,” she says.
7. Be – and stay – curious. When dealing with a difficult colleague, it’s easy to believe that things won’t change. But in the words of Argentine therapist Salvador Minuchin, “Certainty is the enemy of change.” An open, curious mindset has a host of benefits, says Gallo: “It wards off confirmation bias, prevents stereotyping, and helps us approach tough situations not with aggression (fight) or defensiveness (flight) but with creativity. The key is to shift from drawing often unflattering conclusions to posing genuine questions.”