How to deal with difficult co-workers (who make your life miserable)

3 simple steps to speak to difficult colleagues

Imagine you're in the last meeting of the week. And it’s dragging on. All because of the three usual culprits.

Suzy the Slacker’s missed an important deadline so the team are scrambling to put together a backup plan.

Patricia the Passive Aggressive leans back on her chair, arms crossed.

Charlie the Complainer mutters under his breath. It's inaudible - but everyone can guess what he’s thinking and saying.

If you’ve ever felt frustrated at work because of a Suzy, Patricia, or Charlie, you’re not alone.

Difficult colleagues can lead to workplace conflicts. These conflicts can happen across a spectrum of behaviors, ranging from personality clashes to more serious bullying and harassment that require HR involvement. And, sadly, these conflicts are a common feature of professional life. According to Pollack Peacebuilding (a workplace conflict management service), 85% of employees report experiencing some kind of conflict at work.

Equally sadly, most employees (60%) aren’t taught the basics of conflict management or how to work with difficult colleagues in the workplace.

This article focuses on disagreements due to personality clashes, which account for nearly half of all workplace conflicts. A lot of existing workplace conflict advice focuses on avoiding difficult colleagues. But most of the time, there’s no way to run away from the Charlie, Suzy, Patricia, Chris, and Katherine of your office. This article shows you how to effectively deal with 5 common types of difficult colleagues at work.

3 steps to dealing with a difficult colleague: The AIR method

There are 3 steps to dealing with a difficult colleague:

• Step 1 - Acknowledge the thing that's leading to their undesirable behavior - makes your difficult colleague feel seen and understood. When people are difficult, our natural inclination is to dismiss what they say. This step encourages us to understand our counterpart’s internal logic and motivation.

• Step 2 - Impact of their behaviour on you and the wider team - shows your difficult colleague how their behavior is making you (and your team) feel and its negative effects on performance.

• Step 3 - Request them to change their behaviour - spells out the behavioral changes you’d like to see from your colleague. Ideally, these requests increase your difficult colleague’s sense of agency by pointing out things that they can do (rather than sounding like demands).

Acknowledge, Impact, and Request make up the “AIR method”. It’s based on Non-Violent Communication, a technique for communicating developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg in the 1960s. It’s an approach to enhance communcation through understanding and connection. Used correctly, it’ll let you air things out rather than bottle these disagreements up.

Let’s look at how to apply these 3 steps to these 5 archetypal difficult colleagues.

Difficult colleague 1. The Complainer

Meet Charlie the Complainer again. He whines constantly. If not about his boss, then about his work. If not about his work, then about his home life. You feel gloomy around Charlie.

Here are some examples of Charlie the Complainer's behavior:

• Mumbles about the office conditions and resources, like the office chairs not being comfortable enough and the work tools budget not being large enough.

• Complains about the decisions made in the team meeting.

• Gets frustrated about his workload - but doesn’t suggest ways to improve it.

• Vents about perceived favoritism in the workplace.

And here’s how to speak to Charlie using the AIR framework when he complains about another colleague:

1. Acknowledge their frustrations: “I understand your concerns about <other colleague’s name>. It sounds like you’re saying <your interpretation>.”

2. Explain the impact of complaining: “But to be honest, your complaint makes me feel a little caught in the middle between you and <other colleague’s name>.”

3. Request that they do something about that complaint: “If you’re unhappy with <other colleague’s name>, let’s chat about what we can do to change the situation. I have some ideas. But I’m keen to get your thoughts first.”

And when Charlie complains about a heavy workload:

1. Acknowledge their complaints: “I understand it’s been a stressful period for you.”

2. Explain the impact of complaining: “But we can’t overlook the fact that it’s been a busy time for everyone, not just you. And complaining about it isn’t going to make the workload smaller. It’ll just make us more gloomy.”

3. Request that they do something about that complaint rather than just grumble about it: “Now that we have a list of problems, let’s focus on finding solutions to the issues you’ve raised. Do you have any ideas for how we can reduce our workload?”

Difficult colleague 2. The Slacker

Next, meet Suzy the Slacker again. She always misses project deadlines, leaving you and the other team members to make up for it. When you work with her, you feel like tearing your hair out. You get annoyed when you interact with Suzy.

Here are some characteristics of Suzy the Slacker:

• Misses project deadlines or doesn't deliver work when promised.

• Arrives late to meetings.

• Takes holidays more often than anyone else on the team.

• Doesn’t make any substantial contributions to group projects.

• Needs constant chasing to get things done.

And here’s how to speak to Suzy using the AIR framework when she’s failing to meet work deadlines and expectations:

1. Acknowledge potential legitimate reasons for low or delayed output.

   • “I know it’s a busy time so it’s easy to let things fall through the crack. It happens to everyone.”

   • “When I was going through personal stuff last year, I just couldn’t concentrate. I asked for extensions on all my projects and I’m so glad I did.”

2. Explain the impact of low or delayed output on you and the team.

   • “But when we let things slip through the crack without letting other people know, it has a negative effect on all of the team. We all end up playing catch up.”

   • “When you miss deadlines without giving a heads up that it might happen, it affects everyone else on the team.”

3. Request that they either meet the deadline or let people know that they need an extension.

   • “Could you make sure that this is done by <insert date here>? If not, please give me or the whole team the heads up so that we can adjust our work and project timelines accordingly.”

Difficult colleague 3. The Passive-Aggressive

And then there’s Patricia the Passive-Aggressive colleague. She often comes across like she’s annoyed. But when you ask her about it, she says “I’m fine” and walks away. You feel stressed and tense around Patricia.

Here are some characteristics of Patricia the Passive-Aggressive:

• When they get feedback, they respond defensively.

• They might give backhanded compliments or make snide remarks.

• They say “yes” to to what you suggested but then end up doing the opposite.

• Relies on sarcasm or humor to mask their annoyance.

And here’s how to speak to Patricia using the AIR framework when you feel like there’s some tension which she refuses to speak openly about:

1. Acknowledge Patricia’s underlying message, rather than focusing on her behavior.

   • “I heard your views during the meeting and interpreted it as … did I get it right?”

   • “I sense that there’s some underlying tension behind what you’re saying.”

2. Explain the impact of their communication style.

   • “Don’t get me wrong. I usually enjoy your sarcasm. But sometimes it makes it really difficult to understand what you’re really saying.”

   • “I get mixed messages from you. You say “yes” but then don’t complete the task. It confuses me and the rest of the team.”

3. Request that they speak more openly and honestly.

   • “Could you let me know what’s bothering you?”

   • “Can you clarify whether you actually want to work on the project?”

Difficult colleague 4. The Credit-Stealer

And then there’s Chris the Credit-Stealer. He claims credit for other people’s ideas, contributions, or work. You feel frustrated by Chris.

Here are some characteristics of Chris the Credit-Stealer:

• Doesn’t acknowledge other people’s contributions to the team's success.

• Blames other people when things go wrong (even if it's their fault).

• Presents other people’s ideas as their own (especially in front of the boss).

• Uses “I” instead of “we” when discussing accomplishments.

And here’s how to speak to the Credit-Stealer using the AIR framework:

1. Acknowledge their (perceived) contributions:

   • “I know you’ve put in a lot of thought/work/effort into this project.”

2. Explain the impact of them stealing credit:

   • “But when you use “I” rather than “we” when discussing team accomplishment, it can make the other people who contributed to the project feel overlooked and unseen.”

3. Request that they give credit to other people on the team too:

   • “Rather than just focusing on your contributions, which are undeniably big, it’d be great if you could also mention other people’s contributions too. That way, everyone would receive the recognition they deserve.”

Difficult colleague 5. The Know-It-All

Last but not least, there’s Katherine the Know-It-All. She dominates meetings, talking over colleagues, and generally behaves like she knows everything. You find Katherine irritating.

Here are some characteristics of Katherine the Know-It-All:

• Dominates meetings, often interrupting others.

• Adamant about sticking to their own view, and resistant to considering new ideas or viewpoints.

• Often corrects others, even on minor details.

• (Like the credit-stealer) Tends to take credit for successful projects, even when their role was minimal.

And here’s how to speak to the Know-It-All using the AIR framework when they’re interrupting you (or another colleague):

1. Acknowledge the knowledge and expertise that they’re sharing:

   • “I hear what you’re saying. It’s a really valuable point that we should bear in mind.”

2. Explain the impact of interrupting/ not letting other people speak up:

   • “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me finish my thoughts before jumping in.”

   • “I’m going to continue and I’ll address that when I’m done.” (Here, you’re not really stating the impact but you are implicitly asking them to stop interrupting.)

   • “I’m also keen to hear what everyone else thinks.” (Again here you’re not really stating the impact of their behavior but rather highlighting what’s missing.)

3. Request that they give space to other people to share their views:

   • “Could we come back to your points after everybody’s shared their views?”

   • “Could you save these points until the end of the presentation?”

   • “It's great that you're so eager to contribute to the discussion, but let's make sure <whoever it is they're interrupting> has enough time and space to explain their ideas first.”

It might feel unfair that you’re the one doing the work to communicate when it’s your difficult colleague causing the problems.

The truth is that it’s not on you to change another person’s behavior and, most of the time, you can’t.

What you can change is your approach to navigating relationships that are critical in your working life.

So, this week, instead of responding to Suzy (or Chris or Katherine) with a snarky comment:

• Take a deep breath and pause.

• Remember the AIR framework.

• Communicate to your difficult colleague as a civilized adult.

Suzy might not change her behavior permanently.

But at least you’d have made your life easier and freed up some mental capacity to deal with things that truly matter - in and outside of work.