Dealing with difficult people

I can’t deal with [insert the name of your least favorite coworker here].

Picture this: You’ve just wrapped up a frustrating meeting with that one colleague. They rejected every idea you had, ignored your emails, or just made things unnecessarily difficult. Sound familiar?

We’ve all been there. At some point in our careers, we’ve had to work with someone we didn’t respect as a professional. Maybe we’ve labeled them lazy, unprofessional, ignorant, incompetent, unreliable, or worse. Harsh words, right?

I’ve been there too. Let the one who’s never judged a coworker throw the first stone.

It’s easy to focus on their flaws: They’re difficult to talk to, unresponsive, persistently rejecting every request, or constantly pushing back. In short, they don’t meet our expectations.

But… should they meet our expectations?

We often slap negative labels on people because we don’t really know them. We don’t understand their interests, strengths, challenges, or motivations. Their priorities and approaches might be wildly different from ours, which makes it harder to connect. But that doesn’t mean they’re less competent, less capable, or harder to work with. It just means they’re different; they operate differently, and they have different goals and expectations.

In fact, they’re probably great human beings.

Maybe the real issue isn’t them, but how we’ve approached the situation. Maybe we didn’t communicate well, failed to consider their perspective, or overlooked their current challenges.

Now, I’m not saying everyone deserves our professional respect. Some people genuinely don’t. But most do. And more often than not, when we take the time to understand someone, meet face-to-face, listen to their reasons, and see things from their perspective, we start to see them in a new light.

So the next time you catch yourself thinking, “Ugh, do I really have to work with this person again?”, pause and ask yourself: How can I make this collaboration easier? What might be motivating them? What don’t I know about their situation?

Because at the end of the day, we’re all “that person” for someone else.