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When hiring new staff, one goal is to assess how a candidate’s personality fits within the office culture. Human resource professionals and hiring teams use various tools, and sometimes personality tests, to help assemble successful teams and office cultures. 

Despite the effort firms and businesses make towards fostering encouraging work environments, we are bound to work with people whose personalities do not fit our own. If we could choose, we would decide not to work with these difficult individuals at all. However, if left unaddressed, these personality differences and quirks can result in clashed behavioral patterns and strenuous work situations. 

To further explore this topic, we focus on how individuals working together in an office can assess these difficult situations and handle them. 

Finding resolve in the workplace

At some point during our professional careers, we have experienced difficult officemates and colleagues. Perhaps it's their loud and distracting conversations with a team member who sits across the studio. Or maybe they fail to take responsibility for delayed projects and often blame their team members for their shortcomings. Another scenario might come from a colleague "coasting by" and hoping others will volunteer to do the heavy lifting during a project but happily take credit later. The laundry list of challenging work situations and behaviors is endless and irksome. It is easy to get frustrated, and even upset, by the thought of experiencing someone's patterns of selfishness or poor camaraderie. If left unaddressed, these clashes in work performance and personalities can grow into serious conflict issues that can damage entire teams. So how does one attempt to work with and resolve challenging workplace personalities?

In her book, Optimal Outcomes, professor Jennifer Goldman-Wetzler, Ph.D., describes a set of relatable professional situations. She explains that it is to fall into what she calls "the pattern of conflict." The first stage of this pattern is becoming upset and irritated with what a colleague has recently done. Our brain then adds this event to an existing list of malfeasances we've kept track of from our colleagues. This list loops in previous offenses only to justify and intensify our current negative feelings. These feelings manifest themselves as anger, seclusion, and in some cases, even over collaboration. 

Pausing while hot-headed is difficult. It takes practice and patience to take a moment and access issues with a clear mind.

There is something almost indulging about thinking, "Yes, I was right. They did it again?!" Rather than going down this tempting road of judgment that ultimately leads to further destruction of a working relationship, one should hit "pause." Even though it can feel crushing because an unfavorable act was done, pausing is the best thing to do during situations like this. Pausing while hot-headed is difficult. It takes practice and patience to take a moment and access issues with a clear mind. Many mental health professionals credit meditation for being the primary tool that teaches bothered and irked individuals how to step out of messy situations and then re-enter with a fresh mind. Pausing puts anger and frustration in a contained box while opening space for different perspectives and initiatives. After a pause, one may ask themselves: "In order to avoid this situation in the future, do I need to have a conversation with my transgressor, or is the issue small enough for one to learn from, regroup, and let go?" 

Gathering perspectives

Asking a trusted colleague for input is an excellent strategy for examining and managing responses to someone else's behavior. As Amy Gallo, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, explains in her HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict, one should avoid venting in order to cultivate the most objective and helpful opinion. Venting will feel good at the moment, but it will not provide the valuable perspective one seeks. Presenting facts stripped from interpretations will yield the best results. One may discover that the confidant can interpret the situation differently, which will help step out of the narrow focus of frustration and consider the bigger picture. 

I am not proud of this, but sometimes I get so overwhelmed with negative emotions that I have no space for instant empathy for my work colleague's recent stress. Research suggests pausing and wondering what kind of trauma the person endured, making them communicate and behave this way. Replacing speculations with objective observations about a lifelong systemic negative impact in their life indeed helps; it replaced judgment with curiosity. Furthermore, those who irritate us could have grown up with a mentality and culture different from our own. 

I am not proud of this, but sometimes I get so overwhelmed with negative emotions that I have no space for instant empathy for my work colleague's recent stress.

If, after thoughtful reflection, the situation doesn't warrant a conversation or interaction with their colleague who presents a challenging personality, that does not mean that one needs to sweep feelings under the rug. Instead, it's helpful to channel all negative emotions into genuine curiosity about another person's life. For example, a great way to bring an issue closure is inviting the colleague to lunch or activity over which work remains undiscussed. The goal of such encounters is to learn as much as possible about them as a person, so one can get answers to the question, "What happened to them that made them behave this way? 

There are situations when one may realize that their mental health and performance are chronically suffering because of someone else's actions. In this case, one needs to prepare for a potentially uncomfortable and challenging conversation. Beyond collecting detailed notes and records of their colleague's poor actions, one should also visualize an ideal future with the difficult person in it. While visualizing, it's important to consciously prevent one's mind from going towards a direction of, "If they were only a little less rude, entitled, and careless, none of this would be a problem, and everything would be so much easier." Unfortunately, this thinking can keep one stuck in a repetitive and unproductive mentality. It's important to focus on the bigger picture and overall end goal to help find some resolve between conflicting colleagues in the workplace. Roleplaying and conflict resolution techniques like discussing this with a non-biased colleague or HR can help prepare for effective resolutions. It can also help you, the individual, see things from a different perspective to help understand the bigger picture at hand.

Everyone makes mistakes

There are many strategies for having difficult and uncomfortable conversations. Regardless of how one decides to approach these situations, not being upset and being clear about finding a resolution will increase the chances of having a conversation where all parties feel heard. If an exchange is initiated when emotions are high, one response approach would be something along the lines of, "Thank you for reaching out. I recognize that you have a strong opinion here, but could we schedule our meeting for another day? I want to be present and constructive when we converse." While there are many ways to approach this, taking time to assess the situation and approach conversations with level-headed thinking is beneficial.

Working with rude and disrespectful colleagues or those who step on other peoples' toes will continue. However, it is one's responsibility to develop and share communicative techniques that foster and promote cooperation with difficult team members. It's also important to practice patience because, after all, everyone makes mistakes. 

... it is one's responsibility to develop and share communicative techniques that foster and promote cooperation with difficult team members.

Lastly, something one shouldn't forget is asking themselves, "Why does this bother me? Why does this get to me? What can I learn about myself here?" Personality tests can help answer some of those questions and prompt self-reflection. Journaling, introspection, and channeling our creativity outside work are all effective tools that enhance self-understanding. When one understands themselves, they can start to understand others as well.