We all have enemies

'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.'

- Sun Tzu

Relationships are a crucial part of professional success. There are few things that we can do completely on our own—we need allies. But, sometimes we have enemies, they come in all forms and arise from many factors. Perhaps a coworker who doesn't like us (or who we do not like), a difficult member of the project team, or a foe at the planning department. 

Whoever it may be, encountering opposition from another human is a part of life as a professional. But, often times, there are opportunities for an enemy to become an ally. 

Disarm their assumptions

We tend to decide we do not like someone because of an observed assumption we make about them or their character. She thinks she's so much smarter than everyone else. He talks too much. I don't like their attitude. In most cases like this, there is something about the other person that we dislike because it does not fit into our picture of how we believe they should be. More importantly, many times these assumptions are incorrect.

We've all had those moments where we quickly come to the realization of how wrong we were about a person. Wow, he's actually a really cool guy. 

In the workplace, there are those who have their assumptions about us too, and there are always opportunities to present a genuine display of our true character. For many people this might occur during an argument, you show yourself willing and open to see the other person's point of view and maybe even change your mind based off of their feedback. They now see you as a reasonable and level-headed person. You aren't so bad after all.

The proactive alliance

Maybe in a meeting, they share an interesting idea and you acknowledge it and build on it among the group. All of sudden you're not a "know-it-all." Or perhaps you take a lesson from Benjamin Franklin and ask that enemy for a favor, maybe help on understanding a detail in your drawings or interpreting a piece of code, thanking them for their help later on. It's important that all of these gestures are sincere.

But, we also have to acknowledge also that sometimes two people just aren't ever going fit well together. Even in this case, however, we can try to cultivate an environment where we aren't alienating that person. Because, we do this a lot; we're a little more snappy and short with someone we don't like as compared to someone we like, or we challenge them more, or try to make things difficult for them. 

We have to fight that urge and take some advice from Michael Corleone: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. It's rarely a good idea to continuously build strife in your workplace. And in the long run, you never know where this "enemy" might end up, for all we know, they could hold the keys to an important door down the road. Obviously, we aren't all going to hold hands and sing kumbaya, but pettiness can always be avoided in professional practice.