By: Agnes P. Baluyot
Full time employees often spend more time at work with co-workers that at home with family and friends. Thus, disliking someone is normal but it can make unpleasant situations in the workplace and how to make the work environment at least tolerable is hard if someone doesn’t know how to handle it.
So, here are some tips to help you deal with a problem with co-workers:
- Be the Better One. As much as possible, try to be distant from a co-worker who backstab other employees and has an interest for office politics and gossip. If it happens to share an office with a gossipmonger, try to only talk about work-related topics that are not personal attacks on others in the office.
- Be an Optimistic Person. Nobody wants to be surrounded by a co-worker who is always negative and in a bad mood, so even if a difficult co-worker try to bring you down think about the positives in your job.
- Ignore The Person. Employees are at work to do a job, so focus on the tasks that must be accomplished and network with other people at workplace who are not quite so difficult to be around.
- Take Action. Sometimes, people do not realize that they are perceived as being negative person or a gossiper. To deal with this, confront the co-worker and tackle the issue and let them know that you are trying to be positive at work and open for their help and suggestions.
- Make the Most of It. It is not required to be best friends with co-workers. One may find working with someone who is difficult to deal with but that’s ok. As a professional, you should always treat even everyone with respect. Continue to focus on your work and see if there is something that you can learn from difficult co-worker.
With these tips, one can easily deal with difficult co-workers, build better relationship with them and increase employee’s productivity.