Why you can learn a lot from a colleague who gets under your skin

She seems specially programmed to annoy you. She undermines you whenever she gets the chance. The things she says. The way she looks at you. The way she ‘works against’ you, the way she breathes: it's annoying. Right?

I call her ‘she’ for a moment, but it could just as easily be a ‘he’. Unless you are a genetic miracle, it is normal to encounter people in your life that you do not like. Even in the workplace. And actually, that is only good. In fact, according to psychologists, you shortchange yourself when you only work with people you like. Because: the people you regularly clash with, you learn the most from.

Someone does not get up in the morning to consciously give you a bad day, but sometimes that can come across that way. It feels contradictory, but when you are ‘ready‘ for it, it is possible to find your annoying colleague a lot less annoying. How? At the moment you realize that that person is good at the things you are probably less good at. If you get irritated by someone else's behavior, there is usually some kind of mirror involved.

You simply do not understand her because she thinks and acts so differently than you do. An allergy to know-it-alls often means that you are modest yourself. Maybe you see her as a narcissist who only talks about herself, while she finds you very reserved. You are more likely to get annoyed by an authoritarian colleague if you value independence highly. You see: in every workplace, you meet mirrors. And instead of cursing the thing every day, you can also stare at it a little longer and ask yourself why the reflection does not please you.

The complicated thing about communication is that we do not know what the other thinks, feels, or means. We interpret other people's behavior from our own perspective and with our own experiences and needs. Often we label that as difficult or challenging behavior. We fill in, noise arises, and voilà: miscommunication is born, enter the annoying colleague.

The trick? Your judgment disappears when you look at it through a different lens. Because honestly: you can give that colleague much more of a chance than you do now. The first trigger she gives you, you associate with a kind of ‘see, I told you so’ feeling, and the art is precisely to break that pattern. There is a good chance she does not want to sabotage you at all. She is just completely different from you; otherwise, you wouldn't clash.

Can you change her? No. What you can change is how you look at her. Once you start speaking the other person's language, she will naturally appreciate you more, resulting in fewer irritations between you. Oh, and also a nice thought: ultimately, you are responsible for your own happiness, right? You only go crazy from others if you let them drive you crazy.

Listen and Learn. It helps. Really.