Slashdot Mirror
Preventing/Resolving Interoffice Conflict?
An anonymous reader asks: "I have an extremely unpleasant person to whom I directly report. I have no desire to leave my company until I've accomplished certain personal (read: financial) goals, but that will probably be, at the least, 12-30 months. In the meantime, I'd like to start resolving the personality clashes that me and this individual seem to constantly find ourselves in, with the hopes of perhaps extending my stay. Unfortunately, it's beyond my current mediating skills. Have you found any particular books, articles, texts, outlooks, or strategies which they have found valuable with respect to resolving personality conflicts in the workplace, or in a larger sense, mediating, arbitrating, or resolving disagreements?"
Quit trying so hard. Seriously.
"...Unfortunately, it's beyond my current mediating skills. Have you found any particular books, articles, texts, outlooks, or strategies..."
If you're going this far, it's not going to work. You're the type of person that feels they've got to be friends with everyone and when you don't get along you have to do something to "fix" it. Anything you try from a book or strategy guide is just going to come across as forced and false and will probably piss off the other person even more.
Best advice: You're in a crappy working situation. If you're planning on making a career out of this job, try and get transferred to another department/building where there's a different manager. If that's not possible, you need to figure out how your boss's boss responds to complaints. If the boss's boss won't listen, or there's nobody that's higher up, find another job or just deal with it until you can leave.
I wrestled constantly with a surly woman in a previous job--she hated me, hated our department, and hated working with almost anybody.
I'm sitting in her cubicle as she rants about my department again and I notice she has some pictures of her dogs hanging on the walls. In a lull in the raving, I asked about the dogs and--like flipping a switch--she suddenly softened and then went on and on about them. It was the most boring conversation in the world, but afterwards, she cooperated with me much more and even praised my work after the project.
It's easy to get tangled in roles and forget people are human beings--however annoying ones sometimes. That one moment of talking about something she really cared about was just enough to make her realize we weren't gang members but human beings.
As weird as it sounds, try some diplomacy: learn about the person, ask some questions, feign (or, better yet, actually cultivate) interest...you'd be surprised how people suddenly turn around when their passions are revealed.