How To Deal With A Co-Worker Who Doesn't Like You

Sometimes, peaceful coexistence is as good as it gets.

Love them or hate them, your co-workers are pretty much a constant in your life. And a strained relationship with one of your colleagues can cause undue stress, both in the office and in your personal life. If you and your coworker simply don’t see eye to eye, there may not be a fix that will take you from mortal enemies to BFFs. But there may be a way you can learn to coexist.

We’ve compiled five reads that will help you better understand the tension between your co-worker and yourself. With any luck, you’ll be able to resolve the situation to your satisfaction.

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Do you have a colleague who is awesome at one moment and indescribably irksome the next? This co-worker you feel conflicted about — one could even go so far as to call them a frenemy — can actually make you better at your job.

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It’d be easy to command you to “open up” and “trust people more,” but this isn’t realistic. A critical component of trust is comfort and security, which can’t be manufactured or expedited. We all know those people who try to become BFFs too fast, and we don’t believe in those friendships. So don’t act like you trust someone if you don’t. But you can still set your own example of what you want in a coworker. Don’t gossip, and don’t leave people hanging. Want trustworthy coworkers? Be trustworthy yourself.

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An executive coach identifies the causes of troublesome colleagues’ behavior, and how best to respond.

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Co-workers that gossip or berate colleagues create a toxic environment for everyone. While it might be tempting to agree with your boss’s remark on a co-worker’s inability to multi-task or the new administrator’s inappropriate attire, resist the urge to throw a punch.

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No one job title or occupation is the same, but the difficult coworkers you run into in any given field tend to be remarkably similar. Their eye roll-inducing behavior (gossiping, micromanaging) may not always be worthy of an HR report but it still slows down workflow and peeves others in the office.

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