Dealing with Difficult Colleagues & Co-workers – On-Demand Training

Navigate Conflict Professionally & Effectively

Dealing with difficult behavior can be tolerable – in small doses. However, when it happens regularly, it can be frustrating, lower your job satisfaction, interrupt the harmony in your workplace, and impact your overall health and well-being. Most struggles with colleagues come from issues surrounding communication. Before you know it, one passive-aggressive remark can turn into full-blown hostility, adding to the stress that you and your colleagues already experience daily.  

Managing relationships is a vital part of office, department and campus politics. Our expert presenter shares strategies for communicating for success – with empathy, clear expectations, personal boundaries and mutually supportive goals – that will help maintain a healthy, productive work environment for everyone. 

Co-workers and colleagues may not be aware of your workload, deadlines, priorities or pressures that compete for your time. Likewise, you may be missing this critical information about their work. This can lead to feelings of frustration, arguments and even sabotage. Avoid frustrated outbursts and inappropriate behavior that can harm your reputation and contribute to a toxic work environment. Instead, navigate conflict professionally and effectively and maintain positive, professional relationships with your colleagues.

Topics Covered

You will gain crucial, actionable, takeaways so you can:

• Learn strategies to employ when interacting with a difficult co-worker – identify ways to de-escalate difficult interactions by finding common ground and mutual goals.
• Set and manage realistic expectations – recognize that everyone is struggling due to post-pandemic impacts and discover workarounds to challenges you are facing working together to accomplish tasks.
• Depersonalize critical feedback – remove your ego from situations so you look at feedback as data points about your specific performance and how you are functioning within the team, rather than react defensively and cause rifts and lack of trust with your colleagues. Keep yourself in the game!
• Utilize empathy and vulnerability at work – foster a sense of emotional safety that helps team members feel respected and cared for, so you can lay the groundwork for a culture of belonging in your workplace.
• Enjoy where you work and the people with whom you interact with on a daily basis – look forward to your work and be proud of the work you do.

Presenter

Dr. Staci Phelan is the Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management, overseeing Financial Aid, Scholarships, New Student Orientation, the Office of the Registrar, Systems and Data Management, and Admissions and Recruiting.
Click here for full bio.