Everyone has to deal with coworkers who make their lives difficult. Here are 5 effective strategies. ... [+]
The kiss-up, the credit stealer, the micromanager, the gaslighter, the free rider – these are just some of the types of jerks you may have encountered in the workplace. Tessa West, a professor of psychology at New York University and scientific advisor for MindGym, once rearranged her work hours to avoid sharing a bathroom with one difficult individual. This experience in particular inspired her to write Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them.
In the book, West, who has been studying human interactions for two decades, reveals effective strategies for dealing with jerks who make work and life miserable. You don’t have to gossip, vent, shut down, or send out resumes, she says. There are better ways to keep your wellbeing intact. Here are five of them:
1. Try to understand why your jerk is doing what they’re doing. What is the landscape like at work? Most of us think that jerks are people out to get us. However, often they are products of their own workplace environments: They have a micromanaging boss, or there’s a culture of fear that leads them to be a little too controlling. Knowing these things will help you figure out your best approach moving forward.
2. Confront problematic behavior early and often. Most of us are afraid of confrontation so we put it off. Instead, bring issues up as soon as you can. Focus on small behaviors that have clear solutions—like not having enough turnaround time on a project. When we wait too long to confront people, we often focus on traits rather than specific behaviors.
For example, instead of saying, “I had a hard time getting my thoughts across in that meeting because I was interrupted a lot,” we wait too long and end up saying, “You bulldoze me in meetings and suck all of the oxygen out of the room.” Big comments like this aren’t useful. Make a norm out of giving, and asking for, feedback early and often.
3. Think outside the box when it comes to forming allies. It’s nice to complain to our best friends, but they aren’t usually the ideal people to help get us out of a sticky workplace situation. Think broader. Find someone you don’t usually interact with who is well-connected at work. Other victims will be key to raising the alarm bells with your boss, and broad networks will help you find them. The added benefit is that broad social networks are the key to climbing up and out if the time comes.
4. If you’re a boss, don’t wait for people to complain before you take action. Not all workplaces have jerks, but most have the potential to create breading grounds for them. Small steps, like asking your team members specific questions about their relationships with others at work, are much better than generic questions such as, “Is everything going well?” The goal is to sniff out relationship issues before they get too big.
5. Take a good, long look in the mirror. Most of us won’t get direct feedback that we’re the jerk at work, especially if we’re the boss. But most of us have the potential to be less than our ideal selves. And that’s okay, everyone can improve. Knowing what brings out your weakest workplace self is to key to putting steps in place to prevent it from happening.
Tessa West is a psychoology professor at NYU and author of "Jerks at Work."
West always knew she wanted a job that involved understanding how people communicate. In high school, she worked in a video store and found herself wondering why some people got away with slacking off and some didn’t. Later, she worked retail and noticed some people mistreating others right under the boss’s nose.
So, when West came across an opportunity to join a psych professor’s lab at UC Santa Barbara her freshman year, she joined right away. She began working with Wendy Mendes, a graduate student who was examining people’s physiologic stress responses. After college, West earned a PhD at the University of Connecticut. Twenty years later, West still collaborates with Mendes. Their studies involve observing people interact both in a lab setting and at their workplaces, and look at not only how people behave but also their physiology, such as blood pressure and heart rate. Their aim is to develop strategies that benefit people’s long-term physical and psychological health.
At Mindgym, West takes the applies it to behavior change programs for people at work. She meets with clients from all walks of life, from C-Suite executives to new employees. “When you’re sleep-deprived, overworked, or have a bad boss, it’s hard to stay motivated at work,” she says. “For me, having meaning is what saves me when I can feel burnout looming in the near distance. It’s what helps me get over my personal humps, like feeling insecure, and my professional ones, like getting rejected.”
West understands that for the advice to “find a career aligned with your life purpose” can sound intimidating. She recommends asking yourself, “’What work gives me the autonomy to do the things necessary for keeping my body and mind healthy?’ Some people call this work-life balance. I call it necessary preconditions. We often look for meaning once we have balance, but having balance can give us meaning.”
Also, West points out, “life purpose” doesn’t always arrive in a big aha moment. It can be the result of “the accumulation of a thousand small moments, like that feeling you get when you first wake up and you’re excited to meet with your team. My advice is to document those small moments to yourself, because they count for a lot, in the long run.”
