Work
mates can make your work life miserable. They can derail your career
progression in many ways. For instance, once you fail to get along with a
co-worker for some personal reasons, team work becomes impractical.
Eventually, stress checks in and productivity declines. In the end, each
individual has a part to play in the overall performance of an
organization.
Being around insensitive and annoying work mates is not a matter of choice. In any case, human beings will always annoy each other because of their diverse cultures, beliefs, family backgrounds and levels of understanding. Therefore, we cannot get rid of annoying co-workers. However, we can learn to manage annoying co-workers by; the way we interact with them, how we react to their irritating behavior and above all, practicing tolerance including being able to clearly identify what is a deliberate attempt to annoy and what is simply unavoidable.
Annoying co-workers are generally poor communicators. This however doesn’t mean that everyone who cannot communicate fluently and effectively is annoying. It means that although we might offend others by the way we talk to them or behave towards them, we should learn to make up for our offending actions by explaining ourselves. Once we learn how to do this then we can get along without annoying each other.
Annoying people make up for their communication deficiencies in a rudimentary manner in order to get their message across. Therefore their behavior just portrays symptoms of a greater weakness. They probably don’t mean it but no one would know this without communication. In fact, the truth of the matter is that even those who choose to annoy deliberately, would probably not do so if they knew how to utilize the option of dialogue.
The best way to deal with annoying co-workers is to talk to them while striving to be sensitive to their feelings. Human nature is such that, when someone annoys us, we tend to react negatively. However, being combative can only bring about greater hostilities. It cannot be a solution. Furthermore, poor communicators flourish on being militant because it is the only way they know how to get their message across. It is probable that the offended party has better communication skills and is less confrontational. Therefore they should start by remaining calm and trying to initiate dialogue with the annoying person.
Arbitration is an efficient way of activating communication between you and your annoying co-workers. If you cannot talk to them directly, then it is important that you seek help from someone who can. Explain your problem to the arbitrator and then let them talk to your co- worker before bringing the two of you together to talk to each other and hopefully solve your differences.
For all the things that annoy us -whether it is someone shouting obscenities, blowing their own trumpet loudly, encroaching into our private workspace, snooping around, interrupting and interfering, gossiping and rumor mongering- just to name a few; the best way to deal with such behavior is to communicate with the offending person. Communication should therefore be used both as a reactive and proactive technique of dealing with annoying workmates. To be proactive it has to be part of the organizational culture. People should be encouraged to speak and to listen to each other. Similarly, when the damage is done we should learn to react to the situation by talking to each other.
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