PART TWO

THE ARCHETYPES

Cleaning Up Your Side of the Street

A quick note before we dive into the archetypes.

At this point in the book, you may be thinking, “There’s an awful lot about how to understand and manage myself in this book. When do we get to the part about the jerk who’s making my life miserable?” If this is you, you’re not wrong! You’ve caught on to one of the core principles of my approach: if you’re serious about resolving conflict with a coworker, it’s essential that you acknowledge your own part in the dynamic. It’s far too easy when you’re dealing with a trying colleague to focus on them and what the heck is wrong with them (the list may be long). But the tools that I describe in the coming chapters for getting along with a pessimist, a biased colleague, or an insecure boss won’t work unless you recognize that while every battle with a difficult person is different, there is one consistent element across them: you.

Some years ago, a dear friend of mine was trying to support her teenage son through a hard time. Her son’s therapist told her and her spouse that while their kid worked on himself, they needed to do their own work. He referred to this process as “cleaning up your side of the street” or acknowledging and attending to your part in the struggle. That phrase really resonated with me. (I’ve since learned that it is commonly used in Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous when people facing addiction reach out to make amends with those they’ve harmed.)

I could picture what the therapist meant: imagine that you and the person with whom you’re in conflict are standing on opposite sides of a street, firmly entrenched in your perspectives and experiences. If your side of the street is cluttered with trash—volatile emotions stemming from the clash itself, bad blood from previous disagreements, unproven gossip about your opponent, lack of sleep, and so on—it’ll be harder to cross the divide. If you approach the other side with all of your garbage, the odds are you’ll make the situation worse. But if you get curious about your role in the conflict—how you might be misperceiving the situation, and what you want from the relationship—the path to making amends will emerge from the rubble.

Why should you do all the work when the other person is at least partly (OK, maybe fully) to blame? There are two reasons. First, in any tense exchange, regardless of who’s at fault, you can only control your thoughts, actions, and reactions. Second, even if you’re absolutely certain that you’re right and they’re wrong, it takes two to tango. Maybe your optimism and tendency to downplay risks spurs your pessimistic colleague to point out more of them. Or perhaps because you’ve inadvertently signaled to your coworker that you don’t like direct confrontation, they’ve resorted to passive-aggressive tactics to get their point across. The clearer you can be about your role in the dust-up (even if it’s minor), the clearer a resolution will become.

In chapter 11, I will share more about how to clean up your side of the street, but for now, keep in mind that your relationship with your coworker isn’t something that’s happening to you. It’s a dynamic that you likely participate in and therefore have the ability to do something about. In chapter 2, I discussed at some length the fact that although we can’t control how our brain instinctively reacts to a stressful situation, we can reappraise and alter our perception and response. Similarly, you may not be able to change how a colleague behaves, but you can change the way you interpret and respond to their behavior. Remembering that will improve your chances of building stronger, more fulfilling relationships at work, no matter what type of difficult person you’re dealing with.