Our professional life takes up almost, or over, 70% of our adult lives. So, understandably, our professional peace greatly influences how we show up in our personal relationships. And, the health of our personal relationships decides the happiness quotient of our lives. And, yes, this in turn has a major influence on our alertness and competence in our professional quarters.

QOTD: What is your greatest challenge in sustaining a job?

If your answer is, “A work culture that patronizes collective progress, with respect and dignity.” You are not alone. And, you have my complete support and understanding! Unfortunately, dealing with a difficult and demanding senior at work is too common to shock any fresher. We all have our unfair share of difficult people in life, but the ones at work become all the more trickier to coordinate with. The obvious reason being we all need a job, a space to present our work and let others be benefitted from it.

That Difficult Person and Your Dwindling Professional Peace

Fact: You cannot really “handle” the difficult person. You can only manage your own response to the situation.

You know how hard it is to control your response to the situation. Now imagine how impossible it must be to control the other person’s behaviour itself.

Remember this reality check from The Daily Stoic: “No one’s against you. Everyone’s for themselves.” And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. It’s all good. Live and Let Live. This paradigm shift is crucial for making peace with your professional, and even personal, life situations in all phases.

Understanding Requires No Justification

Understand their difficult behaviour, sans justification. Create space for their harsh behaviour to co-exist outside your sense of accomplishment & confidence in your work & learning. Now, I am not saying this will be a cakewalk, and you’ll be able to maintain such profound mindfulness in every waking moment on the job. All I am asking of you is to put in efforts every single day to get to a level of emotional detachment from the comments and jibes of the difficult person. Believe it or not, that’s the only way to disarm them.

Be Attentive to Facts, NOT Your Expectations

Pay attention to the specific actions and patterns of behaviour that you actually receive at work. Bring your mind back from the “what should be” and “what you thought” scenarios. None of that matters. Really. Identify what exactly about their behaviour belittles you, disregards your work, fails to mentor you in the profession, and makes you feel outright unworthy and unwanted. And, obviously, be extremely cautious about every interaction, no matter how nonchalant it might seem on their part. You most definitely need to be proactively up to date with all documentation and organisation policies as well. Yes, this includes documenting every single conversation you have with the difficult person.

Your Worth is not Defined by Your Professional Competency

You are worthy to be seen and heard. You are worthy of respect. Professional competency, just like professional peace, is a lifelong endeavour, and has its many phases. Remember: We can only offer to others what we have for ourselves. As Stephen Covey had beautifully narrated in the classic book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, “children learn to share their stuff only after they have felt a sense of ownership over them.” Adults too can be respectful of others only when they feel respectful towards themselves. Even at work, adults can offer acknowledgement and appreciation to others, especially their juniors, only after they have felt rightful ownership of their own position and responsibility.

Reminder-To-Self: Your behaviour is a reflection of your and only your own values and character. So is theirs.

Find an Emotional Support System

Build an emotional support system for yourself with people who will call you out when you are genuinely not living up to your full potential, as well as celebrate every little win in your life and help you show up better at work. As Esther Perel puts it, “try not to replace an enitre village with one person.” Identify your support group amongst family, friends, and even colleagues. Be as wisely vulnerable as possible. In the words of Brene Brown, “recognise who has earned the right to hear your story.” This story includes your shortcomings, mistakes and achievements – all of it.

Be Your Own Cheerleader

Be your own painfully honest cheerleader. It’s essential to develop an inner voice that is both relentlessly supportive and bluntly realistic. Acknowledge your own learnings and success alike. This self-preservation can sustain your confidence and zeal for your work. It can greatly minimise the effects of the lack of mentoring & acknowledgement from a difficult person.

In a Parallel Conversation

QOTD: Are Difficult Bosses / Workplaces your Fate or your Pattern?

That’s a very important question to explore with a coach and therapist. The caveat is to be stark honest with yourself. You’ve got no one to please with the answer. Here’s a list of questions to ask yourself:

1. How far do you allow to be mistreated in order to keep a job?
2. How far can you accept disrespect and scorn simply because you are too scared to tread into unknown charters?
3. Why do you believe that you must be treated as trash till you get some high throne to sit on?
4. Do you believe that accepting contempt through the early days of your career is the one proven way to reach your dream designation?

Let’s turn this question on its head now.

1. When you finally get to sit on your preferred high throne, would you break the pattern?
2. With all the years of compliance with workplace contempt and neglect, will you still be connected to your personal code of ethics?
3. Will you have any values of your own left to break the pattern? Or would the pattern already have broken you?

Grit and Resilience as Ways to Professional Peace

Grit is not about endlessly hitting a stonewall. Grit is knowing when to persevere and when to reroute. Resilience is knowing you’ll be you, no matter the path you choose to walk; and that is enough to get you through life.

Professional peace can be sought by initiating difficult conversations in the workplace that is surviving a difficult boss. This could work wonders and bring in healthier work patterns for everyone in the organisation. Alternately, professional peace can be sought by removing yourself from a difficult workplace, a difficult boss, and saving your mind space and energy for other life battles.

You could choose situational complacency over situational change. But then, you’d have to be okay with living through the consequences of inaction. And that, in all probability, will be the complete absence of professional peace in your career. We choose the consequences we think we can live with.

You are the sole author of your “That Difficult Person and Me” story. Write one that gives you professional peace.

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Disclaimer: This post is not a judgement call on anyone who is bound to live through a difficult workplace culture due to financial responsibilities. We have the utmost respect for you and wish you the best of everything in life.

P.S. : This post is inspired by a collaborative article on the same topic found on LinkedIn.

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