Love Life with Matthew Hussey - Dealing With a Difficult Coworker

Episode Date: April 22, 2016

What do you do when your co-worker is impossible to work with? Especially when management doesn’t seem to notice or care? That’s the question today’s caller, Crystal, asks. She’s looking for my advice on how to change the situation, but I show her how the real relief will come from changing her mindset and her actions. If you’ve ever dealt with this situation (and who among us hasn’t?), you’ll want to catch this episode where I reveal the 3 secrets to being “so good they can’t ignore you.”

Welcome to Love Life. I'm Matthew Hussey and I am really excited about today's show. But before we jump into it, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever been texting with a guy, maybe you've been on a few dates, when suddenly his texts stop cold? One minute you're flirting back and forth late into the night and the next minute he disappears into thin air. It's not your fault. Guys do this all the time. The question is, what can you do

about it? Well, I can tell you exactly what to say to reignite his interest after he's gone cold. Stay with me until the end of the show and I will tell you. We have another wonderful caller on the line today, which I'm extremely excited about. Her name is Crystal. Crystal, are you there? Yes. Oh my God, Crystal, you're there. I'm so happy. How are you? I'm great, thanks. How are you? I'm feeling really good today, actually. I'm feeling very excited to have you on the line.

What was your question? Well, my question is, I'll give you the scenario. I have a coworker, and she's 10 years younger than me, and she's extremely difficult to work with. I've tried everything between killing her with kindness, flat out ignoring her, trying to lead by example, everything, and I just cannot get along with her. It's a common problem amongst my co-workers, but the management loves her. They think she can do no wrong. So just basically, I would want to know how to deal with this situation because it's at my job and I have to deal with it every day. So here's the thing right now. Have you ever heard the phrase, the best revenge is living well?

Yes. The best revenge is living well. Now, with her, she's not always easy on you or anyone else. She can be a pain. She can be someone who people don't like working with. Now, the worst thing you can do is focus all of your energy and attention on that because then that detracts from you doing what you do really well. Ultimately, ultimately in a workplace, politics can play a part in the short term but ultimately quality wins so my first question to you is what are you doing to bring quality now you don't have to answer that for me right now but i want you to ask that of yourself what am

i doing every single day to bring more to the table? Because I could knock her down a peg. I could try and work out a way for people to like her less, for the bosses to like her less. If only they would see who she really is. Let me tell you something. They already know who she is. If they've worked with her long enough, they already know and they've accepted it and they've decided they like certain other things about her. They already know who she is. They're not stupid. Most of the time when people are in positions of power, they're there not because they're stupid, but because they know people, they can read people, right? So they get to that place in an organization because they're good at reading people. So perhaps they already know more than you think they do, but they've decided that

that's not important to them, that something else is more important to them. That's okay. What you have to think about right now is how you're going to bring your unique brand of quality to the table. What's the thing that the bosses will love you for? What's the thing that you can bring that makes you so difficult to ignore? There's this great Steve Martin, the comedian, when he was asked about how you get into the industry for comedy. He said, it's not about finding the best agent. He said, everyone always says about finding the best agent. He said, everyone always says, how do I find the best agent? How do I get the best gig? How do you play in that venue? He said, look, the bottom line is really boring. He said, it's to be so good,

they can't ignore you. And ultimately, you don't need to worry about this woman. You need to worry about being so good that they can't ignore you. So I'm going to give you a couple of practical things that you can do to both change your mindset and help change your practical actions in this situation. The first one is get perspective. Get perspective. When you zoom out, you're just working in one office with how many people work in your office? About 20. About 20.

So there's 20 people in your office. She doesn't matter nearly as much as you think in your office? About 20. About 20. So there's 20 people in your office. She doesn't matter nearly as much as you think in your office, trust me. And if you zoom out again, there are all these offices around you with hundreds of people. This situation right now that you feel is important because it feels like your world when you go into work every day with that person is not nearly as important as you think it is. She's not as important as you're making her right now. So I would not let her occupy this much of your space. Trust me, she doesn't matter to the other 7 billion people on earth. So don't let her matter to you that much.

The second thing is, let her worst traits be an inspiration for things you want to do really well. What do you want to be better at? Well, I want to be someone who can manage better than she does. Because you know what? Even though she's admired or she's liked by the people above her, she's a poor manager. She doesn't know how to really build rapport with people.

I'm going to be better at that. She hasn't got a great work ethic. I'm going to have an incredible work ethic. Whatever is the... I always think my enemies, the people I don't like, what are the worst traits in them that can inspire my best traits? And that way they become really useful to me because they become this beacon of what I don't want to be. And they drive me to be better. And I know that the way I beat them

is by countering their biggest weaknesses. That's how you beat this person. You counter her biggest weaknesses. So that's the second thing let her worst traits inspire your best ones and the third thing is stop trying to fix her and focus on getting really good at what you're doing now i promise you if you do those three things not only will you release that pressure valve that is making her this important but you're going to get better as a person and your work is going to get better. And you're going to start thinking about what you can bring to the table that is going to dwarf any limitations that that one person could put on you. Because trust me, one person can never keep another good person down. It is impossible.

Be relentless. Okay. Thank you. Yes. I'm so glad you called in. Did you have fun? Did you like it? Yes. Thank you very much. You're very wise. I have my moments. Crystal, thank you so much. We really appreciate your call. Thank you everyone for listening. Crystal, feel free to leave us a message on Facebook. Let us know what you thought of the call. Let us know if you enjoyed it. Let us know what you learned. I'd love to have your reflection once you've had a minute to have a think.

We're at Coach Matthew Hussey. For everyone out there who's not following me on Facebook right now, go and follow me. I will see you there. Okay, at the beginning of the show, I promised you that I would tell you what you could say to reignite a man's interest after he's pulled away.

I've actually put together an entire free guide for you called Nine Magic Texts No Man Can Resist. Just copy and paste any of the nine texts and you'll instantly be right back in the forefront of his mind. So ask yourself first, is this guy worthy of me? And if the answer is yes, try one of these texts out and let me know what happens. To get your free guide, just go to lovelifepodcast.com forward slash texts.