For many, smartworking is over and everyone is back to working together passionately, a prospect that seems chilling to some given that away from colleagues they were just fine. We have all become somewhat unaccustomed to tolerating each other, and now it seems more difficult to return to old habits.
This is certainly a justified feeling given that in work environments one is often obliged to collaborate with people one detests. So how do you get rid of toxic colleagues and regain your peace of mind?
Toxic colleagues and how to avoid them
The first thing to understand is that disliking one’s work colleagues is quite normal: as I often explain, we should not forget that they are not people we chose to be with, the personnel department chose them all, so we necessarily have to be okay with them. The problem is that there is always the fellow careerist, slacker, passer of goods, dishonest, know-it-all, obnoxious, grumpy, and the ever-present minus-doctor who makes constant physical contact jokes while believing himself to be nice. But I wonder: how can you think you are sympathetic to female colleagues if you address them as if they were mere objects for your ***ual pleasure–things of disarming infantilism.
However, in work environments, relationships are often extremely toxic, especially since it seems that the most popular sport is to talk behind the backs of absentees. Is there, then, any technique one can deploy to get better? Of course there is, because many people are questioning this issue.
First of all, it must be ruled out that we are the problem! If we have problems with everyone it is probably our own behavior that is wrong, not everyone else’s. I have had colleagues like this, who felt persecuted, but in reality it was they who were engaging in misbehavior and inappropriate behavior.
So let us do some soul-searching because there is no ploy that will hold if we are victims of ourselves.
Secondly, let us always keep in mind that each colleague is a world of his or her own; there are specific reasons why each of them takes certain attitudes, very often related to personal problems outside the world of work. Understanding our colleagues’ lives more deeply can help us understand them and thus know what to expect (and not) from them. For example, if you know that a colleague’s anger is related to a health problem of a loved one, you will more easily ignore his aggressive behaviors and pity him. Knowing this changes your attitude, changes how you feel, and that is what really matters, because the feelings you have are inside you and the key to being well is to learn to govern them, preventing others from deciding for your mood. Becoming transparent to the bad words of others, letting them fall on deaf ears without retorting is an incredible show of strength, demonstrating maturity and great self-control, qualities that will certainly be appreciated by the leaders and will make the other person look bad.
If this technique, which is always to be preferred, does not work, one can consider reacting forcefully to the unfair, obnoxious, or aggressive behavior of colleagues. Making your point by responding in kind, but always remaining within the sphere of politeness, can silence those who annoy us forever. On the other hand, the “strong” are always so with the weaker, that is, they are often incredibly cowardly, and faced with a display of character there is a good chance they will suddenly become docile. If they then resent it and choose not to speak to us again, fine, we will still have achieved our goal, which is to be left alone.
Interesting also to know that if you learn to know well the people you are dealing with in the workplace, you will be able to predict their behaviors and reactions, you will know who you can trust and who you should steer clear of. Having understood this, internally in the work environment it can be a good idea to create small alliances with people you are comfortable with, excluding those you detest. This can help us create a world within a world, that is, our own little happy oasis in the hell of colleagues we can’t stand. We try to go out of our way to be with people who make us feel good, perhaps even on breaks, at lunch or cocktail hour.
Finally, it is important not to bind oneself too much to the work environment, that is, to remember that it is only a parenthesis, a moment of the day that needs to be reduced in every respect, especially the temporal one. there is life that explodes, there are the people for whom it is really worth using our time and energy, that is, family and real friends, which will be the only thing left when we are no longer needed by our bosses. Let us always remember that the easiest way to be happy is not to try to achieve impossible goals, but to remove what is negative in our lives.
