HOW TO DEAL WITH A COWORKER THAT DRIVES YOU NUTS

How do you deal with a coworker that drives you nuts? It doesn't have to be a coworker: Maybe it's a client, or just one of the people surrounding you. This is a two-part series: How to deal with a coworker that drives you nuts. Today, let's talk about why it's important. Why does it even matter? Keep reading or watch the video below for more...

At the end of the day, you have a relationship with these people, and they are in your circle. Of course, you could just say: "Well, such is life. I'm just going to continue to be mad every single time I see them." I don't recommend it, though. Getting along is important for many reasons.

Relationships cause for people to leave their job.

People don't leave their job or what they're doing. They leave the coworker they can't stand or they leave the boss they don't respect. Very often, a relationship is the reason why someone would want to quit. I was just having a conversation with a friend. She said: "It's really too bad, I'm five years from retiring. I absolutely love my job. I love where I am, but there's a new girl that they've assigned to work with me. It's union. There's nothing I can do about it, and I really don't like working with her. I might even have to change job." In her case, she has the opportunity to be reassigned to a different location, so she is lucky, but why would she leave because somebody else is driving her nuts? She doesn't hate her job, but this relationship is affecting her.

Now, in her case, the person working with her is very slow. Arriving late, taking hours to get started in the morning, leaving early, and just generally doing as little as possible. For some others, maybe it's a mister know-it-all that just gets on their nerves, maybe it's a millennial that just doesn't have a clue, or maybe it's the gossip that constantly makes up stories. And there's always that one person you need to walk on eggshells around.

There are a lot of triggers in our environment, and what this does is it causes for us to be ineffective. We spend time in our heads, in our emotional drama. According to Cy Wakeman in the book No Ego, 2.5 hours per day are lost to emotional drama. That's about 600 hours a year, at an average of, let's say, $30 an hour. In a business with a hundred employees, we're talking about a $1.8 million yearly loss! That's why it's important that we are in control of our emotions and that we get along with people. Even if you only have 10 employees, that's $180,000 a year that you lose in emotional drama.

The difference between hating your job or absolutely loving what you do is how you control your relationships. Remember: People don't leave their jobs. They leave the boss they don't respect or the coworker they can't stand. Next week, we're going over five different strategies to get along.