Why Some People Are Hard to Work With (And What to Do About It)
Understand what makes colleagues difficult to work with and learn strategies for improving collaboration. Plus, discover if you might be the difficult one.
Every workplace has them. The colleague who derails meetings. The manager who micromanages. The peer who takes credit for others' work. The team member who commits but doesn't deliver. The person who seems to create friction wherever they go.
Working with difficult people is exhausting. It consumes energy that could go toward actual work. It creates stress that spills into other areas of life. It makes you dread interactions that should be routine. And often, it seems like there's nothing you can do about it.
But there's always something you can do, even if you can't change the other person. Understanding why people are difficult to work with helps you navigate these relationships more effectively. And sometimes, that understanding reveals an uncomfortable possibility: that you might occasionally be the difficult one yourself.
Why People Become Difficult
People rarely try to be difficult. Most difficult behavior has underlying causes that make it understandable, even if it remains problematic. Understanding these causes helps you respond more effectively.
Fear and Insecurity
Much difficult behavior stems from fear. The micromanager who can't delegate fears being blamed for others' failures. The colleague who takes credit fears being seen as inadequate. The person who resists change fears being exposed as incompetent in new situations.
When you recognize fear as the driver, difficult behavior becomes less personal. They're not trying to make your life harder. They're trying to manage their own anxiety in ways that happen to affect you.
This doesn't excuse the behavior, but it changes how you might respond. Addressing the underlying fear often reduces the difficult behavior more effectively than confronting the behavior itself.
Different Working Styles
What seems difficult might just be different. The person who wants to discuss things verbally when you prefer written communication. The planner who needs structure working with a spontaneous creative. The detail-oriented person collaborating with a big-picture thinker.
These differences create friction, but neither style is wrong. What seems like difficulty might actually be legitimate working preferences that happen to clash with yours. The challenge is finding ways to work across these differences rather than expecting others to adopt your style.
Unaddressed Issues
Sometimes difficulty accumulates from unresolved problems. A colleague who seems passive-aggressive might be carrying resentment from a conflict that was never properly resolved. A manager who seems unreasonable might be responding to pressures you don't see. A team member who seems checked out might be dealing with personal circumstances affecting their work.
These accumulated issues often need to be surfaced and addressed before behavior changes. The difficulty is a symptom of something deeper.
Blind Spots
Many difficult behaviors happen without awareness. The person interrupting constantly might genuinely not realize they're doing it. The colleague whose communication seems aggressive might not know how their messages land. The team member who dominates meetings might believe they're contributing, not dominating.
These blind spots are frustrating because the person seems oblivious to behavior that's obvious to everyone else. But the lack of awareness also means they might change if they received honest feedback that actually reached them.
Organizational Factors
Sometimes difficult behavior is a rational response to organizational dysfunction. The hoarder of information might be protecting themselves in a political environment. The person who avoids commitment might have been burned by changing priorities. The colleague who seems territorial might be responding to unclear ownership and accountability.
In these cases, the individual behavior reflects system problems. Changing the individual without changing the system just shifts the difficulty to someone else.
Common Types of Difficult Colleagues
While every situation is unique, certain patterns appear frequently enough to be recognizable.
The Credit Taker
They present team work as their own. They're visible in successes but invisible in failures. Working with them feels like providing unpaid support for their career advancement.
What's often underneath: Insecurity about their value. Fear that their contributions won't be recognized unless they actively claim credit. Sometimes, a genuine blind spot about how collaboration and credit should work.
How to navigate: Document your contributions clearly. Communicate your work directly to stakeholders rather than through them. Name your role explicitly in shared contexts: "I led the analysis that informed this recommendation." Address the pattern directly if you have the relationship to do so.
The Micromanager
They can't let go of details. They check in constantly. They redo work you've already done. Working with them feels suffocating and suggests they don't trust you.
What's often underneath: Anxiety about outcomes they're responsible for. Previous experiences where delegation led to failure. A gap between their standards and their ability to communicate those standards clearly.
How to navigate: Proactively provide the information they're looking for before they ask. Make your work visible so they don't need to check on it. Ask directly what would help them feel confident in your work. If you report to them, have a conversation about what success looks like and how you can earn more autonomy.
The Resister
Every change is met with reasons it won't work. New ideas get shot down. They seem invested in maintaining the status quo regardless of its merits.
What's often underneath: Fear of appearing incompetent when things change. Legitimate concerns about workload or disruption that aren't being heard. Past experiences where change created problems that they had to deal with.
How to navigate: Listen to their concerns genuinely before dismissing them. They might see real risks others are missing. Involve them early in changes rather than presenting decisions. Address their specific concerns rather than general resistance. Acknowledge what's being lost, not just what's being gained.
The Chronic Complainer
Everything is wrong. Every conversation includes what's broken, frustrating, or unfair. Their negativity is contagious and draining.
What's often underneath: Genuine frustrations that have never been addressed. A sense of powerlessness that turns into venting. Sometimes, depression or burnout manifesting as negativity.
How to navigate: Set boundaries on how much negativity you absorb. Redirect toward solutions: "What would make this better?" Acknowledge valid complaints while not getting pulled into unproductive spiraling. If you have a close relationship, consider a caring conversation about the pattern itself.
The Unreliable One
Commitments aren't kept. Deadlines are missed. You can't depend on them to deliver their part of shared work.
What's often underneath: Over-commitment without realistic assessment of capacity. Difficulty saying no. Poor time management or prioritization. Sometimes, disengagement from work that manifests as unreliability.
How to navigate: Build in buffer time when depending on them. Get commitments in writing. Check in before deadlines rather than assuming things are on track. Be direct about impact: "When your part is late, it affects my ability to deliver mine." If you manage them, have explicit conversations about capacity and prioritization.
When You Might Be the Difficult One
Reading about difficult colleagues is comfortable. We easily recognize others' problematic behaviors while remaining blind to our own. But difficult behavior usually happens without self-awareness. Which means you might be doing something that makes you difficult to work with without realizing it.
Consider whether any of these might apply to you:
Do colleagues seem relieved when meetings end or when you leave conversations? This might signal that your presence creates tension you're not aware of.
Do you frequently feel misunderstood or that others misinterpret your intentions? While this sometimes reflects others' limitations, frequent misunderstanding might indicate that your communication style doesn't land as intended.
Do you notice patterns in feedback, even casual or indirect feedback? If multiple people over time have suggested similar things, there might be signal worth considering.
Do workplace relationships tend to follow similar patterns? Difficulty that repeats across different contexts and people might indicate something you're contributing.
Would a neutral observer, watching your interactions, see anything that might create difficulty for others? Try to imagine your behavior from an outside perspective.
This self-examination is uncomfortable precisely because blind spots are hard to see. But understanding how others experience you is essential for being someone others want to work with.
Strategies for Working with Difficult People
When you can't avoid working with someone difficult, these approaches can help.
Separate the Person from the Behavior
The person isn't difficult. Their behavior is difficult. This distinction matters because behavior can potentially change while labeling someone as fundamentally difficult makes change seem impossible.
It also protects you from personalizing the difficulty. Their behavior isn't about you. It's about them, their fears, their patterns, their blind spots. This framing helps you respond rather than react.
Understand Before Solving
Before trying to fix a difficult relationship, try to genuinely understand what's driving the behavior. Ask questions. Listen to their perspective. Consider what might be happening that you don't see.
Sometimes understanding itself improves the relationship. People become less difficult when they feel understood. And sometimes understanding reveals approaches that address root causes rather than just managing symptoms.
Focus on What You Can Control
You can't control others' behavior. You can control how you respond to it. Focus energy on your responses, your boundaries, and your communication rather than on changing them.
This might mean adjusting your expectations, building in redundancy when they're unreliable, or limiting exposure to their negativity. What can you do differently to make the situation more workable regardless of whether they change?
Have Direct Conversations
Sometimes difficult behavior persists because no one has ever clearly named it. The person genuinely doesn't know how their behavior affects others. A direct, kind, specific conversation might provide information they need to change.
"When you rework my deliverables without discussing them with me first, I feel like my judgment isn't trusted. Could we set up a review process instead?"
"I notice in our meetings you often speak right after me and refine my points. I'm sure you're building on ideas, but from my side it feels like my contributions are being corrected."
These conversations require courage and skill. They might not work. But they at least give the other person information they might not otherwise receive.
Build Allies
Dealing with difficult people alone is harder than having support. Connect with colleagues who share your experience. This provides reality-checking (confirming the difficulty isn't just your perception), emotional support, and potentially collective influence on the situation.
Escalate When Necessary
Some difficult behavior crosses lines that require escalation. If someone's behavior is abusive, discriminatory, or significantly harming work outcomes, escalating to management or HR is appropriate. You're not required to tolerate anything just because it's happening at work.
Try Portrait for Self-Awareness
Portrait helps you see whether you might be unknowingly difficult to work with. By gathering anonymous feedback from colleagues, you learn how your behavior actually lands rather than how you intend it.
The Johari Window framework reveals blind spots that might be affecting your professional relationships. Perhaps behaviors you consider collaborative are experienced as controlling. Perhaps your directness lands as dismissiveness. Perhaps your thoroughness reads as micromanagement.
What friends and colleagues won't tell you directly often includes observations about how you're difficult to work with. Portrait creates a safe channel for that honest feedback.
Try Portrait free and discover if there are behaviors you should know about.
The Relationship You Can Change
Difficult professional relationships are draining, frustrating, and sometimes unavoidable. But they're rarely hopeless. Understanding what drives difficult behavior opens possibilities for different responses. Direct conversation might provide information that changes patterns. Changes in your own behavior might shift the dynamic.
And sometimes, the most powerful insight is recognizing your own contribution. Even in relationships where someone else seems clearly difficult, examining your own behavior might reveal something you can change that improves things regardless of what they do.
The relationship you have most power to change is your relationship with yourself: your self-awareness, your responses, your contribution to dynamics. That's where change starts, even when the difficulty seems to live entirely with someone else.
The question isn't whether you can make difficult people easy. It's whether you can navigate difficult relationships more skillfully, and whether you can ensure you're not unknowingly making relationships difficult for others.
Both of those are within your power.