How to Get Along With Your Coworkers

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Getting along with your coworkers makes work more enjoyable. On the flip side, having a "beef' with a coworker or feeling gossiped about by your teammates can make work extremely difficult.

In an evolutionary sense, becoming excluded from a group was dangerous to us. Therefore, we're wired to find it intensely distressing. Interpersonal conflicts at work are a common trigger for rumination.

Here are some not-so-obvious ways to get along with a wider variety of people and personalities at work—and why that's important.

1. Understand what's annoying about you.

Self-knowledge is valuable. We all have aspects of ourselves that annoy others. This goes far beyond surface-level factors, like if you chew your food loudly. For example, I like to do things in unconventional ways, and I'm fussy. This can create a problem when I'm working with someone who already has a fixed, conventional process for how they get a task done. From their perspective, my requests to do things differently often make their process more time-consuming and inefficient. So, I need to be mindful of this.

When you're self-aware, you can, at the very least, communicate when you know you're being difficult and moderate your tendencies as needed. Stress-free productivity offers many tools to understand yourself better and gain accurate self-knowledge. It requires understanding your own psychology on a deep level, like how you react when you feel anxious or when you're doing something new for the first time, and you're feeling challenged. You can't understand your impact on others until you have deep self-knowledge.

2. Understand how you're perceived.

If you've ever watched the TV show Survivor, you'll understand how important perceptions are in groups. We're all complex, multidimensional people, yet we're not always judged that way. And often, we're judged through the lens of our demographics. For example, on Survivor, women over 35 are often seen as motherly and judged harshly when they play duplicitously (which is part of the game) because mother figures aren't "supposed to" act like that.

It can be a sad reality, but it's useful to know how you're perceived, even when that's not fair. For example, someone who is very smart may intimidate others. A very smart person may trigger their coworkers' insecurity, leading their coworkers to feel threatened and behave accordingly (which could manifest as exclusion or gossiping). Others may believe the smart person looks down on them, even if that's not the case. Knowing how you're perceived can help you soften misperceptions. For instance, the smart person could compliment others on their smartness to help them not feel threatened.

If you're anxious or insecure, this may cause you to misjudge how others see you. For example, you may see yourself as very non-threatening, but others see how as a high-powered go-getter and feel intimidated by you. Keep this in mind.

3. Notice your coworkers' strengths.

People love to be complimented. Even more so, people love to be complimented for strengths they didn't know they had. Help your coworkers see their strengths. Point out someone who makes you feel comfortable, safe, or not judged, who is resourceful, who is a good practical problem-solver, or who thinks differently.

When you help others identify their strengths, it will give them the confidence to use those strengths more. They'll want to be around you and further show off those strengths to you.

4. Understand the difference between respect and cheerfulness.

Someone told me recently that they thought the most important advice for thriving at work was to "play well with others." On the surface, that's an innocuous statement, right? Looking deeper, it's anti-diversity. Companies often (consciously or not) hire and promote partly based on perceived "cultural fit." This refers to how well an individual is likely to fit in with their coworkers and the ways things are done at the company.

For example, a company that has a workaholic culture may not see a solo mother of three as a good cultural fit. A company with a playful, fun culture may not see a serious introvert as a good cultural fit. Can you see the problem here?

People who are not naturally cheerful are often disadvantaged. For example,

• An individual who is from a culture that's less smiley and more direct
• A person experiencing depression or anxiety*
• A person who is neurodivergent*

Why does this matter? Increased diversity at work is not just the right thing to do morally. It's also important for performance. Teams with more diversity (of backgrounds, identities, personalities, skills, etc.) tend to feel more conflictual, but they also produce better work. Diverse people bring different values and different assumptions to the table. Their varied histories allow them to see problems through different lenses and draw on different models and examples than others. This can be beneficial even if it feels disruptive.

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You'll find it easier to get along with a wider range of people at work if you distinguish between cheerful behavior and respectful behavior. Aim to lift others up through being respectful, like amplifying their perspective at a meeting (e.g., "Coming back to MaryAnne's idea....") and respecting other people's time and expertise. Go beyond cheerfulness. Judge others primarily based on whether they're respectful colleagues, not whether they're cheerful and easy to chat with at morning tea. Being respectful of our coworkers is a skill we should all try to continuously improve. The better you get at it, and the more conscious you are of it in yourself, the more you'll detect and appreciate it in others.

* I don't mean to imply that people who are depressed, anxious, or neuro-divergent can't be naturally cheerful. Of course, there is wide individual variation.