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The Seven Ways People Make You Miserable At Work, And What To Do About It

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After more than 30 years in private practice, psychiatrist Judith Orloff, 60, has heard thousands of stories of coworkers and bosses whose difficult personalities have driven her patients around the bend. An author of five self-help books, including The Ecstasy of Surrender: 12 Ways Letting Go Can Empower Your Life, she says that she’s realized that difficult bosses and co-workers are a huge source of stress for her patients.

“The main cause of energy drain in people is from relationships,” she says. “People spend so much time at work, they need to figure out how to manage those relationships in particular.” An assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, Orloff calls the most draining bosses and colleagues “energy vampires.” Though many difficult people have traits that cross categories, like control freaks who can also be passive-aggressive and narcissistic, Orloff believes there are seven distinct types of challenging personalities that can eat away at your productivity and your psyche. She’s come up with strategies to deal with each.  Here are the seven types, with some anecdotes and remedies:

1. The Critic

This is the person who feels compelled to belittle you, judge you and criticize your performance at every turn. One of Orloff’s patients, a manager at a big marketing firm in Los Angeles, worked 10- and 12-hour days, but his boss found fault with everything he did. Among the boss’s criticisms: “You didn’t put enough time into this,” “Why are we paying you all this money when you’re not coming through?’ “I know you’re trying hard but you’re not giving us what we need.” “We could get somebody else to come in and do this job.”

This patient had an especially tough time coping with his hyper-critical boss because he had grown up with an overly-critical mother and he was used to just taking the abuse and feeling bad about himself. Orloff’s solution: Remind yourself that the boss’s behavior is his problem, and not a reflection of your performance. Don’t get defensive, express appreciation for the bits of his criticism that might be useful and make your hyper-critical boss or colleague part of the solution.  “Frame the issue as something you can both brainstorm on and work together,” says Orloff. “Don’t react when you’re criticized,” she adds. “Stay centered, breathe, and tell them you’ll deal with it later.”

2. The Passive-Aggressive

This difficult personality promises to help with a project and then flakes out. You decide together that you’ll meet at 9:30am to get started, and she doesn’t show up. You agree that each of you will write a section of the report but when you’ve finished your piece, you find she hasn’t even started. A patient of Orloff’s who worked in the fashion industry had just such a colleague who first volunteered to help put a presentation together and then did nothing. Orloff’s patient, who was juggling young children and a sick husband, chased after her colleague for days, only to be told that something more important had come up and the colleague couldn’t help after all.

Orloff’s advice: Working with a passive aggressive person is a no-win situation. The best you can do is to identify these colleagues and resolve never to ask them to help. Turn away their offer if they volunteer. “If they do anything, it’s very little,” she says. “Or they leave you in the lurch and they always have a great excuse.” What if your boss assigns you to work with a passive-aggressive? “Address the behavior in a calm, firm tone,” says Orloff. For instance, if your colleague is late for a meeting, simply say, “I would greatly appreciate it if you could be on time when we start out in the morning.” Keep your expectations low and focus on the task at hand, says Orloff. “They are not motivated to change unless someone calls them on their behavior.”

3. The Victimized

Pity the poor person who is always being persecuted and demands that others rescue her. A patient of Orloff’s who worked in the accounting department at Whole Foods had a colleague who insisted every day that she was about to get fired. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, many in the office felt this way and the doom-and-gloom colleague amped up the fear level. “It mattered to my patient because she was very afraid of losing her job too,” says Orloff. “This person made everyone in the department extremely anxious.”

Orloff says the solution in this case was an easy one because there was strength in numbers. The colleagues got together and went to human resources. An HR staffer took the woman aside and talked to her about her behavior. She stopped discussing her anxieties in the office and it boosted the entire department’s morale. If you’re dealing with a victimized colleague alone, don’t have long conversations about her feelings and don’t express sympathy. Don’t try to make her feel better either. Limit your interactions and don’t get sucked into her self-pity.

4. The Needy

One of Orloff’s patients, a lawyer who worked in Century City, had an assistant who didn’t assist her. Instead the woman insisted on unloading all of her problems on the lawyer, draining the boss of precious energy and even prompting the lawyer to take on the work the assistant should have been doing.

The solution when you’re dealing with a needy colleague: Set clear boundaries. Don’t feel guilty about saying, in a neutral tone, that you are busy with work, you can’t chat and you must excuse yourself. If you consider the colleague a friend, agree to meet after work and talk and if you know of a good therapist, make a referral. Says Orloff, “The needy person will just suck you dry.”

5. The Negative

This is the person who has no good news, only bad. He thinks the brown spot on his skin is cancer. On his flight from New York, the airline lost his luggage. Nobody understands him, including his own mother. Orloff had a patient, a manager at a sporting goods store, who was herself overly negative. “She would go in and terrify her coworkers with all this negativity,” says Orloff. A good friend in the department wound up taking her aside and telling her to stop.

Orloff says that unless you have a way to get the negative co-worker to listen, the best thing is simply to tune her out. “The mistake most coworkers make is they feel sorry for them,” she says. She recommends “I’m not interested” body language: Instead of looking her in the eye, cross your legs and move your body in the other direction. Say, “I’m sorry but I’ve got to get back to work now.”

6. The Narcissist

Orloff believes that narcissists are the worst energy vampires of all. “They don’t care about what other people think unless it builds them up,” she says. They have no sense of empathy.

The best way to deal with a full-blown narcissist: Orloff advises changing jobs, if possible. But if you’re stuck with a narcissistic boss, appreciate her good qualities. Most narcissists can be smart, funny and charming in social situations. As for work, frame everything you do in terms of how it will help the narcissist. “You have to clarify how they will benefit,” says Orloff.

7. The Control Freak

One of Orloff’s patients was an on-air reporter for a sports channel whose boss insisted on micro-managing everything she did, from what she should wear to how she should talk to the specific questions she should ask in interviews. “She felt like he was stifling her creativity,” says Orloff. The reporter tried confronting him, he became defensive and their relationship deteriorated.

Orloff counseled her to pick her battles and focus on specifics. The patient decided she most cared about being able to have some latitude in her interviews and she wound up working out a compromise: She would write a script in advance and run it by her boss before she did the interview. He liked the plan because he retained some control and she was happy because she got to frame the assignment. “With controllers, you shouldn’t say, ‘No, I’ll do it my way,’” says Orloff. “You never want to try to control a controller. That never works because they just amp up their controlling nature.” Don’t say you’re right and he’s wrong. Focus on results.

With all of these energy-sapping types, says Orloff, it’s best to let go of the idea that you’re right and they’re wrong. “Being right isn’t going to get you anywhere,” she says. “Be firm and kind, not snippy, angry or blaming. If you can do all that with your tone of voice, you won’t get caught up in their bad habits.”

I feel very lucky that my boss, Leadership Editor Fred Allen, has none of these difficult qualities, but in the past I’ve worked for two critics and two control freaks and I’m afraid I may be prone myself, at times, to the negative and the needy. Two more pieces of advice I’ll add from my own experience: If the critic is your boss, get support from other colleagues who are targets of his barbs. With the control freak, try to anticipate her demands and stay several steps ahead, like updating her frequently on your progress on assignments. I’d also suggest reflecting on your own difficult personality quirks and considering Orloff’s stories of how they affect your colleagues.