Four out of five of us will experience a coworker who tries to bully or backstab. In all walks of life there are people who suck time away in political maneuvering, grabbing resources, and creating distractions. These people can get your eyes watering:
- They secretly present your ideas as theirs.
- They take credit for your work to help them get ahead.
- They attempt character assassination.
- They provide you misleading information to their ownbenefit.
- They step over people, you included.
- They fabricate to try to save themselves.
- They endeavor to bring you down with disrespect.
- They create conflicts of interest.
- They try to trick you into badmouthing the company.
- They share private peer conversations.
- They go over your head and behind your back.
- They work to get your job away from you.
- They disassociate from you after you help them.
- They undermine you with micro-inequities,such as not returning phone calls and leaving you out of meetings, and generally make you feel, as one CEO put it, like “a sharpened instrument is being eased into the fleshy portion of your body.”
Do I have an answer to dealing with these people? Sorry, not really. I do have this recommendation: when reading this list make sure YOU don’t do any of these to others!
