Why One Colleague Is Only Difficult With You: The 4-Week Test | Ep 11
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A new head of operations at an insurer noticed it in her second month, and she noticed it first in her inbox. The financial controller signs off every change she makes. He answers the other department heads within the hour and thanks them by name. Her requests sit for five days and come back as one line, usually a question she's already answered.
In the monthly meeting, he's relaxed and funny with everybody else. When she speaks, he looks at his laptop. She mentioned it to a colleague she trusts, who says he's one of the most helpful people in the building. She mentions it to her own director, who says he's found him fine for years and suggests she picks up the phone.
By the end of the quarter, she's stopped mentioning it, but at 2am she's started wondering if the problem is her. she If you've ever been in her position, you know the worst part isn't the delay. It's that nobody believes you, because everybody else thinks that person is fine. People in this sport usually reach one of two conclusions within a few weeks.
Either the colleague is a certain kind of person, or the problem is you. Both conclusions come too early, and both usually make things worse. In the next 20 minutes, I'll show you the four things that most often explain how to tell which one you're dealing with, and what to do before you judge what anybody is.
I'm Nick Kecker. I'm an organisational psychologist, and I've spent more than 25 years in and around boardrooms. This is what the research says. Thank First, how common this is. About 3 in every 4 employees have experienced incivility at work, meaning rude or dismissive treatment where you can't be sure any harm was intended.
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And it's rarely spread evenly. When researchers pulled 57 studies of aggression at work, what predicted incivility depended on who it targeted. The pattern the new head of operations describes is normal in shape. The real question is, which of 4 explanations she is looking at, because each one needs a different first move.
1. Part of it belongs to the 2 of you, and to neither of you on its own. 2. Your good work is part of what's attracting the incivility. 3. It follows a line of sex, ethnicity, age or background. 4. It really is them, somebody courteous upwards and cold to anyone who can't hurt them. Whichever one it started as, it can quickly become mutual.
Hang on to that, because it's the part people almost never check. Researchers call this targeted incivility, when it's aimed at particular people rather than spread around. It describes a pattern of behaviour, not a type of person, and that distinction runs through everything that follows. The pattern is what you can see, the person is what you can't. and To help you make sense of that, here are four situations that look like this pattern but are actually something else.
The first is a colleague whose job is to say no to you. A controller who signs off on every change will be shortest with whoever sends him the most changes. Check how he treats the people who held your role before you. The second is a colleague reacting to something you did. A project that overturned three years of their work or a correction in front of their boss.
The person who started it usually remembers it least. The third is a grievance you've not heard. Maybe they think the job should have been theirs. That doesn't excuse the behaviour but it changes what will end it. And the fourth is anybody whose behaviour might have a clinical cause. Telling a personality disorder apart from difficult behaviour takes a qualified clinician that's assessed the person, not a colleague who's just watched them in meetings.
If this makes you more confident about what your colleague is, pause and check first. Even Let's start with the least intuitive explanation, because it's the one that should bring the most relief. Sometimes, how two people treat each other belongs to neither of them individually. It belongs to them jointly, their history, what's at stake between them, and the bad habits they've slipped into.
Researchers tested this in three separate workforces. A restaurant chain in the United States, a manufacturer in China, and a mix of industries. How rude people were to each other varied widely from pair to pair, even after accounting for each person's general tendency to be rude or to be treated rudely.
An older synthesis of seven studies found something that matters for the 2am question. There was little sign that anybody gets the same treatment from everybody they meet. The idea that some people simply attract this wherever they go found little support. What does that look like in practice? In my experience, it has no single starting point you can name.
It's worse in writing than in person, and it eases when you're both pulling in the same direction. If a shared deadline produces a week of ordinary courtesy, that's useful information. So if you've been asking what kind of person they are, you've been asking about the smaller part of the issue. The larger part lives between the two of you, and that's the part you can change.
So the second explanation turns a 2am question upside down in a study of almost 5 000 university staff in 339 work groups the high performers were more likely to be treated badly by colleagues a second study of 217 employees traced it to envy in the rest of the group supervisors do it at both ends people seen as weak performers drew hostility through the boss's anger and people seen as strong performers drew it through the boss's envy two 2025 studies found the same with supervisors who envied competent or exceptionally inventive staff so doing well and being a high performer doesn't protect you from this pattern it may actually be one of the things that attracts it remember the head of operations her first project cut the cost of a process the controller had defended for three years and it was praised in front of the board his incivility started that week envy was weaker where people felt part of the group that's the lever we'll come back to here The third explanation is the one where treating this as a personality clash does the most damage.
Researchers surveyed three organisations, a city council, a police agency and the United States military, nearly 17,000 people between them. A person's sex and ethnicity affected how much rudeness they got and women of colour reported the worst treatment of all. The researchers call it selective incivility and describe it as a modern form of discrimination.
A difference of a less visible kind can do something similar. When bosses saw someone as different in values and attitudes, they clashed with that person more, rated their work lower and treated them with more hostility. Here's the difficulty. It looks exactly like the pattern we started with, small, deniable, aimed at some people and not at others.
What gives it away is a trend and the trend only shows when you look at who else the same colleague is difficult with. One case shows you nothing, five cases may reveal the trend. And if that's the case, it's not a relationship problem, so building rapport is not your job. Whether a particular case is discrimination in law is a question for a qualified advisor.
And I'll come back to what to do with that. What do now the explanation everybody jumps to first sometimes it really is them in a study of 172 employees the people who said they bullied colleagues scored high on machiavellianism a cynical and strategic way of using people and on psychopathy which covers coldness and impulsiveness the people who said they were bullied did not so if you've been wondering if the problem is you the traits were on the other side but here's the part that's more useful than knowing what anybody is in 225 teams supervisors high machiavellianism were more hostile only when they believed their position gave them real power another study described such leaders hostility as cold and strategic rising when they felt secure with their own bosses this is called kiss up and kicked down i couldn't find a study that shows it as a stable habit so i won't present it as proven what's useful is this don't try to diagnose them watch how they treat people who have no power over them and notice whether it gets worse when they feel safe I Whichever explanation it started out as, it can become mutual.
This is the part people rarely check. Researchers followed employees through two working weeks, with short surveys several times a day. Incivility received in the morning wore down people's self-control and it was followed by incivility they themselves dished out in the afternoon. In a survey of 512 school staff, the strongest predictor of being rude to others was having been treated rudely first.
Looking back at the head of operations again, by the end of the quarter she was writing to him in shorter, colder messages than she did for anybody else, and copying in her director. From his chair that reads as exactly the hostility he thinks he's been getting from her. The test is in your own sent messages.
There's also a reason both sides feel wronged at once. When people describe anger they caused, they tend to see the incident as understandable and closed. When they describe anger they felt, they see it as one more in a continuing series. I'm flagging a gap here. Nobody has tested how often the feeling of being singled out at work is accurate.
Some people really are singled out, as we've just seen, but that's a reason to check it before you act on it, rather than to dismiss it. We Here's what you can actually do. Four moves if it's happening to you and one more if you manage the people involved. I'll point out how well evidenced each one is as we go.
The first move is judgement from practice, not a tested method. For four weeks, keep a record before you name anything. Four because one bad week proves nothing and a month usually shows a trend. Write down what happened on the day, not how it felt. The request, the date, how long the reply took, what it said and who was copied.
Next to it, where you can see it without anybody asking, note how the same colleague handled a comparable request from somebody else and keep a copy of what you sent back. One test for the record. Would you be comfortable if the colleague read it? If yes, it's a record and your director can act on it.
If not, it's a grievance and your director will try to calm it down. For the head of operations, four weeks of that would show his replies to her averaging five days and under one day for two peers who need the same sign-off. And it's a seguro��orth and The second move is also judgment from practice.
After four weeks, read it and check for four things. First, when it started. If it began just after a visible success, envy moves up the list. Second, who else gets it? If everyone who shares your sex, ethnicity or background gets the same, it follows a trend and the resolution changes. Third, how they treat people with no power over them.
If they're warm upwards and cold downwards, the strategic explanation deserves weight. Fourth, your own column. Put five of your messages to them beside five to a colleague you get on with. If they read differently, you're in a spiral, whatever started it. That leads to the third move, which is a move entirely within your control.
And the evidence of spirals points straight at it. Reply to moment you choose, not the moment they chose. And in exactly the tone you use with everyone else. In a scenario study of 296 employees, more agreeable people were less likely to return rudeness. So the choice about how to respond seems partly open to anyone.
This isn't appeasement. It removes the one thing they can point to. It's going The fourth move is when envy or competition is in the mix. Better performers attract more harm from teammates when the team's goals were less cooperative. More cooperative goals reduced it. Envy did less damage where people felt part of the same group.
This points to changing the setting before you change the temperature. The specific moves are practical. Share credit. Build a joint objective rather than a string of approvals. For the head of operations, that means presenting the next phase with a controller's cost analysis named as its basis. And both names on the paper.
It costs her some credit. It may buy her a working relationship. And it removes the thing the envy was feeding on, which is who gets seen. If none of that makes a difference, have the conversation. About behaviour and never about character. Maybe it sounds like this. On the 4th, the 11th and the 19th, my sign-off request took five days.
And the same request from others took under a day. The change has now missed its window. Is there something about how I send these that isn't working for you? That last question gives them a way to name a grievance and costs you nothing if there is none. Thank Now if you manage the pair, don't dismiss it because they've always been fine with you and don't call them both in to fix a personality clash.
Ask for the four week record and meanwhile do three things. Two of them come from practice. Look at your own attention. Who gets the praise in front of senior people and whether that's evenly spread. Then design the goals and the credits so one person's win isn't another person's loss. The third is evidence based.
A six month civility programme run across eight healthcare units compared with 33 that did not take part improved civility between colleagues and reduced rudeness from supervisors. It worked on whole units, not pairs, but it shows the level of rudeness in a team can be proactively moved. And three things I wouldn't do.
I wouldn't tell anybody what they are. A label can be denied and can't be proved. I wouldn't dim your work to make it stop. If envy is part of it, doing less rewards the envy. And I wouldn't wait for somebody else to notice. Most people won't. Because, to them, that person is fine. No. Here's what none of this legitimises.
Nothing in this video tells you what your colleague is. It's built from groups and a pattern across thousands of people doesn't describe the person you work with. What it gives you is a record, four things to read in it and it addresses the issue without anybody being labelled. And the uncomfortable part, this pattern is almost invisible to everyone except the person on the receiving end and the evidence says that person is often doing good work.
An organisation that files every report as oversensitivity is quietly overtaxing some of its best people. Next time, why good people go along with it and what it takes for one of them to stop. Let's The written version of this episode is on my website, including every source, every limitation and the four things I still can't answer.
The link is in the description below and is showing on screen now. Please help me continue making this content by liking and subscribing to my channel. This not only helps the algorithm push my content to a bigger audience, it ensures you get notified of episodes as they land. Each episode takes a different pattern people get wrong at work.
And in the comments tell me one thing. Think of a time a colleague was only difficult with you. When did it start? Was it resolved? And if so, how? If one thing survives the week, make it this. Keep the record before you name anything. I'm Nick Kecker. Thank you for watching. Observe and act differently.
Thank you. Thank you.