“No matter how smart you are, if you don’t know how to work with people, your dreams will just be dreams.”
This statement applies even to your working environment. Everyone has to work with an unfriendly co-worker at some point in their career. It becomes sometimes necessary to learn how to deal with their unfriendly behaviour instead of ignoring it. Getting along with that team member becomes useful to focus more on your work and enjoy the company of your team members. This learning helps in building your conflict resolution skills and overcoming diversity.
In agile we all learn to adapt to co-operating with our team members and giving a helping hand to others. The agile mindset always encourages us to be trustworthy and sincere to our co-workers and team members. As we get adapted to agile and get adapted to the agile mindset we try our best to be friendly and helpful to our team members as we know we are a family and we all together will bring the best success result only when worked together.
But even after all your efforts and being friendly, there is some team member who may seem indifferent and unfriendly to you. As an understanding and responsible person, you don’t want to convey their behaviour to managers or agile coaches or scrum masters. Maybe sometimes, you even consider it as a trivial matter, not feeling the need to convey their attitude towards you to managers. But if the repetition of this unfriendly behaviour continues it will surely start to affect your mood, environment and finally your work. It will make you feel regularly drained or stressed, unmotivated, or create a mental barrier.
So it’s always better to solve the issues with team members as early as possible to work in harmony as a team before it starts affecting your productivity and health.
In this article, we will share some easy and basic ways to handle unfriendly co-workers.
Voice-out Your Thought
Instead of staying quiet about what you feel it is always better to voice out your though and clear the matter at once. While doing so make sure that you speak directly with the corresponding person and not with other team members who can play no role in clearing this matter or may worsen it. While speaking or discussing with them be sure of your language to be polite and not offending. You can start with, ‘I feel upset when you…’, or ‘I find out that your behaviour makes me hard to focus…’ etc.
Focus on Other Positive Relations at Work
Even after discussion and talking to them the behaviour remains the same. Try to focus on other team members who you enjoy being around. Know that you are not alone. If a person is being mean to you without reason then they are the same to others too. So know that you are not alone in it. Even if this is the case avoid badmouthing or sharing such an experience with other team members. It is also your responsibility as a team member to maintain the team’s neutral and peaceful atmosphere as much it is the scrum master and product owner’s responsibility. Maintain you’re cool and know that it’s not you, it’s them. Even while sharing about it, share with people who are not connected to your work.
Know Your Trigger Points
Find out what behaviour of theirs makes you feel challenged or trigger your mood. Whenever you find them executive their actions always detach yourself from the situation. This method will help you in keeping calm and collected at your work. Focus on the work and other related people of your team instead of creating or facing a negative environment at work. Try to divert your focus from such unfriendly team members to other things you love about your job then it may be your team members' company, work challenges or work perks you may achieve.
Show Compassion
When you find that they behave in such a way because of your style or way of carrying yourself ignore them. But also remember that every person has their own experience and battles to deal with which could make them act the way they did. Try to show your compassion and empathy to them whenever you get to know them better. “If you want to reach an agreement, move from a competitive mindset to a cooperative one” is the only way to win a person, and complaining to managers, and executives or bitching or sharing your experience with team members will only worsen the matter.
About Advance Agility
We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organizations across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.
Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.
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