How to Deal with Fickle Colleagues
A Personal Journey
Happy Friday all!
I’ve often had to work with colleagues who were inconsistent, unpredictable or prone to changing their opinions suddenly. Such people may come across as indecisive or unreliable as they often shift their stance without a clear reason.
Working with fickle colleagues can be challenging because it’s very hard for others to depend on them or to take their word on face value.
Over time, I’ve learned some strategies that help navigate such situations.
Here goes….
Getting to the Root Cause
I was working on a project with someone in the Marketing team once and he seemed to be changing his opinion constantly. Often, we’d have an hour long meeting and agree on the way forward only for him to come back a few hours later and turn everything upside down.
I got fed up initially and didn't know what to do. Eventually, however, I sat him down and had a chat with him to get to the bottom of it.
Open communication can be a great tool in such situations. Expressing how my colleague’s fickle behaviour was affecting my workflow and why I felt the need to find a compromise helped in getting him to see things from my lens.
He, then, revealed that he wasn’t getting clear guidelines from his manager, the Head of Marketing. He was finding it hard to get through to him and, when he did hear back, it would always be at the last-minute.
We had to escalate the issue and things got easier to deal with subsequently but getting clarity on the ‘Why’ helped a lot.
Setting Clear Boundaries
It’s extremely important to realise the need for setting boundaries in such situations. Setting boundaries can be tough if you don’t have a choice and are ‘asked’ to team up with a fickle colleague but, still, one can take measures in this regard.
In my experience, even if you make it a point to protect your time and energy, that in itself can have a big impact. Such a commitment would automatically mean that you would set clear deadlines and a cadence on which you would work, regardless of how others behave.
Being Flexible Yet Firm
Following on from the point about boundaries, it’s important to recognise that flexibility and firmness, both, are important.
Some changes are inevitable and, thus, learning to be adaptable is important. Yet, last-minute changes or ad-hoc updates have a negative impact on my work so I’ve developed a tendency to be firm there.
This balance has helped me a lot, over the years. It has allowed me to maintain my sanity while being a team player.
Don’t Take It Personally
As a final note, it’s important to remind oneself not to take fickle behaviour personally.
Fickle behaviour from my colleagues is down to them. It often stems from their own external pressures or insecurities and not necessarily anything I may have done.
It’s important to keep reminding myself that there are things that I can control and there are things I can’t. I try to focus on what I can control.
I guess, all in all, it’s important to maintain consistency, communicate openly and not take it personally when it comes to dealing with such colleagues.
It’s not an easy balance to strike, especially, when you’re under a tight deadline and I still cave in, at times of high stress. Yet, almost without exception, it comes back to haunt me.
Great strategies! Learn these things along the way, but learned the hard way 😫
Wish I had read this or known about it 40 years ago for my “younger self” 🤔
There's a lot to learn about this.