The best way to deal with the annoying co-workers can be summarized as______. [o

Interviewer(M)Katherine Crowley(W)
M: If you would like to know how to deal with the aggravating people who make you dread of going into the office, Katherine Crowley, the writer of a book called Working with You Is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work will tell you the answer. She joins us now. Good to have you with us.
W: Good morning.
M: What surprised me when I read this book is you say "Quit complaining, do something". You say the best thing to do is to change yourself because you are not going to change the other person.
W: That’s right.(1)What I found in working with many thousands of people over the last 20 years is that it’s futile to try and change another person. So, the best thing you can do is begin by changing your internal reaction and then we give you very concrete tools for how to change your experience.
M: What’s this business about unhooking yourself?
W:(2 -1)Well, we give you this process. It’s actually four steps and the first two steps are to cool down your system. Because as we all know, when those co-workers really annoy you, you immediately get upset.(2 - 2)So the first two steps are deep breathing or doing some sort of physical exercise if you can run out of the building and walk around the block.
M: Yeah. You say you spend a lot of time talking people off the ledge, which is essentially calming them down. But once you’ve done that and that seems very intuitive, then what do we do?
W:(2-3)Well, the next two steps would be taking action. To unhook verbally as what we say, you should find something to move the situation forward and take the high road not accusatory but a win-win kind of communication, and then you look for a business tool whether it’s documentation of some kind or sending out an e-mail or referring to a job description.
M: Okay, but doesn’t it seem a little defeatist to say you have to change yourself? Is it really "me" that has to change as supposed to the other person?
W: Well, have:you ever changed anybody? No, you can’t. You can’t change somebody. But if you can change your reaction to them, you’ll have a much better love-work life.
M: Yeah, but they are still going to be annoying, aren’t they?
W: That’s right. They are not going to change, so in part of the book we explain to you how to detach and stop taking it personally.
M: Alright. You spend a lot of time telling me about types of co-workers. So what is the most common annoying type of co-workers?
W: The most common annoying type of co-workers are called "boundary-busters". So, whether it’s someone who invades your space, makes too much noise, eats up your time, chews your ear off. Those are boundary-busters.
M: And how do I deal with them?
W: Most of the time you do have to confront the boundary-buster.(3 - 1)But what we suggest is again to cool your system down, make sure you take the high road. You’d better say in a way that they actually say "Oh, okay, I hear you" , rather than yelling at him. What we tend to say is "You are so loud" instead of saying "you know what, it really bothers me, I can’t concentrate when your voice goes up, so can you please calm it down?"(3-2)So it’s a way, it’s a communication style and we give many examples in Working With You Is Killing Me.
M: Okay. And what’s the worst kind of co-worker?
W: Well, what we call the worst kind, what we’ve decided among ourselves is the "wrecker" and this is because this person will speak very sweetly to you, and in the meantime, stab your back, one way or another, behind you.
M: Right, and what should I do about that?
W: Well, you have to be your own, wage your own PR campaign,that is public relation campaign.(4)As soon as you detect that somebody is talking negatively about you, you need to just make sure that you’re at every meeting and find out what the person is saying about you. And wage your own PR campaign, get people to speak better of you, and ultimately they get caught.
M: Right. The key with the wrecker is you have to detect it. When does it get to the point that either you have to quit or the annoying peraon has to quit?
W: That’s a really good question. And what we say in Working With You Is Killing Me is that,(5)you actually have to figure out your tolerance level and you also need to determine what your fatal attractions are. For some people as I have mentioned are tolerable, if they use our technique and learn to manage up, they can deal with it: for others that are just not acceptable and the toxins from working with someone like that literally wear away at their health.
M: All right, I see. Thank you. I appreciate it.