Negative or Unproductive Co-Workers Have Nothing To Do With You

Don’t let negative or unproductive co-workers hold you back from achieving your workplace and career success.

Ceridian LifeWorks, a provider of employee assistance programs, recently reported dozens of examples of co-workers who spread tension among other staff members, increasing workplace stress.

Negative co-workers can abandon their workloads to you, right before an important deadline. Their hostility can wreck the personality of a workplace and negatively impact your productivity.

Bad co-workers can waste your time, or they can withhold vital information that also hurts your productivity, which reflects on your career.

According to one recent report from New Scientist, the average worker wastes two hours each workday fielding emails, annoying colleagues and phone calls.

Here are seven practical steps you can take to avoid letting your co-workers hold you back from your workplace success

1. Be honest with yourself first. Are you guilty of being that unproductive or unpleasant to co-workers? Stress is contagious when you, not just your co-workers, express stressful behaviors at work. If you’re the bad co-worker, take proactive steps to stop your own bad behavior.

2. Identify and isolate bad co-workers. Identify toxic co-workers and develop a plan to avoid those areas of the office housing bad co-workers. Don’t give them the opportunity to ruin your day.

3. Don’t ignore the situation. If a co-worker is behaving badly, immediate address the situation before it becomes a long-term instigator of stress. Politely ask a co-worker to stop a behavior, and include a polite explanation. Example: "I’m very busy between 10 a.m. and noon, so please don’t visit my desk during these hours."

4. Agree to disagree. Respectfully agree to disagree with colleagues who insist they are right. Example: "I agree your work is important, but my deadline is my top priority right now." Example: "I respect your perspective, but I have to return to my desk to finish a project that is important to me."

5. Don’t lose your temper. Like stress, anger is contagious, too. Practice anger management exercises such as deep breathing to calm you when you see a stressful co-worker approaching your desk. Or excuse yourself to take a quick, stress-busting walk outside the building or to another floor and back again. Don’t encourage bad behavior from a co-worker by demonstrating your own bad behavior. If you do, the bad co-worker wins, and you lose the control you must assert over your workplace behaviors.

6. Use your emotionally intelligence. This is your power to respond intelligently to emotional situations. If a member of your work team is a chronic procrastinator, take steps to avoid being on that co-workers team or to assign less-taxing assignments to the slacker. Make and keep a record of what you accomplished on a project, and, without resorting to blaming the lazy co-worker, act positively in positively addressing your achievements in a report to your superiors.

7. Turn a negative into a positive. If you find yourself in a workplace that condones or even celebrates bad co-workers, don’t focus on what you cannot change. Change your future by actively looking for another position at a positive workplace. Creating weekly reports tracking your accomplishments in projects involving unproductive co-workers becomes the basis for creating a great resume. Yes, you can turn a negative into a positive and leave negative co-workers or un-productive workers behind as you sail into your next success.