"The company no longer treats me with the
same amount of respect that they used to..."

Dear Office-Politics,

I had worked with one of my senior colleagues and it turned into a nightmare as he refused to cooperate with me properly. As a result the work suffered. He held a meeting with the chief technical officer complaining about my lack of technical and communication skills. I have got a verbal warning to this effect.

I have worked for one year in this organization and never received any complaints from anybody till then.

I realized slowly that he had been seeking favouritism from the seniors to get him posted to enticing work locations. Having failed through merit, he was resorting to cheap one-up-manship to prove how good he was for the postings and how much he thought about the company. Now the company no longer treats me with the same amount of respect that they used to. I feel lost.

Through hard work and dedication, I have time and again proved my capabilities. But the soiled reputation is making me search for a new job. Please tell me how to tackle similar situations in the future.

Feeling Lost

Dear Feeling Lost,

It is unfortunate that the situation has deteriorated to the point where you feel you need to look for a new job. Sometimes, however, it is best to make a new start rather than invest the amount of time and energy needed to try to redeem an unpleasant situation.

I can understand your concern about what to do should you encounter a similar situation in the future. The heart of the problem seems to have been the lack of cooperation between you and your colleague while working on this project. When this arises again the best thing to do is to raise the issue directly as soon as you are aware of it. Talk to your colleague about improving your level of cooperation and point out to her or him that the greater the degree of cooperation the better the work and the more positive feedback for both of you.

Should you encounter a colleague who is simply refusing to cooperate, that is the time to turn to management and seek their help. Either the person to whom you both are responsible, or the Human Resources department, should be contacted and brought into the working relationship to help resolve the
problem.

What appears to have happened in your current position is that the difficulty was not addressed early and so became much larger than it needed to have. The best way to avoid conflict is to address it at the earliest
possible time, even if our preference would be to avoid it and hope that things get better. Things will get better, but only by our efforts, not by our denial that there is a problem.

Good luck in your job search.

Regards,

Dr. John Burton

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