"In my current job, I am paired in a small office with a colleague who can be difficult at times. We handle a lot of work over the phone, and he can sometimes be very loud and boisterous. On top of that, he can get very upset following certain phone calls with clients. When first hired and paired with him, I was taken aback by his behavior and remained quiet. One day, at the advice of our manager, I talked to my colleague and told him that I would be very thankful if he could tone his voice down in our office and use healthier ways to handle anger on the job. I should've used this approach right away; he thanked me for the feedback and told me that his old officemate handled frustration in the same way. Once he knew I didn't care for that approach, he vowed to be better moving forward, and things are great now."

"I consider myself a great team player, and any of my current or past coworkers would echo that same thought. While I work great in teams, conflict among people is always inevitable, and I excel at working with difficult teammates. A couple of years ago, I was on a project team with a person who tried to take over meetings with their thoughts on processes moving forward and wouldn't budge for other people's ideas. After seeing a few of our team members become visibly frustrated during our first gathering, I took it upon myself to talk with this person face to face. The person became very confrontational and berated the other members of the team. I decided to wait and see how the next meeting the following week went. When the combative behavior continued, I approached the project lead the next day to see what could be done. While the difficult decision was made to remove that person from our project team, I had no regrets about the approach I took because it was good for the overall health of the team."

"Over the last two years in my escrow assistant role, I've worked alongside a fairly difficult colleague. They were often not very friendly and not a great communicator. Over time, I learned to just be myself and smile when I could tell they were in a bad mood. I tried to keep our conversations light and job-related but didn't hesitate to throw some humor and fun in once in a while to try and lighten their mood. Sometimes that was effective; other times, it was not. But I never let it ruin my day."