How to stop being a difficult person to work with

It is possible to learn techniques for getting along better with colleagues. Here are a few.

Follow @ITCatalysts Dear Bob ...

I'm a programmer with a difficult personality. From what I understand, this is not uncommon, and I've been willing to live with the professional consequences of that. I'm lucky enough to have good technical skills and have had a successful 15 year careerer.

However, when I talk to people, I make them feel really bad. I don't see this happening, I can't think back and identify things I've said or done to cause these feelings, I don't see it at all. Nevertheless, I've heard this plenty over the years from people I respect: People like my work, but they don't like working with me. I'm not comfortable ignoring this; I need to change.

Over the years you've answered plenty of questions about how to deal with the difficult guy in the office. I've even used some of your advice. Now I see I am the difficult guy.

I suppose the first step is recognizing a problem exists, but what then? Classes? Prozac? Therapy? Any idea what can I type into Google to help me be, er, nice?

How can you develop empathy? Thanks,

- Difficult

Dear Difficult ...

I have to give you credit. Twice. It's rare that someone in your situation ever recognizes the need to make personal changes, so score one for you.

And ... I've been doing this on and off for more than a decade, and nobody has ever asked me anything like this before.

Without more to go on it's going to be tough to give you any specifics, and I'll be the first to tell you that approaching your colleagues to ask, "Can you help me understand what I do that's ticking everyone off?" is an unlikely way to begin.

Here are a few possibilities to consider that are relatively common in tech-land:

• "I'm always right." Many smart, talented engineers grew up being the only smart person on the room. Not really, but it might have seemed that way, because they divide subject matter into what they care about and what they don't, and they are the best at what they care about.This is the year "passion" will officially stop being useful and start being a cliché, and it's too bad, because good engineers are passionate about engineering issues. The downside: An engineer who is passionate about a design issue and is accustomed to being the only smart person in the room fails to give anyone else credit for brains. Worse, instead of trying to persuade everyone else, they figure anyone who disagrees with them just doesn't understand what they said. So they become increasingly patronizing.
  
  If this sounds at all like you, in every design discussion from now until you retire, don't even offer your perspective until you are certain you understand what others are proposing, and ... and this is very important ... how they arrived at their ideas.