• Question: Please share an example of a time you had difficulty working with someone. What made them difficult to work with? What steps did you take to resolve the issues?

    Asked by anon-196637 to Sebastian, Paddy, Lee, Jennifer, Fiona, Eleanor on 8 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Jennifer Harris

      Jennifer Harris answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      When I did a placement at the Department of Health and Social Care in Government, I was working on a very fast paced project and we had very clear questions we wished to answer – what does the Government need to do to improve Mental Healthcare. I found it difficult to work with patients for the first time. I had spent 5 years in the laboratory working on science that might one day help people but I had never worked directly with patients. I had to learn how to work with patients who have all the experience of an illness and learn how to support some of their vulnerabilities. I learnt how to explain better what we were trying to do and learnt how to work with patients to develop ideas, rather than simply using them as a sounding board.

    • Photo: Sebastian Cosgrove

      Sebastian Cosgrove answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      There was someone I worked with during my PhD that was more senior then me and had a set way of doing things that sometimes I didn’t agree with. This made them hard to work with as they would be quite pushy about their way. You just have to manage how you interact with people like that – such as avoid them in your working space, or politely ask them to leave you to your own devices. If they prove to be harder to work with then that, you can go to a more senior colleague to help (boss).

    • Photo: Fiona Scott

      Fiona Scott answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      In our lab we get each other to check our lab books to make sure everything is correct and as it should be. I asked my colleague to check mine and she was very critical of my work, in part because she wasn’t overly familiar with my project and asked me to do extra work that I had agreed with the people I worked closer with that I didn’t need to do.

      While it was good that she looked at every detail when looking at my data, her constant criticism really started to really get me down.

      I thought I was a rubbish chemist, but then I was reassured by my colleagues that even they didn’t get her to check their lab books that often because she was the same with everyone and I could send my lab book to them instead!

      Basically if someone is being excessively negative in your life, you are perfectly within your rights to remove yourself from that situation if you can.

Comments