For many years, I assumed that when I clashed with someone at work, the problem was them. They were difficult, rude, inefficient, or just hard work. Meanwhile, I was perfectly reasonable.
It took a painfully humbling experience for me to realise that workplace conflict is rarely that one-sided – and it is a lesson that has shaped so much of the work I do now.
Years ago, when I worked in recruitment, I ran a very successful temp desk. It was high pressure, fast paced, and intense. I worked long hours, moved quickly, and was good at what I did. I had a strong instinct for matching candidates to clients and could often tell, almost immediately, where someone would fit best. I was bringing in a lot of business and making the company a lot of money, so eventually I was given some support.
I was assigned an assistant.
To be fair, I got on really well with most people there. My manager was great, the receptionist was lovely and the other consultants were friends rather than colleagues. But this particular assistant – let’s call her Jane – I did not get on with at all.
From my perspective, she was rude. She was slow. She was either unwilling or unable to work at the pace I worked at, and I found it hugely frustrating. The more mistakes I thought she made, the more irritated I became. And the more irritated I became, the worse I behaved.
At the time, of course, I did not think about it like that. At the time, it was all her fault. She was lazy. Or incapable. Or obstinate. Or deliberately unhelpful. Or maybe she just did not like me. Whatever the explanation, I was clear on one thing: she was the problem.
I became so frustrated that I was on the verge of asking for her to be moved and for someone else to support me instead. But before I had the chance to do that, my manager called me into her office.
She looked serious, which was not something I was used to, so I knew something was wrong. To cut a long story short, Jane had made a complaint about me. She said I was bullying her.
I can still remember the physical feeling of that moment. I felt sick. My whole body was shaking. I was furious. Completely furious. I wanted to leave my manager’s office immediately and give Jane a piece of my mind.
How dare she accuse me of bullying when she was next to useless?
I asked to go home because I was too angry to carry on working and did not trust myself not to explode.
Which, when you read that back slowly, tells you everything you need to know. I wanted to explode at someone who had complained that I was bullying her.
That was not my finest moment.
What that experience exposed, in a way I could not ignore, was that I was only seeing events through my own perspective. I was so consumed by my pressure, my standards, my frustration, and my version of what was happening that it had not properly occurred to me to think about what it might feel like to work with me.
Looking back now, I can see that the situation was almost certainly more complex than I allowed for at the time. Perhaps Jane was not as confident, fast, or robust as the role required. Perhaps she felt out of her depth. And perhaps she experienced me as intense, impatient, critical, or intimidating.
In truth, some of those things were probably true on both sides.
But what I can see clearly now is this: whatever I thought about her performance, my behaviour towards her was not acceptable. I was in the position of power, and I handled my frustration badly. I did not create safety. I created pressure. And then, instead of noticing the effect that pressure may have been having on her, I judged the response I got back.
That, for me, is where this becomes much more than an old story about a bad working relationship.
Because this is what I now see in workplaces all the time.
I am often asked to work with teams that are struggling – teams where relationships are strained, trust is low, and both sides feel frustrated by the other. And almost always, when you first listen to the different perspectives, the pattern sounds familiar. The team blame the manager. The manager blames the team. One person thinks the other is defensive. The other thinks they are controlling. One says the other is uncommunicative. The other says they are impossible to please.
And everybody, in their own mind, is making perfect sense.
That is what makes workplace conflict so difficult. Most people are not waking up in the morning thinking, How can I make life harder for everyone around me? They are usually reacting to pressure, uncertainty, fear, overload, past experience, unclear expectations, or the behaviour they are experiencing from somebody else.
But when conflict starts to build, something subtle happens. We stop seeing behaviour as part of a dynamic and start seeing it as proof of the other person’s character.
They are lazy.
They are rude.
They are controlling.
They are oversensitive.
They are defensive.
They are difficult.
And once we start telling that kind of story, we become much less curious. We stop asking what might be going on underneath the behaviour, and we also stop asking the more uncomfortable question: what effect might my behaviour be having here too?
That is often the missing piece because in many workplace conflicts, we are not just reacting to a pattern.
We are participating in it.
The manager who becomes increasingly directive because the team seem hesitant may not realise that their tone is making the team even more cautious. The team member who withdraws because they feel criticised may not realise that their silence is making the manager more frustrated and more likely to push harder. The colleague who feels ignored may become curt. The other person then experiences them as hostile and pulls away further.
Before long, each person is reacting to the version of the other person they have helped to create.
That does not mean everything is equal. It does not mean there are never genuine performance issues, inappropriate behaviour, or power imbalances. There are. Sometimes one person does need to take more responsibility than the other. Sometimes behaviour is clearly unacceptable.
But even then, if we want things to improve rather than simply harden, we have to be able to see the dynamic – the pattern playing out between people – not just the person.
That is the real shift.
Not, Who is to blame?
But, What is happening between us?
What might each of us be reacting to?
What might I be contributing, even unintentionally, to the response I keep getting back?
Those questions are not always comfortable. In fact, they can feel deeply exposing, because they require us to loosen our grip on the tidy story in which we are simply the reasonable one dealing with the unreasonable one.
But that discomfort is often where progress begins.
Because the moment people start to see conflict as a pattern rather than a personal indictment, something opens up. Defensiveness softens. Curiosity returns. Responsibility becomes shared rather than weaponised. And from there, better conversations become possible.
Looking back, I still feel ashamed of how I handled that situation with Jane. I would love the chance to apologise properly. But I am also aware that the lesson stayed with me because it was painful. It forced me to confront something I had not wanted to see: that I was not just reacting to a difficult dynamic. I was helping to create one.
That insight has shaped so much of the work I do now.
Because whether I am working with leaders, teams, or individuals, the breakthrough so often comes when people stop focusing only on the faults of the other person and begin to notice the dynamic they are in. Not to take all the blame. Not to excuse poor behaviour. But to understand that change becomes much more possible when we can see the pattern clearly.
Workplace conflict is rarely as one-sided as it feels in the moment.
And sometimes the most important question is not, Why are they like this?
It is, What might be happening here that neither of us can fully see yet?
You might also find these helpful
- How Your Behaviour Quietly Shapes Your Reality
- The Secret Language of Behaviour
- Finding Yourself in the Midst of Change: A Practical Guide to Personal Growth
If this insight resonates, you may also recognise some of these patterns in your own working relationships – the assumptions you make, the pressure you create, the reactions you keep receiving, and the part of the dynamic you may not yet have fully seen.
That is exactly the kind of work I explore through The Confidence Breakthrough – helping individuals understand how their own thoughts, feelings and behaviour shape difficult relationships at work.
And for organisations wanting to improve communication, trust and team dynamics more broadly, The Communication Breakthrough™ helps people understand the patterns shaping how others think, react and behave, so change becomes more possible, practical and lasting.