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Facing Opposition

Strategy is a methodology used to achieve a goal in the face of obstacles. A lot of obstacles are internal or self-contained - what do I need to do to put myself in a position to make my goal achievable. This is similar to what our previous articles have been discussing, and it's easy to miss the fact that you are overcoming a challenge. These obstacles require discipline, but are relatively easy to plan and understand whether you are capable of overcoming them or not. The other kind of obstacle is external, where there are forces working to prevent you from accomplishing your goals. 


There are times where direct confrontation is the best move, but in an office situation that should be the exception and not the rule. In martial arts, there is a common saying “use your opponent's strength against him.” This is also true when using strategy to overcome opposition. You’re never going to be able to bring all people onto your side, but you can learn how to use a good strategy to neutralize them.

In an office environment, there are a number of types of opponents. We’re going to call them challenging co-workers because we don’t want to relate to them as an enemy.

Examples of these are, people who:
  • take credit for your work
  • try to show that you are incompetent
  • belittle you or your work
  • feel they are always right and are not willing to listen to other ideas
  • are slackers and expect you to do their work for them

Going back to our strategic concepts, this can generally be classified as a case of environment. The key is learning everything you can about the playing field. You must understand what about your coworker is so challenging for you. Get to know their style, motivation and methodology. Anticipate their next move and prepare for it. Each situation is totally different, so there is no one size fits all solution. However, here are a few examples of how to deal with these types of coworkers. You will have to put in some extra effort, and may think it's unfair, but we have to play the hand we’re dealt.

  • Unity - Try to turn the challenge around and work with the challenging person. If a proposal comes out of the "workgroup" that he is participating in, it may turn the challenge into a collaboration.
  • Be prepared - Make sure you are prepared to back up your suggestions and proposals. Take some time to think about potential problems and make sure that you have a risk/reward analysis, solutions or workarounds.
  • Preview - Ask a smaller audience for feedback on your idea before presenting it, preferably including key people. By the time it becomes public knowledge, it will already have been vetted and polished. Everyone knows where the idea came from.
  • Transparency - Be open with other people, specifically your manager or other key people about the challenges you are facing. Most of the time, you won’t want to make it into an HR issue, but letting them know will open their eyes so they see it when it happens. In some situations, it is worth going to HR, but this should generally not be your initial goto solution, unless the case is extreme.
  • Widen audience - When sending emails, add additional people on the CC of an email. This will increase your audience and give them the opportunity to see if someone is being needlessly challenging. It will also enable you to reference the email in the future with the expectation that they will be able to search their emails and find the reference. 
  • Avoidance - There will always be situations where you feel that you can’t win. In that case, try to avoid them, when possible. Not every challenge needs to be overcome.

The most important idea is to understand what is going on and working on mitigating the problems. When you are in a reactionary mode, you will always be off balance. However, if you take the time to think and work out the appropriate reaction you will be successful. The more time you take to plan out a course of action, the better position you will be in to succeed.  Learning to deal with challenging people effectively will not only mitigate the challenge, but will probably make you better at your position and prepare you for leadership roles.

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