Getting Along

INTRODUCTION

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Early in my career, I took a job reporting to someone who had a reputation for being difficult. I’ll call her Elise. Plenty of people warned me that Elise would be hard to work with, and I believed them—I just thought I could handle it. I prided myself on being able to get along with anyone. I didn’t let people get under my skin. I could see the best in everyone.

I was in the job for less than two months before I was ready to quit.

Elise was even worse than I expected. She worked long days and on weekends. While she didn’t explicitly ask her team to do the same, she often followed up at 8:30 a.m. on a request she’d made at 6:00 p.m. the night before. Her expectations for what I could get done in a day ...