How to Work With Someone You Don't Like

I used to think I had to like the people I worked with. Not just respect them—like them. Same values, same humor, someone I’d grab coffee with on a weekend. When that wasn’t there, I treated it like a failure, a sign that something was wrong with the relationship or with me.

Then I spent two years working with someone I genuinely didn’t like. And we did some of the best work of our careers together.

The shift wasn’t about forcing friendship or pretending to be fine. It was about realizing that professional effectiveness and personal chemistry are completely separate things. You can have one without the other. And once you know that, everything changes.

The difference between dislike and dysfunction

Here’s what matters first: make sure you’re dealing with dislike, not abuse.

If someone is genuinely hostile—undermining you, making you feel unsafe, creating a hostile environment—that’s a different problem. You need to document it, escalate it, or leave. This isn’t about learning to tolerate bad behavior. It’s about professional coexistence when someone just rubs you the wrong way.

Dislike shows up differently. You find them annoying. Their communication style gets on your nerves. You disagree on approach. They’re not bad, they’re just not your people. That’s the friction this is about.

Name the specific friction

Most people stop at “I don’t like them” and never dig deeper. That’s where everything gets stuck.

Get specific about what actually bothers you. Is it their tone? Their pace? Their lack of follow-through? Their need to be right? Their messiness? Their perfectionism?

The person I worked with was what I’d call “aggressively informal.” Meetings started late. Decisions happened in Slack at midnight. Feedback came wrapped in jokes that landed sideways. None of it was malicious. But it drove me up the wall because I’m wired for structure and clarity.

For a year, I stayed frustrated at the personality level. Then I realized: I don’t actually dislike them. I dislike how they operate.

That distinction matters because you can’t change someone’s personality. But you can work around their operating style.

Create deliberate structure

This is where most people fail. They expect the discomfort to dissolve on its own. It won’t. You have to engineer a working relationship that bypasses the friction.

Set clear expectations upfront. Not in a harsh way—in a practical way. If they’re the kind of person who overpromises and underdelivers, agree on check-in points before deadlines. If they’re the kind who thrives on chaos, create more structure, not less. If they don’t read emails, switch to a channel they actually check.

You’re not changing them. You’re designing the system so their quirks don’t tank the work.

For the person I mentioned: I started scheduling standing weekly check-ins, always at the same time, always with a written agenda. That one change did something magic. It gave us a container where we weren’t just reacting to whatever was happening. We had time blocked off, clarity on what we were discussing, and a written record.

Did I suddenly like them? No. But I stopped resenting them, because I wasn’t constantly frustrated by lack of clarity.

Separate the person from the work

Here’s a mindset shift that actually works: treat them as a professional partner, not a personality match.

When you’re in a meeting, focus on the work, not on how they’re delivering it. Notice their actual output—are they solving the problem? Are they pulling their weight? Are the results solid? That’s the data that matters.

If the answer is yes, you have a working relationship that works. It doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t choose to grab lunch.

I realized that despite finding my coworker maddening, they consistently did good work. They pushed me in directions I wouldn’t have gone alone. They caught things I missed. They were reliable when it counted. Those are the things that actually determine whether a working relationship succeeds.

The personality clash? That was static. Useful signal about style differences, but not relevant to whether we should keep working together.

Find the one thing you respect

This sounds corny, but it’s the thing that actually prevents resentment from calcifying.

You don’t have to respect everything about someone. But find the one thing that is actually solid. Their work ethic. Their clarity of thinking. Their kindness to junior people. Their ability to stay calm under pressure.

Mine was tenacity. This person would not quit on a problem. They’d burn through ideas, test assumptions, stay in it longer than made sense. I found that genuinely impressive, even when I found them infuriating.

When you hit a moment where you’re about to write them off—they’ve annoyed you, frustrated you, missed a deadline—that one thing you respect becomes a lifeline. It reminds you: I might not like this person, but they’re not incompetent. Something legitimate is happening here.

Stop trying to make it personal

Here’s what kills working relationships with people you don’t like: you try to turn it into a friendship, and when it doesn’t happen, you interpret it as rejection.

You invite them to lunch. They decline. You offer support on their project and they brush it off. You try to build rapport and it lands awkward. Then you feel rejected and you withdraw.

Stop doing that. Accept that this is a professional relationship and let it be that.

It’s actually freeing. You don’t have to figure out how to bond. You don’t have to pretend to enjoy happy hours. You just show up, do the work, and go home. That’s fine. That’s not failure. That’s professionalism.

Your coworker doesn’t owe you friendship. And you don’t owe them emotional labor. The deal is: competence, reliability, respect for the work. That’s it.

When to actually walk away

Not every working relationship is salvageable, and not every person deserves your effort.

If someone is consistently unreliable, if the work is suffering, if they’re actively making your job harder—and you’ve tried the structure, the boundaries, the professionalism—you might need to exit.

The key is: make sure you’re leaving because the work relationship isn’t working, not because the personality isn’t working.

I’ve had people I didn’t like where the work was solid, so I stayed. I’ve had people I didn’t like where the work was chaos, so I left. The second one wasn’t about them—it was about the fact that we couldn’t actually deliver together.

The difference matters. One is a personality issue. The other is a performance issue. Only the latter justifies leaving.

What you’re actually learning

Working effectively with someone you dislike teaches you something that working with your favorite people never will: that you can succeed even when conditions aren’t ideal.

Most people wait for the perfect team, the right chemistry, the people they’d choose to grab coffee with. And they wait. And they don’t move. Meanwhile, someone else gets the work done with a team that’s just fine on paper, even if it’s not fun.

You’re not trying to build friendship. You’re trying to demonstrate that you can be a professional adult who gets results regardless of whether you have chemistry. That’s actually a rarer skill than getting along with people you like.

The year I worked with that person, I shipped more good work than I had in years. Not because we became friends. Because I stopped waiting for the relationship to feel easy and just made it work.

If you’ve been struggling with how to handle feedback from people you don’t like, read how to deal with feedback that stings. That’s often where the tension lives—criticism hits different when it comes from someone you already don’t connect with. And if the issue is deeper—if you find yourself unable to learn from certain people despite wanting to—how to learn from people you disagree with might open up a different frame. Sometimes dislike is just disagreement wearing a different costume.

You might also find value in how to negotiate without being a jerk—because sometimes the friction in working relationships is actually about unstated expectations and unresolved scope, not personality. Once you clear that up, the person becomes way less annoying.

The people who thrive aren’t the ones who only work with people they like. They’re the ones who learned to build good working relationships despite it. Start there.