It’s September, and the kids are back at school. Things are picking up at work and everything is go-go-go.

This is a good time to look at some common workplace problems and how to deal with them.

The problem I want to look at today is that of nasty colleagues. What do you do if there’s a colleague who’s a bully? How do you handle a colleague who is friendly one day, nasty the next day, and who ignores you the rest of the time?

We spend most of our waking hours at work, so difficulties with colleagues can really decrease our quality of life. We need some helpful strategies for handling difficult people at work.

When we think of how to deal with a colleague who’s a bully, we need to look at both sides of the equation, and recognize that bullies pick on people who they see as fair game.

If you’re being bullied at work by a co-worker, you need to take a good look at yourself and ask yourself if there’s something you’re doing that might have made it easier for the bully to choose you as a target. To clarify, I’m not saying that you should blame yourself for the bullying.

Bullies are angry, unhappy, insecure people who look for easy victims. They’re cowards, so they avoid bothering people who they see as strong and empowered. Instead, they bother those who they perceive as more susceptible to their harassment.

Bullies can tell when you’re not as confident or secure as you could be, and they’ll zoom in on you if they feel they can get under your skin.

If you’ve been on the receiving end of bullying, you’ll need to dig deep and find your sense of confidence and empowerment or  “fake it til you make it;” that is, present yourself as more confident, tougher and more empowered than you might actually feel.

Eventually, if you walk around acting as though you feel this way, you might very well begin to feel stronger and more self-assured.

When it comes to people in the workplace who give you mixed messages, it can be very confusing how to react to them. One day they’re nice, the next day they’re nasty and the day after that they’re indifferent to you.

You need to see that this type of erratic behaviour is not about you. This person is dealing with their own issues and their behaviour toward you is just one way that they’re demonstrating their problems.

You need to be strategic: be cordial to them when they speak to you and don’t be concerned when they ignore you. If they’re nasty, you can try to minimize your interaction with them, and definitely don’t show them that they’re upsetting you.

If you’re as neutral toward them as you can be, while maintaining a professional attitude, it might make them feel that they’re not getting enough of a reaction to satisfy their needs, and they might choose to start bothering someone else.

The most important thing is not to take it personally, and not to try to please them, hoping that this might make them nicer to you.

This person is complicated, and you need to see that there’s very little you can do to predict or to change their behaviour.

Caring less about them, not trying so hard to get along with them and just being superficially pleasant is the ideal strategy when dealing with such an emotional chameleon.

I hope that these tips are helpful to you in your dealings with some of the difficult people in your workplace. Keep reading my blogs to learn more about successful strategies for interacting with troublesome co-workers.