There's Someone on Your Team You Just Don't Click With

You know exactly who I mean. Their name pops up in your calendar, and you feel something tighten. You're a little shorter, a little more formal. And you go home with an annoying kind of noise in your head.

It happens a lot. It's human. And it drains your energy all day long.

Having someone on your team you don't click with is tiring. All day you make micro-decisions about how to handle that person. It leaks out of your attention, your mood, and eventually the atmosphere in the team.

In this article I share what helped me most: five practical ways to look at it differently, so it costs you less.

1. It's Okay That You Don't Like Someone

We sometimes act as though a good leader has to like everyone equally. That's not true. You're a human with preferences, and some people simply rub you the wrong way.

The feeling itself is fine. It only becomes a problem when that feeling starts steering your behaviour without you noticing.

So the first step is being honest with yourself. You're allowed to keep finding that person difficult. The aim is only that the friction stops steering you.

And here's something nice. The moment you accept that it's completely okay to feel less of a click with someone, the relationship sometimes improves on its own. The pressure of having to like them eases off, and often a chunk of the friction goes with it.

2. Usually It's Your Communication Styles That Clash

Here's something that helped me enormously. Very often you "dislike" someone because you have a different communication preference. A model like DISC makes that visible.

Say you focus your communication mainly on detail, structure and process. In DISC terms that leans toward blue. The other person prefers making new plans, brings energy and enthusiasm, and thinks out loud. Two very different ways of showing up in a conversation. If you don't spot that, it quickly feels like the other person is wasting your time or slowing you down.

I'm task-focused by nature in how I communicate. I used to get irritated by people who spent the first fifteen minutes of a meeting sharing their holiday plans. Later I realised: that's simply a different communication preference. We're not from another planet. The moment I saw that, something dropped away. The irritation turned into curiosity.

If you notice you often clash with someone, ask yourself whether your styles sit opposite each other. That insight alone often takes the edge off.

3. Your (Non-)Verbal Communication Gives You Away

There's another reason to deal with this. If you really dislike someone, it leaks into your behaviour. A slightly shorter glance. A tight mouth. A tone that's a touch more businesslike than with others.

The other person feels it. Often without being able to name it. And then a vicious cycle starts. You're distant, they get cautious or defensive, and that confirms exactly why you disliked them already.

So your feeling steers the relationship, even when you choose your words carefully. That's why it pays to work on the feeling itself, deeper than just your behaviour.

4. Try an Exercise That Sounds Softer Than It Is

There's one thing I do every evening. It's called a metta exercise, a form of meditation. I picture random people and wish them happiness and health. People I know, strangers, sometimes people who've annoyed me.

It sounds airy-fairy, but it's simply training. You grow your capacity for empathy, even for people you'd normally keep at a distance.

And that carries over into your work. The easier it is to put yourself in someone's shoes, the less that person costs you. You still don't have to like them. The wall just gets lower, and the interaction lighter.

Try it for a week. A few minutes each evening. You'll be surprised how quickly your view of difficult people softens.

5. What You Gain From This

Once you start working on this, something changes in your role. You spend less time avoiding and getting irritated. You get room back in your head. And the other person notices, which often makes the collaboration smoother on its own.

There's one principle that holds all of this together. As a leader you treat everyone equally, whether you like them or not. Your feelings about a person stay your own business. The way you assign work, give feedback and hand out opportunities stays fair for everyone. People watch closely how you treat the colleague you struggle with, and your fairness there shapes how much they trust you.

You don't have to like everyone to lead everyone well. You only have to see how your feeling steers you, and hold enough self-direction to handle it differently.

That's the kind of work I dig into with leaders in leadership coaching. We look at the patterns that drain your energy and practise concrete new behaviour. For leaders at director level, coaching for senior leaders is a logical deepening of that same work.

Running into this yourself and want to talk it through calmly? Plan a free introduction. Just to see if there's a click.