Seven things changed for me after Surrounded by Idiots, and together they are most of what I know about difficult colleague communication. None of them made a difficult colleague easy. They made my half of the conversation shorter, which turned out to be the part I could actually fix. The scenes below are ordinary ones from Indian offices, with names and companies left out. I have kept them close to how they actually go, because the details are the only useful part.
The one thing I would keep if I lost the rest
Most of what I call a difficult colleague is a person receiving a correct message in a format that does not fit them. That single sentence does more work than the four colours, because it moves the question from what is wrong with them to what I sent. Once I started asking that, the arguments got shorter and the work started coming back closer to what I wanted.
1. I stopped opening with the fix
A content writer sent me a draft at 6:30 in the evening. The structure was wrong, the intro was three paragraphs of scene-setting, and my older habit was to reply with six numbered corrections before saying hello. That reply took me four minutes and cost her the evening.
What I do now is ask one question first, about what she was trying to do with the opening. Half the time the answer tells me the brief was wrong and not the draft. The corrections still go out, usually the next morning, after the person has been heard once. It has cost me nothing and saved a revision round on most drafts.
2. I started sending the agenda before the call
Our weekly client call had one person who never spoke for the first twenty minutes and then said something sharp at the end. I used to read that as disinterest. It was preparation. She needed the three questions in advance to be useful, and I was asking her to think out loud in front of a client.
Now the agenda goes out the evening before, with the decisions listed as questions. Silence in the meeting dropped. The sharp comment at the end turned into a clear answer at the start, which is a better place for it.
3. I put the ask in the first line of the email
I wrote status emails that opened with context and buried the request in the fourth paragraph. A senior colleague replied to one of them with a single line asking what I wanted from him. He was right about the email and ruder than he needed to be, and only one of those was worth learning from.
The change is small. The first line is now the ask, with the date attached. The context sits underneath for anyone who wants it. Replies come back faster and the follow-up chain is one message shorter on average.
4. I stopped asking quiet people for an opinion in a group
In a review of a landing page, the quietest person in the room had the real problem with the page. He said it in the corridor afterwards, in two sentences, and it was better than anything said in the meeting. I had spent forty minutes asking the loudest people first.
Now I send a message before the meeting to the two people who usually stay quiet, asking for one point each. Then I read those points out in the room with their name attached. It takes five minutes and the meeting starts from the real problem instead of the first confident voice.
5. I gave people a number instead of saying soon
A developer and I went three rounds on a small fix because I kept writing that I needed it soon. Soon meant Thursday to me and next sprint to him, and neither of us said so. The client noticed before either of us did.
Every request now carries a date and a size. Thursday morning, half a day, one page. Deadlines I invent get marked as mine rather than the client’s, because a fake urgency is the fastest way to lose a careful person’s trust.
6. I stopped treating enthusiasm as a commitment
A colleague on a client call said yes to a scope we had not costed, in front of the client, with real energy. Nobody wanted to be the one who interrupted the yes. Two weeks later the work was late and the client remembered the yes and not the problem.
I now write the scope in a message the same evening, with what is included and what is not. It reads like admin and it saves the friendship. Enthusiasm is genuine and it is not a plan, and the two need separating while the call is still fresh.
7. I stopped calling the person difficult
For two years I described one colleague as difficult in my own head, and every interaction started from that note. The book did not fix him. It made me notice that he was fine with a written brief and impossible with a verbal one, and that I kept giving him the verbal one because calls were faster for me.
He gets the brief in writing now, in a fixed format, at least a day ahead. The relationship is not warm and the work is fine. I will take that trade.
What did not change
I still lose my patience in the last hour before a deadline. I still send a message I regret twice a month. The colours are not a personality test I can pass, and knowing the four patterns has not made me a calmer person, only a slightly better-prepared one.
Four questions I now run before replying to a message that irritates me:
- What did this person think they were being asked for?
- Which line of my reply will they read first?
- What date have I actually given them?
- Would I send this to the person who signs the invoices?
The honest summary is that this is difficult colleague communication work, and it is mostly admin. Prepare the message, name the format, put a date on the ask, and stop diagnosing people you have to work with tomorrow. The summary of the book sets out the argument behind all seven changes, and the ten-minute read on colours is what I use when I meet someone new. If you want the version for a genuinely manipulative colleague rather than a merely difficult one, that is the other Erikson book.
