How do you deal with a difficult cross-team colleague without making it personal?
There’s another team lead from B2C in my organisation whom I’ve barely had to work with until recently. We’re from different teams, and we’ve been assigned a relatively rare project where the two of us need to collaborate.
The problem is that working with him has been incredibly difficult.
He’s not my senior or someone I report to, but he has been with the organisation for a long time and carries himself with a very strong sense of superiority. There’s a constant negative vibe in his interactions, and conversations often feel more like a power struggle (I sense a gender difference, or he is built that way) than two people from different teams trying to solve a problem together.
What’s frustrating is that he seems to have very little understanding of cross-team collaboration. Instead of approaching things with a “let’s figure out how to make this work” mindset, there’s a lot of territorial behaviour, unnecessary resistance, and an attitude that his way of doing things is automatically the right way(Even his team have said this often).
I don’t want to approach this as if I’m complaining about someone who is “difficult.” I genuinely want to handle it professionally and get the project moving without creating unnecessary friction.
How would you deal with someone like this?
This is a situation I don’t want to come around complaining to the next level. Also, I am not good at winning these kinds of fights.