When Your Coworker Is A Workaholic, You Can Still Have Peace

We all have THAT person in our workplace.

That person who is sending emails at all hours of the night. (Do they ever sleep?)

That person who’s always working, never taking a break, even for lunch. (Do they never get hungry?)

That person who seems to thrive just from having so much on their plate. (How much can one plate hold?)

I don’t know about you but it can sometimes make my blood pressure go up.

Do you find that you want to help that person, but you just don’t know how?

If you do have a workaholic coworker, here are 3 things that you can do to help you manage that relationship and the way that you work with them.

1. The first thing to do is what not to do: Don’t take it personally. They may have a personality that thrives on functioning at that level of busy. They may be in the middle of a big project. They may have something going on in a season of their life where it’s important for them to keep busy. In short, you don’t know the full story. Don’t take it personally when their work habits and the way they get stuff done is different than you.

2. The second thing is not to celebrate their unhealthy behaviors. Whenever you compliment someone on making unhealthy sacrifices about the way they are getting their work done, it’s going to cause them to do it again. Instead, be genuinely concerned and interested in helping them develop a better work life rhythm for example. Find a time that you can talk with them in private and find out what’s going on. Offer to help them in some way. Maybe there is something you can take off their plate so they wouldn’t have to be as busy. Be careful though. Workaholics might see that as an opportunity to hand you something so they could go work on something else! Limit how available you are to help them get some other things done.

3. Finally, a third thing to do if you have a workaholic coworker, is to find the rhythm that works for you. Manage the expectations you have with them about response times, deadlines, and availability. Talk with them about how the healthy boundaries you set help you be your best, not just at work but in all areas of your life. I call these boundaries The 3 T’s. They include Time (set a time you plan to work rather than simply going until you’re done), Task (focusing on tasks you can finish so they do not stay on your mind) and finally, Technology (if it’s causing you to take more time to complete a task than it should, it’s time to block it until your work is done). (For a more detailed explanation, click here to access my Jones Zone.)

My challenge to you this week is if you do have that workaholic coworker in your life and you find yourself questioning your own work ethic, to take a step back, take the blood pressure cuff off, and ask yourself if you know their whole story. And if you do, is there something you can do to help them with their full plate, while still keeping yours properly proportioned?