Working With a Dominant Personality: I Didn’t Quit and You Shouldn’t Too

It was a Friday morning and I was quite enthusiastic about the opportunity to present my ideas in front of a large group of people. The meeting started on a good note, but within just a few minutes, I was no longer leading the conversation. My manager tactfully brushed my ideas aside and took over the discussion. 

I don’t remember anything else about the meeting except the part that it left me angry, frustrated and even made me doubt myself “What if my ideas were actually pathetic?”

This wasn’t my first experience of being sidelined, ignored and left feeling downright stupid. There were many others in the organization who behaved the same way. Hungry for control, dismissive of others’ ideas, quick to pass judgment, impatient with results, self-confident to the point of being highly arrogant, such dominant personalities were all around me. 

Their authoritative behavior combined with a body language that reeked of dominance was initially quite upsetting, more so when it was my boss or someone who played a significant role in controlling my success at work. It was challenging, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up. 

I loved my job, my team and wasn’t willing to give up the opportunities just because of a few dominant personalities around me. I realized that if I wanted to succeed, I have to learn to work with people who are different from me, even the ones who are predisposed to dominate and rule. 

I decided to learn to work with them instead of feeling intimidated around them thereby taking control of my own growth and success at work. I needed a strategy that would stop making me feel bad about my situation and start doing things that would move me towards my goals. 

Strategies to work with a dominant personality 

Here are the few strategies that worked for me personally and I am sure if you try them out, they might work for you too. You just need to be patient with the process, be willing to adapt, adjust and make changes as you go. 

1. Feel in control

I know this sounds counterintuitive because more often than not the behavior of the dominant personality will make you feel completely out of control. And that’s why the first and the most important step is to gain that control back. 

While there’s more work required to actually gain control of your situation, you would win half the battle by thinking “you do.” Your mindset plays a crucial role in how you experience the events in your life, the emotions you feel and it finally determines how you act. 

By telling your mind that you are in control of your situation, you can feed it with the goals that will inspire you to take action instead of adopting a self-defeating goal where all you do is feel sorry for your situation thereby turning a bad situation into an even worse one.

Joseph Murphy wrote in The Power of Your Subconscious Mind “What the other person says or does cannot really annoy or irritate you except you permit him to disturb you. The only way he can annoy you is through your own thought. For example, if you get angry, you have to go through four stages in your mind: You begin to think about what he said. You decide to get angry and generate an emotion of rage. Then, you decide to act. Perhaps, you talk back and react in kind. You see that the thought, emotion, reaction, and action all take place in your mind. When you become emotionally mature, you do not respond negatively to the criticism and resentment of others.”

2. Dig deeper into their dominant personality 

More often than not, people who have a dominant personality aren’t aware of their temperament and the effect they have on others. They really don’t see the world the same way as you do. In some situations, having a candid discussion with them can solve the problem and at other times it may actually backfire.

Mary Abbajay writes in Managing Up, “When we come from a place of judgment, we become stuck in our own worldview. When we come from a place of curiosity we expand our range of possibility.”

Understanding a little more about their personality is your gateway to finding an effective way to work with them. When around them, be present. I really mean it. Be present and take note of the way they speak and the questions they ask. Take note of their non-verbal cues (tone, voice, facial expressions) and try to understand what motivates them to be this way:

• Is it their need to be in control?
• Do they tend to prioritize results over relationships?
• Do they usually come off as assertive, direct, and quick to make decisions?
• Do they tend to overrule others’ opinions because they want things done their way?
• Are they motivated by achievement or the desire to look good in front of others?
• Does this self-confidence come across as arrogance?
• Are they impatient with others who tend to be more thoughtful in their decisions? 
• Do they put others down to make themselves look good?
• Do they operate with a sense of urgency and expect efficiency in every interaction?

A person with a dominant personality can display many of these distinct behaviors. What’s crucial for you to move forward is to understand 2 things:

1. What part of their behavior annoys or upsets you?
2. How does this behavior prevent you from achieving your goals?

The second question is really important because you should spend zero time worrying about someone else’s behavior that has absolutely no impact on your life or the things you wish to achieve. Yes, their behavior might disappoint you briefly, but in no way it should be the reason for unnecessary stress and anxiety in your life. 

3. Don’t take it personally

What can make you see things clearly and act constructively around them? Detach their words and prevent them from attaching it to your identity. Their behavior does not reflect on you, your competence, or your work. 

In the story I told in the beginning when my manager took over the discussion from me, he did make me feel inadequate at that moment. But later when I had the time to think about it, I realized that by feeling this way, I was giving away my power to fix my situation. My ideas probably weren’t the best, but they were worthy of being heard. His hijacking the conversation in no way reflected on my competence. That’s just the way he was. 

By not taking things personally, I was able to manage my emotions and guide my actions to collaborate effectively instead of giving in to the fight-or-flight tendencies that such conflicts tend to evoke.  

4. Look for win-win opportunities

Daniel Kahneman, American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel prize, provided this brilliant advice on negotiations “Negotiations are not about trying to convince the other guy, it’s about trying to understand them. It’s slowing yourself down and not doing what comes to you naturally. What is it that you can do to make it easy for them to move your way?”

Treat every interaction with a dominant personality as a negotiation. Asking these questions will help you find an alignment of your ideas to their goals:

• What drives them? 
• What results do they seek?
• How does your work align with the big picture they have in mind?

Knowing what drives and motivates them can help you present your ideas in a way that makes them feel good, in control, and in a winning position. When they feel this way, they are unlikely to brush you aside and more likely to pay attention to what you have to say. 

Another useful strategy comes from the world of poker. As the saying goes in poker, know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Sun Tzu also expressed the idea in The Art of War “Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence.” Sometimes, it’s important for you to speak up and express your discontent with their behavior while at other times it’s best to keep quiet and let them have their way. Pick your battles carefully. 

When you look for win-win opportunities, you are likely to find solutions that didn’t seem possible earlier. 

5. Don’t get impatient with their impatience

A dominant personality may be dismissive of your ideas or be quick to pass judgments. But the worst way to work with an impatient person is to be impatient yourself. 

Keep pushing for your idea. When they interrupt you or try to take over, politely point out that you haven’t finished. When they try to dismiss your idea, ask them for their opinion on your idea. If they like to make quick decisions, be prepared with all the data and analysis upfront. When they try to push you under the bus, remind them that you are on the same team.   

By staying calm and composed around them and paying attention to their reaction, you can adjust your interactions to align with their expectations without feeling disappointed, hurt, or let down.   

Summary

1. Working with a dominant personality is not fun, but sometimes avoiding them is not an option either. When you can’t avoid or quit, what should you do? Learn to work with them.
2. The first step to working with a dominant personality is to feel in control. By feeling in control, you give permission to your brain to act constructively instead of adopting a self-defeating goal where all you do is feel sorry for your situation. 
3. Understand what parts of their behavior impact your success and what makes them behave this way. Do they want things done their way? Do they want to look good in front of others? Understanding what motivates them will enable you to address the key problem and devise a solution that addresses the specific problem.
4. Disconnect their behavior from your identity. How they behave in no way reflects on your competence and worth. Guide your emotions to work for you and not against you.
5. Approach every interaction as a negotiation. Look for win-win opportunities to collaborate where they feel less compelled to brush you aside and more open to what you have to say.
6. The best way to kill their impatience is to be patient yourself. Stay calm and composed around them and adjust your interactions to guide them and slowly help move your way. 

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