Hard cover book arrived in very good shape...like new and very quickly.
Since the title of the book is "Working with you is killing me" the very 'quick' arrival may have saved a life :)

What a great title for a book! And for the most part, the book lives up to its title. Crowley and Elster set out to help the reader "unhook" from emotional pitfalls in the office and show how to manage difficult personalities. They do both. to an extent.

I really liked the introduction where we were invited to take a short quiz to discover our most challenging workplace situations. There were only 4 or 5 short questions and a suggestion as to which chapter we should go to depending on the answers. The downside to this approach is that if one was directed to say, chapter 3, then you would miss out on the principle unhooking strategies which underpin the whole book contained in chapter 1.

The principle unhooking strategies are great - simple, to the point, easy to remember and practical. I will certainly use them when next faced with a difficult personality. Where the book falls down is in the practical examples of how these strategies might work. The words used in the examples, would in my opinion not solve the situation. They may in fact inflame it, leaving you with having to apply the unhooking principles again when facing this same difficult person next time. For example, when faced with a difficult employee, to demonstrate the last unhooking step, the supervisor says "This is what I've experienced in the last couple of weeks from you. It's unacceptable behaviour. I'm going to put this document in your HR file. It will be part of your permanent record unless you improve within the next week." As an employee, I would certainly not respond very positively to that approach. I would almost certainly revert to my basic difficult personality style, leaving the supervisor with the need to "unhook" again next time we meet.

I'm also not a great fan of categorizing people into various personality styles as the book does. Although it does have short questionnaires to help you identify these styles (there are quite a number of them with various titles such as "Hero", Martyr", "Invisible One" and so on). I'm not sure how easy these would be to use when faced with a real person.

I did really like the chapter on "Managing Up - Taking Control" - probably worth the price of the book alone.

In summary, if you buy this book, use the unhooking strategies, but keep in mind far more positive assertiveness tactics in their implementation than are described in the book.

Bob Selden, authorWhat To Do When You Become The Boss: How new managers become successful managers

This book delivers.

In my experience, 99% of the books on professional relationships out there fall into either of two categories:

Most of them refuse to address - some even to accept - that a few people you encounter in the corporate world have pathological dysfunctions. These books dedicate all of their content to treat your inability to cope with differences between people's personalities and yours. "Change the way you react to other people and all your problems will vanish" is the axiom behind the pages, from cover to cover, in these texts.

Books in the second category, on the other hand, are usually written by mental health professionals and do address the presence of people with personality disorders in the working environment. Their recommendation is simple: just leave the place, as fast as you can. They paint a scary picture of the sociopath or borderline personality next door, and advise a bee line to the door, specially if next is a manager's door.

Problem is the landscape of the average corporation is a hodgepodge of dysfunctions and interpersonal mistakes - from the minor ones we all incur, to the full-fledged, unchecked, sociopathy. To further complicate things, it is becoming increasingly clear that, not only most personality disorders are actually co-dependency phenomena - i.e. "victim" and perpetrator are both entangled in a reinforcing relationship - but there is also a social component in the prevalence of dysfunctional leaders. Simply put, some cultures (be it a country or the firm you might work for) select and empower dysfunctional leaders.

Navigating far away from these considerations, Crowley and Elster's book very definitely assume there are all kinds of people and situations in a typical firm - as well as among the READERS of their book! We, readers, can find ourselves sometimes incurring in the infamous "fundamental attribution error" (assuming the person we are dealing with is moved by ill intention), some other times we may just lack one or two emotional skills, to deal with a not-that-complicated conflict. But - and in that "but" resides the uniqueness of "Working With You is Killing Me" - there are also occasions in which we are entangled in a dysfunctional relationship with someone with a personality problem.

Without explicitly labeling the "other part" as a dysfunctional person - what good would that do? - the authors do label the RELATIONSHIP as dysfunctional and address all the sides of the matter: the role the reader possibly has in it, the futility of expecting changes from the other person, and what can objectively be done to change the situation, without necessarily jumping out of the boat (just to run into another dysfunctional top dog, in the next job).

Another great source of value in "Working With You is Killing Me" are the abundant textual examples of how to phrase the messages the authors recommend, as well as how to prepare to deliver them. As the authors of "Influencer" emphatically remark, it is essential to have vicarious experiences - seeing how others handle difficult tasks - for us to learn that skill. Crowley and Elster's textual examples of speeches provide just that.

On the other hand, if something might be criticized in "Working With You is Killing Me", is the somewhat harsher-than-necessary tone of some of these examples. Though nobody could possibly be called aggressive, by spelling them, in my experience (and, I believe, in some authors' as well) their too impersonal undertone would probably create a barrier to a good leadership rapport. Che Guevara's words - "hay que endurecer-se pero sin perder la ternura" (one has to grow hard, but without losing the tenderness) - apply here.

That said, "Working With You is Killing Me" is a unique, must-read book, for anyone interested in on-the-job relationships, which, I suspect, probably includes all of us.

Kathi and Katherine bring a great one-two punch to this book and can help you from getting knocked out at work. Katherine's background as a psychotherapist can help you to see how people are pushing your buttons.

There is some great advice in here on how to detach yourself a little bit from what can be debilitating frustration. It may appear pretty simple, for example, the admonition to take 3 long deep breaths, but try it, it works. Beyond this threshold of cooling yourself down, the self analysis and self management advice is very good. When someone is driving me nuts, I usually have some role in it; they're hitting my guilt or sense of inadequacy. And I am better off recognizing this, seeing that I have a role in the "s/he's killing me" feelings I may have. So, that's Katherine's contribution (they share their perspectives in the introduction to the book).

Kathi gives the -two in the one-two punch, as she offers constructive ways to act. The fact is that when people are infuriating us or walking over us, we're not the only ones who have work to do. Kathi offers some great tools to push back. Sometimes the advice is (again seemingly simple) to speak to the person in terms of what you are observing and what you'd request they do, instead of speaking in accusatory tones that might be satisfying but will likely set you back. Kathi also assesses the way you can use tools in the workplace to leverage behavior, for example, company policies or meetings.

There aren't a lot of things that can suck the energy out of you like a tough relationship at work. If you want to work your way out of that stress, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Working With You Is Killing Me.

Working with You is Killing Me was a good book in that it showed me that I am not alone. I did identify a lot of the tough to deal with characters that were featured in this book-one of each of them is lurking around my life.

That said, the advice given is common sense-there is nothing here that I haven't read anywhere before. But it sure did make me feel better knowing that other people are going through similar issues in their relationships with others.

I can't really recommend this book unless you are looking for validation that you aren't nuts. That's all here. But the tips and tricks you are hoping for, well, you could get the same caliber stuff from the Sunday employment section of your local paper.