There is a person I worked with a few years ago who used to drive me absolutely crazy.

He was loud in meetings. He had a habit of stating the obvious as if he had just discovered it. He interrupted people mid-sentence. He took credit loudly and gave it quietly. Every time I saw his name on a calendar invite, I felt a small but very real sense of dread.

And yet, I learnt more from watching him than I did from almost anyone else that year. 

That realisation took a long time to arrive. But when it did, it changed the way I think about growth entirely.

We talk a lot about finding good mentors. About surrounding yourself with people who inspire you, lift you, and model the professional you want to become. That is all true and important. 

But there is another category of teacher we almost never talk about: the difficult ones. The ones who irritate you, challenge your patience, and make you question whether you chose the right career. The ones you would not invite to dinner but cannot quite avoid at work.

These people, I have come to believe, are some of the most underrated sources of professional development available to us.

Here is why. When someone we admire does something well, we notice the skill. But when someone we find frustrating does something well – and they always do something well, even if it is hard to admit – we notice it even more, because we were not expecting it. The surprise breaks our bias open. We pay attention differently. We actually have to wrestle with what we are seeing.

That colleague I mentioned? He was extraordinary at reading a room. He could sense when a client’s energy had shifted five minutes before anyone else in the meeting caught on. He adjusted in real time. His instincts were sharp in a way mine were not. 

I did not want to admit it. I resisted it, actually, for longer than I should have. But eventually I watched him closely enough that I started to understand what he was doing, and then I started doing it too.

Think of it like sandpaper. Not the most pleasant thing to run your hand across. But that friction is exactly what produces the smooth surface. The people who make us uncomfortable, who challenge our patience, our ego, or our preferred way of seeing things, are often doing more for our edges than the ones who agree with us and make us feel good.

And it works both ways. Watch someone handle a difficult conversation badly, and you learn exactly what not to do. Watch someone lose a room because they talked too much, and you learn when to stop. Sometimes the clearest lessons come not from what to copy, but from what to avoid. Good things show you the direction. Bad things show you the boundaries.

None of this means you have to become friends with everyone. Or tolerate genuinely toxic behaviour. Or pretend that every difficult person is secretly a hidden gem. Some people are genuinely destructive, and the skill there is knowing when to create distance.

But there is a much larger group: the irritating ones, the abrasive ones, the ones whose style clashes with yours, whose approach feels wrong, whose success you do not quite understand. And for this group, I think we write them off too quickly.

The question worth sitting with is: what is this person doing that I am not seeing yet?

I still catch myself in meetings sometimes, feeling that old resistance. Someone says something that grates on me, and I notice my brain starting to dismiss them before they have finished the sentence. 

That is the moment I have learnt to pause. Not because I have to agree. Not because they are right. But because the dismissal itself is a signal. A signal that my own discomfort is running the show, not my judgement.

And discomfort, as we know, is usually where the growth is hiding. 

There is an old idea in philosophy, and I have heard it in many forms, that the people who aggravate us the most are often reflecting something back at us. Maybe a fear. Maybe a quality we secretly want but do not have. Maybe a version of ourselves we have tried to leave behind. 

Whether or not that is always true, the provocation is useful. They are making us look at something we would rather not look at. And looking, even when it is uncomfortable, is the beginning of learning.

This week, I want to invite you to try something small. Think of someone at work who genuinely frustrates you. Not someone harmful, just someone difficult. Someone whose presence makes meetings longer or whose style makes you want to scroll your phone.

Now ask: what is one thing they do well that I have been too annoyed to notice?

You do not have to like them. You do not have to tell them. You just have to be honest with yourself long enough to find the answer.

That is the skill. Not the tolerance, not the patience, though both help. The skill is the intellectual honesty to learn from a source your ego would rather reject.

The best professionals I know have a wide learning surface. They collect insights the way some people collect stamps – from everywhere, from everyone, regardless of whether they would choose to have dinner with the person who taught them.

Keep that surface wide. Even for the people who drive you up the wall. 

Especially them. Let’s learn, unlearn, relearn, and grow together.

PHOTOS © PEXELS