Working with a Type A personality

LegacyUser

Anyone got any advice?

As a background, I recently started in a new job overseas which is high stress, very competitive and subject to a high level of attention to detail in virtually every daily task.

While the training and getting used to the job has been stressful, everyone is lovely and I feel the job is challenging, works to my strengths and will allow a lot of professional growth for me.

One of my colleagues is typically Type A - perpetually stressed over the smallest things, micro-managing, pedantic, very fly-off-the-handle over relatively trivial things and frets about the place with this unrealistic sense of urgency.

She's a lovely person and I get along with her, but her tendency to assume a bad mood, patronise or make me feel about 2 inches tall because I haven't been as pedantic as her about some minor detail is really stressing me out. Her attitude to me is dictated by what she perceives me to have done right or wrong - and given I'm still in the new stages and still have a lot to learn, it makes me feel like I'm walking on a tightrope around her all the time.

I'm a fairly laid-back person, easygoing, communicative, smart, hard working and good at what I do. I simply don't let small things get to me in the same way - if something goes wrong, I'll take a measured approach, take responsibility and move on. Such is life.

I don't doubt my ability, but I do worry about her capability to undermine me because we don't work on the same wavelength. For example, I regularly hear her bitching about other colleagues' work, how they've slowed her down or she's had to pick up the slack for someone's 'incompetence' just because they haven't approached something in the same way she has. I don't want my professional reputation to be affected by me simply being more laid back than her and her perceiving it as slovenly or something.

Anyone ever dealt with someone like this before? As I mentioned she's a lovely person, brilliant at her job and really goes above and beyond for it on a daily basis, which I respect. But we're simply of a totally different mindset and I'm not at the age where I think I should have to change my personality or my way of working to accommodate someone like this.

Taltos

Might be more appropriate here OP.
For anyone who has followed this thread please ensure you read the local charter.

Thanks.