The only way to successfully work for someone you don’t like is to not work FOR them, but learn from the situation. Look at the situation as quite temporary and transitional. Once you know that it is not permanent, it is much easier to cope.

A torturous situation cannot be sustained so don’t force it, and not liking your boss is pretty torturous. You might think that is rather dramatic to put it like that. However, if this is someone you disagree with fundamentally, don’t respect them, they annoy you or don’t respect you, there are constant awkwardness and tension between you, then those are all examples of someone you don’t like and IMHO, someone you should not force yourself to work for.

Why? cuz YOLO: You only live once

Don’t even think that you work for someone you don’t like. Tell yourself that because you don’t like them you don’t work for them. 

I care about yours and my own happiness and mental peace way too much to keep working for someone that I don’t like. For example, a micromanager would be someone I would not like working for and in that case, I really could not do it long term as I care about independence and being able to do my work in peace.

In the meantime, while you are in this position, you can LEARN a lot if you just kind of forgot that you work for them.

If they don’t have control over you because you won’t let them, then you actually free up your mind immensely towards learning, new information, and gaining experience. All of which could be used to find your next opportunity whether in the same organization or elsewhere.

So even though this temporary boss is awful, your time is productive and valuable. You have assumed power by not really caring what they think. You don’t even like them, why would you care what they think?

Bosses are critical to your success and also, the day to day experience, so I would encourage finding people that you do like working with or for. I like my boss now and things are good in that area, but this was not always the case. That said, those previous experiences were still valuable and I learned a lot from them. 

When you give yourself permission to learn and make progress in spite of adversities, the time spent is much more fruitful and you will look back and appreciate all that you achieved.

Even if this is a team member that you don’t really like, you can remove yourself effectively from the negativity by merely assuming that their lousy influence is temporary while your learning and growth are infinite.

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