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.
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Working With You is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work Books In Print, Audio Books.