Hm. Saga time ....

I had (and have) a problem with dealing with conflict. At my last-but-one place of work, one colleague had a tendency to speak *at* underlings; one piece of work I was doing for him wasn't going so well, so I had nothing to take to him, so he would visit my office and be loudly unhappy. What broke me out of the cycle was plucking up the courage to walk into his office first thing one morning, and say "Right --- how are we going to deal with this wretched problem?" After that, he was on my side.

Hope this helps.