Sort it out

I was 'ordered' to 'sort it out' with a person in another team who is a stakeholder in my project. There was a bit of work I felt he should've helped to get done but he just dug his heels in and insisted that I should do it myself. I wasn't happy about that but there is a lot of politics involved here. So, I came to know that this person - who belongs to a different team, doesn't bill any of his time to our project. Basically, whatever work he does for us is free. My manager likes this and wants to keep it that way. Which means he'd rather bend over backwards to keep this person happy than back me up even when I am right.

So much so that in our last one on one, he told me 'If you can't work with X, that is a problem'. Which means he will get rid of me and not renew my contract. Essentially, this is what happened to the last person who was doing my job. X complained about him to my manager and my manager got rid of him and brought me in. So, now, my manager insists that I should talk to this person and square things with him. Which I did today. Funnily enough, what I gathered from today's chat was, this person is one of those people who get aggressive when they feel defensive. I got an impression that he is a bit insecure and is trying to compensate by patronizing me. Not an easy situation to manage. If I try to be friendly, he patronises me even more. If I don't, that is cause for a grudge. Let's see how it pans out but I am ready to put my papers in if it doesn't work out.