Dealing with Difficult People

You
You end up spending valuable energy by deciding to tolerate this person/s. It takes energy to tolerate a poor situation – energy which you need for other, more positive and productive efforts. In addition, by tolerating this person, your attitude suffers. Although we decide to tolerate it, we don’t ignore it. Tolerating something that reduces our level of energy and our attitude is unacceptable.

The Other Person
If you reflect back to a time when you became complacent, lost interest, and experienced a drop in attitude (as we all have experienced at one time or another), you’ll find one of two reasons for this shift. One reason is that the work you were doing really didn’t interest you - work was unfulfilling. One of the great revelations in life is that just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you enjoy it. The other reason we might have become complacent, lost interest, and experienced a drop in attitude is
that we became disillusioned with someone or something. In situations where the reality of the situation is different from the one we first imagined, is there a way to make things better? Maybe.

Your Team
A manager tolerates a difficult person for an extended time, hoping they’ll “come around” and thereby avoid a confrontation, until something happens – some event or challenge - and they feel they have no choice but to confront and often terminate them. Subsequently, the manager is surprised at the number of team members who come forth and comment on what a drag on the team that person had been. They’ll speak up about their poor attitude or poor work ethic, and often add, “I don’t know why
you kept them so long!” When you don’t address a difficult person - when you decide to tolerate them - your whole team is affected. In addition, ask yourself this: When you keep a difficult person on, what does it say about you as a leader and what does it say about your values and your integrity? Tolerating a difficult person doesn’t work in the long run.

Work to Understand Their Motivation
This option is about being a leader and being an effective communicator. It’s about being compassionate and strong at the same time. It’s about being good for someone rather than being good to them. It’s about understanding rather than telling. This solution is about taking the time to understand the other person’s motivation for acting the way they do. If you’re effective at this, you’ll be able to either help them change their perspective on things



Dealing with Difficult People - To learn more about this author, visit Michael Beck's Website.

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