Difficult people can range from a speed bump to Armageddon when it comes to progress. They can interrupt meetings, cause mutiny, raise your anxiety and in some cases make you think the unthinkable. Lucky for you and us, you haven’t acted on the latter (we hope). Difficult people are a challenge. This is true whether managing or simply falling in the rank and file. This blog entry will help you de-code their behavior and perhaps even turn those difficult people into one of your top performers or advocates.

There’s a disclaimer that I always give when I write or train on this topic.  There are EVIL people in the world and sometimes we win the lottery and have to work with them. You usually have no problems recognizing them. These are the employees hell bent on destroying everyone and everything that you and your organization are trying to build. Some are even bent on destroying themselves. The tactics I discuss will likely not work with these people. However, I do have advice for how you can handle them. GET THEM OUT OF YOUR ORGANIZATION. Hold them accountable for their behavior and they will either change their ways or give you the evidence you need to legally terminate them. Either way should work for you. Remember, these are people trying to destroy more than build.

Another consideration is that you, as a manager are being paid and charged with meeting or exceeding results. Your organization compensates you and your team depends on you to do just that. Any opportunity we as managers have to help our employees, we should seize it. We should have compassion. However, our compassion should be global.  What I mean by that last statement is that by tolerating bad behavior from one individual or even a small group of individuals (because we feel sorry for them), we are essentially telling the other people on the team that they aren’t as deserving of our attention as the squeaky wheels. When you are feeling compassionate, realize that emotion should be placed with your team as well. Think of the damage the one difficult person is doing to the rest of the team. Be very compassionate but be so for your team.

All that being said, let’s focus on the topic at hand.  What are steps that we can take to manage a difficult person? Following is the answer to that question.

1. Build Trust. Trust is a mighty diffuser of difficult situations. A bullet point hardly does it justice but you can read, Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey or Trust Me by Nick Morgan for more insight and action items.
2. Seek to understand. Find out what they are trying to tell you. Often this may mean reading between the lines.
3. Put aside you ego. Despite what may have happened, your ego may block understanding and may promote unhealthy confrontation.
4. Ask questions. Asking questions is a tactic of empathy. Cover the who, what, where, when, and how’s of the situation.  Why’s can be sensitive so approach them with caution.
5. Avoid any blame. Blaming the difficult person is going to make them more difficult
6. Find and avoid hot buttons.  This goes hand in hand with the previous point. Unplug your hot buttons and avoid pushing theirs.
7. Passionately listen. I added passion in this because you should feel, during this interview nothing else matters except the other person.
8. Identify their communication style. There is a great deal of research on communications styles (Myers Briggs®, DISC®, and authors like Tony Alessandro).
9. Identify your communication style. Are you both talking the same language? If not someone has to change their native tongue to communicate in a manner that is conducive to the other person’s style.  Since you’re dealing with a Difficult Person, I’ll suggest you do it.
10. Seek to be understood. After you have build trust, empathized to a point of real understanding, then explain your point of view. State the facts as such and your opinion the same.

Managing Difficult People is a complex task. Reading a blog entry is only a small (but significant) start. However, I offered several resources for you to research. I encourage you to expand your reach and develop your skills around this. It’s about relationships and no manager can be successful without them. Don’t manage Difficult People, instead build a relationship with them. Once the platform of a solid relationship exists, you’ll be amazed at what the two of you can accomplish.

You can follow me on twitter @TerrenceWing and @LiquidLearn.