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How to Deal With Difficult People

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In business, like the rest of life we will often encounter people who are just that little more difficult to get along with. Some use the term ‘personality conflict’ to describe the situation, yet this suggests that there is some sort of unbreakable barrier and that the problem is somewhat unfixable, since it is highly unlikely somebody is going to change their entire personality for the sake of better work relations! A far more rational solution is to change specific behaviours, rather than personality traits.

Situations with difficult employees tend to occur over time; after all it is not very common to hire someone and find them impossible to deal with after the first week. Usually it is small irritating personal habits that progress over time into larger annoying behaviours after being left unattended. In any relationship, both people influence the other’s behaviour. In almost every conflict situation, both parties bear some responsibility for the way things end up.

Focusing on blame will produce no results and only irritate you further. The most proactive thing you can do in these situations is focus on what YOU can do to make things better. It doesn’t matter who is at fault, if your primary concern is to rectify the situation. Try to consider your contribution in this unpleasant situation; perhaps you have just written them off as a lost cause, their own worst enemy? Now try to consider ways in which you can change this; maybe by getting more involved with them personally, making an effort to become friends.

A good idea is to approach the situation in a non- accusatory tone, preferably when you are both calm and in a private situation. Address the problems you are experiencing, once you have finished let them have their say and be sure to listen intently so they know you are truly concerned and interested. When possible find things to agree on, and offer something in return.

If you are clearly frustrated it will show. It is important that you deal with things firmly, but nicely and without dramatics. To remain the bigger person you should retain quiet dignity, even if the other person becomes rude or nasty. No-one is suggesting you smile and turn the other cheek in the face of abuse, but if you counter-attack or react in kind, you will almost always make the situation worse.

Avoid gossip of any kind as you will start to involve other members of staff. As well as being disruptive to the organization, it will make it more difficult to fix the situation. Gossip only focuses on the worst part of a person and paints them in a very negative light. Along with being unfair, it affects your thinking and actually shortens your patience, especially when you get covert support from others.

Like every situation, prevention is better than cure, by using a combination of politeness and limit setting these situations can be completely avoided. However, sometimes the conflict becomes so polarized that you will have to go to outside sources to seek help. If the person in question is a fellow staff member, one possibility is to approach your team leader and explain the situation. Do your best not to convince your boss how ‘bad’ the other person is, it will just make you look like the problem.

At the end of the day there is generally a solution to every problem. If the situation persists and you and the person in question continue not to see eye to eye, then perhaps mediation or some other form of intervention may be necessary. In any case you must remember that there are two sides to every story, maybe you aren’t being as reasonable as you originally thought? Be open to others suggestions and opinions, and be aware of your rights and responsibilities in a conflict situation, as well as theirs.

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Coaching for Success

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Coaching is perhaps the most effective method of increasing performance available to managers, team leaders, and colleagues. This article defines coaching and outlines a process for effective coaching.

Coaching Defined

Coaching is perhaps the most effective method of increasing performance available to managers, team leaders, and colleagues.

If you wish to improve the skills of your employees, you must plan to observe them and provide them with feedback. If you’re like most supervisors or managers, you have limited time and are looking for employees to become proficient – and independent – faster.

Entelechy’s Coaching Model is designed to help you do just that!

The Coaching Model is appropriate for developing the skills of employees if the employee is willing to improve. Coaching should not be used as a softer, gentler version of corrective action; if a performance problem occurs, you will want to use the Problem Solving model.

The Coaching Model is based on several important principles:

1. There are two primary goals to coaching:

• To improve performance.

• To help employees gain the ability to self-assess.

2. It is important that the coaching sessions follow a predictable process. This will help the coaches feel more comfortable and relaxed, which will help to ensure they actively participate in these sessions. It is for this reason that we suggest that you share the coaching model with your employees prior to coaching.

3. Coaching is a planned development process and should not be a surprise.

4. The way you open the conversation sets the tone for what will follow.

5. After we open the conversation using our initial probe, we discuss positives first and areas for improvement last. Beginning with positives first is motivational and accomplishes the following:

• The goal is to have employees increase their performance. If they are not in a positive frame of mind, they will not be open to this change.

• Reinforces good behavior and ease into the coaching session.

• Builds self-esteem.

6. Ending the coaching session with a discussion of areas for development ensures that they are focusing on those areas.

7. Always give the coached a chance to self-assess before you offer your insights. Encouraging self-assessment is positive for several reasons:

• It encourages improvement even when you are not coaching.

• It allows you to determine why the employee may not be performing as desired; they may not know that they’re doing something incorrectly.

• It builds self-esteem.

• It increases the chances that behavior will change.

8. Reinforce correct self-assessment.

9. Defer or redirect inappropriate or incorrect self-assessment.

10. We focus coaching on only two strengths and two areas for development. Limiting the discussion is important and accomplishes the following:

• Increases the coacher’s ability to reach proficiency.

• Focuses on the most important issues.

• Other issues can be addressed after some progress has been made on the most important issues first.

11. If an employee is not identifying areas that you identified (or has identified them incorrectly), use increasingly specific questions to allow the employee to self-assess if possible. This allows you to determine if the employee doesn’t know what’s expected, doesn’t have the skill, or simply chooses not to demonstrate the skill.

The Coaching Model at Work

Now let’s turn our attention to Entelechy’s Coaching Model in practice.

Step 1: Open the Conversation

The coach opens the conversation with a general question; this helps the coach get a sense for the accuracy of the coacher’s self-assessment. If the coached responds with, “that was the best call ever” and you thought that the call was poor, you know that you’ll have to adjust your coaching conversation.

Step 2: Probe for What Went Well

The coach asks the coached what went particularly well and listens for the responses. By identifying what went well first, a positive tone for the coaching session is set. We want to make sure that the coached continues doing these things. This also forces the coached — NOT THE COACH — to identify superior performance.

Step 2a: Redirect or Defer

Sometimes the coached will bring up a negative when you’re discussing positives. You will want to defer that discussion until later in the coaching conversation by saying, “I’d like to talk about that more later. What else went particularly well?”

Other times, the coached will claim something as a positive that — in your opinion — was an area that needs development. You will want to redirect their perception by pointing out what you saw that helped you conclude that it was less than desirable. “Oh, really? Did you happen to see John’s face when you discussed the product’s features? That’s right, he seemed to lose interest when you started talking about us rather than about him….”

Step 2b: Support and Build

When the coached correctly assesses his performance — both strengths and areas for development — support the assessment by saying, “I agree.” Build from their conclusions to reinforce the accuracy of their self-assessment. In this way, you are reinforcing one of the most valuable skills anyone can acquire: the ability to assess and improve their own performance.

Step 3: Probe for Areas for Development

The third step is to ask the coached what he would change if he could do it again. Obviously, if the coached knows what could be improved and knows how to improve it, he won’t benefit from YOU telling him! And by mentally rehearsing what he will do differently, the likelihood of him actually carrying out the improvement is increased.

Most experts agree that two or three areas for development are enough for anyone to work on. Working on a laundry list of things to change is frustrating and futile. Focus on the areas of greatest need.

When identifying areas for development, the coached may not have identified the one that you thought was most important. Again, you can redirect their perception by identifying what you saw that they might not have that allowed you to come to your conclusion. “I agree that the two areas that you identified would definitely had made the call go better. What do you think the effect of your product feature presentation was on the customer? Why? What might you do differently the next time…?”

Step 4: Summarize and Support

Even though you may have limited the coaching to a few strengths and a couple areas for development, you will want to briefly summarize the discussion, especially what the coached will do differently the next time. This recap will cause the most important things to remain fresh in memory. You will also want to support the changes by saying something like, “I think those changes will make your next call go even better.”

Follow these four steps to help your employees and colleagues increase their performance. In the next issue we discuss how to give feedback within the coaching framework.

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Coaching Strategies: The Twinkie Defense and 3 Other Strategies Lawyers Use

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Using the skills, strategies, and smarts of lawyers, you’ll be able to more effectively coach your employees to optimal performance. Here are 4 great tips to help you give constructive feedback in such a way that you motivate positive and productive performance…

1. Give evidence of performance to employee. In litigation, prosecutors are required to turn all of their evidence over to the defense. In order to be fair to employees, supervisors need to do the same thing. Tony frequently received disturbing memos from his district manager about his poor performance on sales calls. “You failed to cover the Five Points for Sales Excellence with a customer last month. This is unacceptable.” Tony never received a monitoring sheet spelling out the discrepancies, never heard a tape of a recorded call, and he didn’t even have the opportunity to defend himself because the cowardly manager simply shot her message off in a cold blunt memo.

Giving feedback the way Tony’s district manager does is dangerous. It certainly isn’t motivating Tony to improve.

Moreover, because the manager has provided no proof of the calls – no score sheet, no recording of the call, no date or time, and not even one specific statement about Tony’s alleged ineffectiveness – Tony can’t even defend his performance.

When monitoring and coaching employees, ALWAYS turn over the evidence of the call to them. This evidence may include a recorded call, Mystery Shopper score sheet, detailed notes from customer’s account, etc.

2. Prepare for employee performance meetings in advance. No attorney would conduct a direct examination or cross examination without thoroughly and carefully pre planning their questions. I always prepare a loose script prior to meeting with employees about problem performance, even though I don’t actually read from my script. Writing the discussion out reinforces it in my mind and allows me to be less concerned with covering all the basis and more concerned with my employee.

3. Ask open-ended questions. Asking a juror if they are for the death penalty yields a yes or no answer, but asking her how she feels about the death penalty gives the attorney the opportunity to learn more. Just the same, asking your employee if she thought the phone call in question was good will yield a yes or no answer, but asking her how she thought the call went gives her the opportunity to expound. My favorite open-ended coaching questions include: “If you could do this call over again, would you?” “Tell me about that caller.” “Is there anything else about this call/customer that I haven’t asked, but need to know?”

4. Don’t allow the “Twinkie Defense.” In court, defendants may stand behind a theory of the case called the “Twinkie Defense.” This theory tries to throw the jury off the trail by blaming the client’s bad actions on something else – he ate too many Twinkies, for instance, and was on a sugar high when he killed/robbed/raped/molested and therefore is not responsible for his actions. You may have encountered the Twinkie Defense with your employees: “I was late because traffic was unusually heavy and then when I got here the elevator was broken, therefore my tardiness is not my fault.” Decide that employees will be held accountable for their actions and don’t allow them to hide behind the Twinkie Defense. In response to the Twinkie Defense, you respond with, “This is about individual responsibility – not trying to hide behind excuses.”

Deploy these field-tested and proven strategies and you’ll be coaching employees like a pro!

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