Archives for April 2012

Working with Difficult People

It is impossible to unconditionally like everyone you meet and the same goes true for your workplace. At work you are expected not only to be constantly around people that can be labeled as ‘difficult’, but to interact with them, work with them as a team, and perhaps take orders from them in some cases. The idea that they are difficult is no doubt portrayed by their behavior towards others or yourself that puts you off and makes working with them a pain.

What Are Difficult Coworkers Like?

Difficult people may have one or several of the following character and behavior traits:

Being talkative and not listening enough
Excessive complaining/whining
Overly critical
Dominating over equals
Being rude and disrespectful
Unreliable and slacking on commitments
Not giving others due credit for their work
Argumentative

This list is by no means exhaustive; it points out some of the common issues employees have with other workers at their organizations and offices. We all know of some people, or at least one person, who has problems like these and we wish to stay away from them as much as possible. However, it is important to work on better ways of dealing with them and improving work relationships so your productivity and career do not suffer.

How Can I Effectively Work With Difficult People?

Since it has already been pointed out, running away is usually not an option to get away from people you do not like unless the situation has become so extreme that you are willing to quit your job. With effort you can help smoothen out many of your unpleasant work relationships and help build a better, more conducive environment for everyone.

Firstly, try to evaluate the person and your dealings with them in an objective, unbiased manner. Often, previous experiences and unconscious bias makes us judgmental about a person and affects our future interaction. Figure out if there really is a problem or if you are just overreacting and judging people in a flawed, unfair manner. Give others the benefit of the doubt.

Realize that it is near impossible to change someone else to your liking – so work on the things that you can change and are in your control. This involves your thinking and your behavior! Since you are the one being affected by someone else, you should take the initiative in improving your communication.

When communicating with the person, keep calm and your anger under control. Stay quiet and actually listen to what he/she is trying to say; not just the overall theme, but underlying tones that will tell you why that person is behaving the way they do or what exactly they are trying to say beneath the rough manner. Don’t counter an attack with an attack; avoid conflict by letting the other finish and then asking questions to start a productive problem-solving process rather than the usual argument.

With constant complainers and pessimistic coworkers who end up sapping your energy and dampening your own morale, avoid times where they can engage you in useless conversation or change the topic to something less morbid. Counter their whining with cheerfulness until they realize they cannot constantly victimize themselves in front of you.

Once you are willing to change your own attitude and responses, difficult people will no longer be able to feed off your reactions and relations should improve. Lastly, enlist the help of a boss if things are getting out of hand.

Building Team Spirit

Many modern organizations have accepted that the new way to be efficient and allow creativity in the organization is by promoting team spirit. Now team spirit encourages creativity because it allows diverse ideas from equal authority sources. However, every individual is responsible for his own specialized actions and shares the authority of his individual projects. Hence, they wish to do it their own way that best suits them. So how can an organization build team spirit? How can a manager motivate teams to work together and be productive and profitable? The answer is easy. All you have to do is follow a few simple rules and tips.

Common Ground

The first thing a manager must do is assign a common goal. When team members are assigned common grounds and goals, they are bound to work together as the fall of one is the fall of all. Now what effect this has is that every individual in the team will assure that every other member is on track. Every individual will try to assist the others that need help or assistance, in any way possible. This promotes team work and team spirit: all for one and one for all. This also means that teams should be allowed to work individually and decide on who their leader is. Sometimes a leader is not even required, everyone tends to work together perfectly and the manager only needs to ask for feedback on the project status every now and then.

Identify Non-Value-Added Work

Bureaucracy, rework, and inefficiency are all those things that destroy employee morale and create a feeling of not wanting to commit to the work. Make sure that all workers are involved in all of the work and decision making so that no one employee benefits from working less than the others.

Build A Strong Relationship

Bring in sessions and activities that strengthen the relationship between all the team members. Offsite activities, company retreats and training sessions on team building, all help build better relations in teams.

Autonomy

Autonomy should always be provided to the team manager to see creativity and commitment. If the team feels they have the authority to make all decisions and come up with their own techniques, they will surely work better and excel. Creativity requires freedom and the best way freedom is provided in a company is through autonomy.

Avoid Conflicting Interests

Never try to micro evaluate team members. If you place competition and try to figure out what individual of the team is responsible for failure, then you’ll end up watching team members play the blame game.

Bring the idea of unity in strength into the organization’s culture. Any work is not one person’s work but the work for all individuals to reach the company’s ultimate goal. With this perception and idea in mind, no matter what department an employee works for, he will always be there to assist a fellow colleague in need. One crucial factor a manager must always control is “Competition”. The lesser competition there is between members of a team, the better. Competition between teams can be healthy as individuals will then try to work efficiently as a team than as individuals.

Dealing with Poor Performers

We are working in a world where no one is perfect or equally talented in what he does. So some of us are sometimes left behind while extraordinary and hardworking performers raise the bar to a whole new level. Just because the performer is a little behind doesn’t mean that he is lazy or a bad worker. There are many factors that will determine whether the performer really did perform poorly. There are always simple steps and factors to analyze the true reason of poor performance and how we can change that.

Who is responsible?

Firstly, always make sure who performed badly. Sometimes we hire the wrong people to do the wrong work and blame them for unsatisfactory performance. For example, a secretary is not responsible for assuring that the manager’s computer and documents are properly working and arranged. His/her job is to assist the manager and it is the I.T department’s job to make sure all computers and systems are working efficiently and safely. You can always refer to the job description of a post to know what jobs you are responsible for.

Why?

Now that you know who is responsible, figure out the problem. Sales reps are usually dismissed because of not reaching quotas. As a manager we need to be smart and recognize the origin of the problem. Listening is the key here. Allow the employee to make his case and justify poor performance. Sometimes the reasons can be legit. It’s not the rep’s fault the market is falling and people are opting for substitutes of the product, or if the worker was not given specific instructions and training in what his quota really is and how to achieve it. The company must assure that all employees are effectively informed about their goals. Setting up better goals than before is not so easy, we must always figure out a game plan for them in the beginning so that they know what to do. Another key is not to compare the employee with other colleagues. Another rep might just have gotten lucky in filling his quota because one company bought all his supply.

SMART Goals

Set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals for the employee. Assigning the employee with immeasurable and unrealistic goals is pointless. Set for them new goals that you know an employee can achieve in a realistic time period.

Re-evaluate

Now that you have re-assigned the employee and set up new goals for them, you need to re-evaluate the performance. This must be done according to the goals set for them before. Of course any assistance needed would have been provided as discussed by the manager and the employee while setting those goals. If besides such efforts and motivation, the employee fails to reach the new goals, then he/she has failed.

Disciplinary Action

It now comes to down to company policy on what action to take. Most companies tend to dismiss while others provide more guidance and training for poor performers. It all depends on the company policy.

Any manager should always first find the root cause of poor performance and try to change it. Giving on employee can be very de-motivating and stressful for others and sometimes unfair for the poor performer. Reasons for poor performance can be legitimate and all we would need is a little understanding to see that.