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As you're thinking through your coaching practice, agenda, and
rolling out a new coaching practice for your team in your organization,
you may wonder, what about all those difficult people?
The ones I know that aren't going to be very wild about this new practice or
will be difficult to coach in one way or another.
Well this lesson, I want to talk to you about how you can approach this.
Some strategies to help you coach difficult people.
Honestly, I teach the entire course on this, so I'm really giving you a very
condensed version of the things that I know you should know.
But there are some key elements I think that I can help you with right away,
if you have difficult employee on your team.
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First of all, we need to remember that difficult is not a truth or a fact.
Difficult is an opinion about someones behavior, right?
So even if we begin to define someone is a difficult employee,
we are already down the road of interacting with them that way.
If I believe you're difficult, I will interact with you in that way, and
that typically isn't good, right?
So the first thing is, you have to catch yourself and
recognize, okay, I'm defining someone as difficult, and here's the thing.
I don't care if everybody agrees with you.
When you define someone who's difficult, it changes how you interact with them, and
it decreases your effectiveness okay?
So that's number one.
Second of all, that doesn't mean that they aren't behaviors or performance outcomes
that people demonstrate at work that are in appropriate and not effective and
that need to be addressed.
That absolutely happens and that's your job as a manager.
And frankly, what I see happen more is that all too often,
managers ignore difficult behavior, and then what happens is organizations
actually build systems around difficult people, [LAUGH] because nobody wants to or
knows how to deal with them.
And so they keep being there, and really they are ineffective.
They can cause a lot of problems on teams, right?
So yes, difficult is a thing, but we have to define it.
And second of all, it really is something that needs to be addressed because it
actually can be very toxic and damaging to an organization's performance and
culture, okay?
So the biggest take away I want you to have in this short lesson is how to talk
to someone who's demonstrating difficult behavior.
Now most people,
most managers, don't have a problem when someone just missed a goal, right?
So you were supposed to make 50 calls, you made 2.
You were supposed to have this delivered on Friday, it hasn't been turned in it.
You were supposed to be at work at 9, you keep coming in at 9:30, right?
It's very tactical, it's very easy to address.
This is what happened, you need to change it.
Whatever, do a little coaching.
That's how that works.
What happens, though, for most managers,
is when they struggle to coach people when its behavior.
So when someone is not listening, when someone is perceived as rude,
when someone is perceived as arrogant.
When someone is perceived as dismissive, when someone is perceived as defensive.
These are all the kinds of things that people experience with one another, and
then it becomes really hard to know how to deal with them.
And so the easiest way to help yourself is to identify what the behavior
is versus the label, right?
So saying someone is rude is a label.
What do they do in the world that makes you think that they're rude?
That's the power question.
What is observable?
Well they rolled their eyes.
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They never, of they don't ask questions about other people.
These are the things that people do in the world that help other people arrive at
a label.
A label is just an opinion, okay?
So even though we have some general understanding from, for what rude and
disrespectful and arrogant might mean, I think you'd be surprised what some people
think is disrespectful versus someone else, right?
So really being able to pull apart.
If I'm a manager and I need to talk to you about your behaviors that you're
demonstrating, my job is to prepare the facts, and we talked about this, right?
How to have that conversation, don't be stuck in the label.
So I don't want to lead my conversation by saying you are rude,
you are disrespectful.
We want to lead that conversation by saying, in the meeting,
I observed that you rolled your eyes.
In the meeting, I observed that you interrupted Joni.
When you walked in the door today, you didn't say hello to anyone.
In our one-on-ones, you don't make eye contact with me.
You want to focus on the observable behavior versus the label
because what happens when we launch with the label.
Is that people will get immediately defensive because it's our assumption
about why they do what they do.
And here's what I know for sure.
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The majority of people do not wake up in the morning and
think I'm going to be disrespectful today.
[LAUGH] They don't wake up in the morning and think I'm going to be arrogant today.
They don't wake up in the morning and say I'm going to be rude today.
They wake up in the morning and they think things about other people,
which drives their behavior, right?
So someone who might interrupt someone in a meeting several times,
it could be because they're frustrated, impatient or passionate.
It means a lot of different things.
We don't really actually know.
All we know is what see.
So understanding that other people's behavior is for
their reasons, not because of the label we give it.
So people are not doing things to be rude.
People are doing things based on their own thinking.
That's what we have to help them understand.
So we're coaching a difficult person.
We need to point out the observable behavior, not to label.
And then we need to ask them if they're willing to change it.
Because interrupting people, not communicating with team members,
rolling eyes, yelling, are not effective behaviors at work.
They will cause performance issues if they're not already.
And so if someone wants to change, that's good news.
[LAUGH] Then we can coach them.
If they don't want to change, okay, then I will manage you, right?
But that's your work as a manager, is to really make sure that they
recognize that the observable behavior is here and it isn't acceptable, right?
And then ultimately, what is the consequence if it doesn't change.
But that's the key with dealing with difficult people,
is making sure that you are coaching, that the conversations you are having is
about what is observable and not the label that you give it.
Okay, so just to recap, difficult is only difficult once you've decided that it is.
And if you believe that someone is difficult,
you will interact with them that way.
There are behaviors that people demonstrate at work that aren't acceptable
and must be addressed.
Avoiding them only makes it worse, and it actually impacts and
impairs your ability to lead your team
because people lose respect if you don't manage those kinds of behaviors.
And finally, when we talk to an employee about their behavior, we want to focus on
what was observable, not on opinion either from you or from someone else.
And we ask them if they're willing to make changes to move forward.
Those are the key takeaways from a book I actually wrote,
How to Coach Difficult People.
And then I also have a book called Five Ways for Thinking About Difficult People.
Because it's a factor, it's a real issue.
And I think it's getting worse, not better.
But there are some things we can do as managers to help the situation.
All of this to say, keep these ideas in mind as you're defining your coaching
practice and working on agendas with someone you consider to be difficult.
Kris PlachyCEO and Founder & Instructor
