Consulting Journal: Techniques - Handling difficult people

Techniques: Handling difficult people

by David Blakey

The way for consultants to handle "difficult people" is different from the methods described in management books.

[Monday 15 April 2002]

‘How to deal with difficult people.’ There are many books, videos, courses and websites about how to deal with difficult people. Most of them will tell you that a skilled manager should avoid conflicts. They will tell you that you should persuade difficult people to work with you. They will tell you how to obtain their cooperation and commitment.

Much of this advice actually panders to management weakness, instead of reinforcing management strength. The thinking is that you will have to continue working with these difficult people, so it is better to get their cooperation in one project so that you can continue to get it in the next project, and so on.

If you are a manager within a hierarchical organization, and you have no control over the people who work for you or who report to you, then this advice may be useful. You may indeed have to continue working with these people.

If you are a manager within an organization where you have control over who works for you - you can ‘hire and fire’ - then you should weigh carefully whether your time and effort in dealing with a difficult person will be an investment or an expense.

If you are a consultant, then almost all of the advice and guidelines about dealing with difficult people is useless to you.

An external consultant has options that do not seem available to an internal manager. As a consultant, I can throw people off my team in a way that you - as an internal manager - might feel unable to do. I have more pressing requirements than boosting the ego of a difficult person. If I don't want these people on my team, then I can shove them off. I will leave when I have finished my assignment, and the difficult person will not have an opportunity to retaliate. You may imagine, as an internal manager, that you cannot do the same thing, because of the repercussions that it could have later. Even some consultants imagine that their assignments include handling difficult people. Most assignments should not.

Why people are difficult

The reality is that most difficult people are difficult for a reason. The most common reasons that I have seen are

They lack confidence.

These people are unwilling to put forward their ideas until they are absolutely certain that they are right. They are useless to me as team members. I need people who can put forward ideas, who can defend their ideas, and who, if their ideas are rejected, will not treat that rejection as a personal rebuff. Provided that they are not putting forward frivolous ideas, I want my team members to keep putting forward new ideas, no matter how often those ideas get ‘shot down’ by the rest of the team. I have no time or patience for ‘shrinking violets’.
They are negative.

Given my feelings about people who never put forward ideas, you can imagine how I feel about people who continually attempt to ‘shoot down’ others' ideas, without putting forward any of their own, ever. I simply will not have these people on my team.
They are incompetent.

As well as people who put ideas forward, all teams need people who will act. Preferably, all team members will generate ideas and complete tasks, but I am willing to trade one for the other, to some extent. There are some people who actually never complete any task satisfactorily. In the worst case, their work is both incomplete and unsatisfactory, so that someone else cannot take it over and complete it properly. Anything that these people work on has to be started again.

In many organizations, the incompetent become known as ‘good team players’. This is useful for you - as a manager - because you can get rid of them onto other people's project teams. These other people include me - the external consultant. At least I will keep them out of your way for a while, until I discover their incompetence and push them off my team and back into your department.
They are lazy.

People who are lazy are worse than people who are incompetent. The incompetent make an effort, however bad the results may be, and they can be employed on simple tasks with frequent supervision. With lazy people, I never know whether they are doing anything at all. Strangely, I have seen, in many client organizations, that the lazy people seem to be higher up the hierarchy than the incompetent people.

I do not regard delegation as laziness, of course. There is much hard work involved in managing a department of fifty or so people well, no matter how much is delegated. Some of the hardest workers I have known have been people who gave the impression that they did very little.

I do regard bad time management as laziness, however. There are some very lazy senior managers around. Many of them spend time that could be productive by appearing at project team meetings. They do nothing, and they fail to keep their promises, but they continue to turn up at the meetings.

Worse than this, there may be capable people on the team who report to these lazy managers, and who are prevented from making a full contribution to the team by their presence. So not only are the managers themselves useless, but they reduce the usefulness of their own people.

My advice

Now, here's my advice to you.

If you are a consultant, get rid of these people. You won't have to suffer their resentment in future and it's not worth your time and effort to coax them round. You will be better off without them. This really is your first option. You should only consider alternatives if you can't get rid of these people.

If you're an internal manager, then consider whether you can do the same. Seriously consider getting rid of them. Neither you nor the organization should be investing time and effort into people who are not motivated, confident and competent. Your efforts should be directed towards the people who are motivated, confident and competent.

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