A leader who has to take the helm of a newly acquired company, manage a business through a market crash or lead the organization through a natural disaster might be scenarios that come to mind when you think of leading through adversity.
However, one of the most challenging – and common – scenarios of leading through adversity arises when leaders have to manage difficult team members.
- There might be a high performer who doesn’t play nice with others. While their skills are niche or superior and they bring in results to drive business goals, they feel like less of an asset as they destroy team morale. But do you want to confront a cantankerous and difficult star employee?
- It could be there’s a team member who has the talent to do well, but falls short regularly and doesn’t seem motivated to even try – or blames others or circumstances for their mistakes. When is continually monitoring and asking for revisions or more thorough work too much?
- Sometimes it’s an employee who ticks all the right boxes for personality and tries very hard, but seems to lack the core competencies to do their job properly. Is a congenial temperament worth the ongoing aggravation and extra work for others on the team?
- Then there are the folks who have been around for years, despite consistently poor performance and attitude – perhaps even insubordination and questioning your authority. Where do you even start?
Too often, managers are reluctant to have conversations with difficult team members who might have an emotional outburst or tackle performance issues with a nice person who is struggling or oblivious. They often hope that the issue will go away with enough time (it won’t!) and they just manage around the difficult team member.
The trouble is that when there is a difficult employee of any kind, there are repercussions for the entire team. These include:
- Negatively affecting productivity and perhaps even organizational success.
- Hurting employee morale because it’s human nature to feel frustrated when someone seems to get preferential treatment when they’re not meeting expectations for performance or behaviour.
- A ripple effect where other employees are either disgruntled and are no longer motivated to do their best, or they feel that the bar is set lower for everyone and stop working as hard.
How to Approach an Issue with an Employee
Effective leaders approach a difficult employee or a challenging situation as a problem to solve with curiosity and empathy. They tackle conflict directly and without unnecessary delay.Nothing improves when we ignore issues and it won’t serve any manager to be conflict avoidant. At the same time, an effective leader isn’t a dictator, but rather someone who seeks to figure out what’s happening and how to fairly resolve the situation.
Like any puzzle, strategy matters.
1. Objectively assess the situation.
Step back and look at what you’re seeing with a difficult employee. What are the issues that you see? What evidence do you have to consider as you evaluate potential causes? What concrete examples do you have to discuss with this employee?
2. Take a moment to consider whether your leadership may have contributed to the situation.
It’s hard for some of us to think about this, but effective leadership starts when we can be self-aware and self-reflective. Is it possible you didn’t communicate expectations or deadlines or responsibilities clearly and this person really didn’t know? Or, if you did communicate clearly, is it possible that you weren’t fair or reasonable? Did anything change with the team member’s role or responsibilities that was implied but they didn’t grasp? Could your management style be causing issues? For example, are you micromanaging or changing deliverables on the fly?
3. Consider things from their perspective.
There could be reasons why these issues are arising that are contributing to problematic behaviours. If someone doesn’t seem to be willfully rude or obstinate and they aren’t bullying others or trying to undermine you, what’s going on? It’s possible there’s a personal or health issue that is a strain. There could be other factors at play. Are there issues between this person and another team member or even a client?
4. Consult someone if you need more information.
Sometimes it is very helpful to get the opinion of someone that you trust when you have to deal with a delicate situation. This might be someone in Human Resources, a boss or manager, a mentor, a peer or a professional leadership coach. Reaching out for guidance is not a sign of weakness; on the contrary, it’s wise to acknowledge when you could use a little support.
5. Book a time to have a conversation with the employee.
Ideally, you want to have any delicate conversations in person or at least face-to-face online. It’s too easy to misinterpret tone when you can’t read facial expressions.
Review our keys to having effective performance conversations, particularly meeting on neutral ground, listening with the intent to understand and using specific examples to discuss as you approach the issue (“The deliverable was X, but you did Y and missed the deadline. Can you walk me through what happened?”).
Active listening fosters trust and builds rapport, but it’s also critical to really seek to understand what they share with you. Address any concerns with empathy and compassion so that the dialogue is constructive.
6. Identify the gap together.
Through this conversation, your objective curiosity about what is going wrong could help you uncover something unexpected.
Consider:
- Are there tools, resources or other support that would help them do their job better?
- Did they have adequate training? Do they need a refresher or more training?
- Are there procedures or processes that aren’t working?
- Can they identify barriers they encounter?
- Do others on the team face the same issues in the same or different ways?
- What are their natural talents, skills and abilities? Are they aligned with this role?
- Is there conflict that is affecting their performance?
- Do they feel their personal values don’t line up with the company?
7. Create an action plan to move forward.
This is going to vary depending on what you feel is the root cause of the issue. Is this team member an asset? Then figure out actionable goals, clearly define what you want to see in terms of results and commit to giving timely and effective feedback going forward. Do they need resources, mentoring or coaching? There are ways to encourage better performance from your team members. If the team member is more of a liability, it might be time to talk to your HR Manager about steps toward termination.
When you need to have difficult conversations with team members (we prefer to call them essential conversations), apply these strategies and seek professional executive coaching for further support.
Coach’s Questions:
How have you previously dealt with difficult employees? What were the effects on the problem and on others in that previous situation? What is your gut response to conflict? What could you change or do differently going forward?
