Episode Transcript
Let's say it like it is. Managing difficult employees isn’t any fun. It wastes lots of time, takes lots of energy, and usually creates lots of paperwork. Now for the good news, well sorry, there is no good news. The best news I can give you is that if you handle the situation correctly you may be able to dramatically improve their attitude, work quality and general performance.
Now let's discuss what to do if you do have a difficult person on your team. To that end, I like to categorize difficult employees into the following seven categories:
• Unethical
• Sullen
• Lethargic
• Know-It-All
• Always-Late
• Underperforming
• Troubled
Ok, I know this is a little corny, but this was more fun than categorizing them as types 1 to 7. Please note that the first five types are honesty and/or motivation based, the last two, could be you or I at any given time. In this post, I discuss the first two types, Unethical and Sullen. The other five types are described in posts by the same name as “2 of 3” and “3 of 3”
Unethical: This type of person is marginally honest. They do not do anything blatantly illegal or clearly against company policy, but push the limits with no particular regard to the organization, their fellow employees or your customers. Classic example activities of this kind of person includes
• Padding their expense account
• Selling inappropriate products to your customers
• Stealing customers and leads from other sales people
• Taking credit for other people’s work
• Generally doing things that other employees find repugnant
Generally speaking, I don’t trust this kind of person. My advice to you is not to trust them either and be pleasantly surprised if you find them to be honest. Your best plan of action to straighten them out is to
• Talk to your manager and HR person first
• Then sit down with the employee (maybe with manager and HR)
• Lay out the law in writing
As an example, if they have been selling inappropriate products to your customers, inform them that you will be monitoring their sales. Continue to say that if the practice continues, they will be reassigned or asked to leave the organization. You have to be tough and make it plain to your group that questionable business practices are not acceptable.
Sullen: These people can often be identified by their
• Facial expressions
• Speech
• Body language
• General attitude
There are a number of reasons why people are sullen at work, some are personality related, some are non-work related and some are work related. From a personality perspective, these people are few and far between, but some people are just sullen by nature. You have to learn to manage around their sullenness, or over time, move them out of your department to a location within the organization where their personality matches the job.
Non-work-related sullenness will be discussed in a future section.
Work-related sullenness can very often be corrected through good management (yes, your good management). Very often people are sullen at work for a specific reason. These reasons include
• Low pay
• Lack of challenging work
• Lack of training
• Lack of visibility to upper management
• No perceived chance of advancement
• Other similar issues
Your job as the person’s manager is to work with the employee to define the specific issue or issues causing their unhappiness and define a plan to correct it. I have seen many peoples' attitudes improve dramatically when the proper steps are taken to address their concerns.
The primary advice and takeaways are to know that:
• There is potential to dramatically improve the attitude, work quality and general performance of difficult employees
• Try to categorize the specific difficulty and address that difficulty directly
This is continued in “The Seven types of difficult employees – Part 2 of 3”.
