Dealing With Difficult People

Rachel Salaman: That's Gretchen Spreitzer, Professor of Business Administration at the Ross School of Business.

Gretchen Spreitzer: And when we talk about incivility, we're not talking here about very explicit, high-impact kinds of incivility, like bullying or harassment or discrimination. They're often more subtle. They're often harder to be clear about whether they're intended or not, but the findings are that they're very destructive to people's wellbeing, very destructive to people's self-esteem and ability to work well with each other in the workplace.

Rachel Salaman: So Gretchen Spreitzer characterizes difficult behaviors as incivility. For author and coach Ilene Marcus, however, they're just plain annoying.

Ilene Marcus: What we actually mean by annoying, the workplace definition I use, is persisting irritating behaviors in day-to-day situations that suck your energy. It could be their attitude, the way they approach the work. It could be a "rainmaker" who the culture bends for, right? They don't always adhere to team norms, but because they're the superstar, everyone has to deal with the way they do their work, like always answering emails late at night – or not answering emails.

Rachel Salaman: So why do we find people like this difficult? Ilene says that we should look at the specific problems they cause.

Ilene Marcus: Are they sucking your time? Are they sucking your energy? Do they put you in a place where you constantly have to set a boundary? So workers show up as annoying in many different ways.

Rachel Salaman: Harvard-trained psychotherapist Katherine Crowley describes difficult people as "emotional traps."

Katherine Crowley: Emotional traps really cover the gamut. It can be anything from an irritating co-worker, an unruly employee, a difficult boss, maybe an overly demanding customer, an incompetent vendor, or even another department that seems inconsiderate or slack in some way. We really define emotional traps as anyone or anything that hooks you – and that is, it stirs you up emotionally and causes turmoil in your day.

Christine Comaford: So here's what happens in your brain: sensory data comes in, you see things, you hear things, you smell things, you taste things, you feel things. That all zooms into your brain stem, into your reptilian brain. It then moves very quickly to your mammalian brain where emotions are attached. And then it zooms to your prefrontal cortex where we make meaning.

Rachel Salaman: That's best-selling business writer Christine Comaford, on how we often react instinctively to difficult people – and make primal decisions about them.

Christine Comaford: We see our boss scowling, that's a visual input, right? It comes into our brain stem, goes into our mammalian brain – maybe our shoulders crunch up and we feel a little bit concerned or stressed out – and then by the time it gets to our prefrontal cortex, we've decided that he's disappointed with us, he's never happy with our work.

What's that going to do to someone's behavior and capabilities? They can maybe keep their head down, play small, do minimal acceptable work just to try to not be seen – whereas that was meaning they just made. Maybe he's scowling because he has a stomachache!

Rachel Salaman: Christine Comaford. And Dr Rick Brinkman warns about thinking the worst of people in written communications, too.

Rick Brinkman: You see the problem with writing in general, but especially in email, is that it leaves us able to hallucinate freely as to how we think the other person sounds when they say it.

Now this is a great irony of communication: tone of voice is taken more personally than any other part of communication. So, you have to keep in mind that you do not know how people sound, absolutely not – you are making it up. You may be right, half right, but you're making it up.

Ilene Marcus: What happens is that your amygdala in your brain, which controls emotion, gets triggered.

Rachel Salaman: Ilene Marcus told me more about how our whole body reacts to difficult people.

Ilene Marcus: When that gets triggered, then the blood rushes to the frontal lobe, and that impacts your decision making – so then the adrenal glands also get involved. So, what happens? Your blood pressure raises, your temperature raises, your breathing gets quicker, your heart rate raises, and your pupils get dilated.

Rachel Salaman: So what happens next? Ilene told me that we typically choose one of three options: flight, fight, or freeze.

Ilene Marcus: When you're in that mode, you go into a "fight or flight" response. So you either come out swinging at this person, "Why are you doing this? This is not what the meeting is for!" You start yelling. "I'm done, we're leaving, I'm packing up my toys and going home." I also find that some people freeze. Even when they're the boss, they're not really sure how to manage someone who's annoying them. I call these the four Fs: it's the Fight, the Flight, the Freezing, and what I say is the right response, which is you really need to Focus on managing them at that point.

Rachel Salaman: Christine Comaford agrees about the importance of that fourth F, "Focus." And first, she says, we should focus on our own emotional state.

Christine Comaford: If we don't know how we're feeling – frustrated, overwhelmed, happy, peaceful, confident – then we actually can't navigate our emotions.

Rachel Salaman: And then, according to Gretchen Spreitzer, we should tell the other person how we're feeling. Because we need them to focus on the impact they're having.

Gretchen Spreitzer: And that doesn't have to be in a public way – in a way that makes people really uncomfortable – but in a side conversation; to say, "You know, in the meeting we had today, I felt like you weren't hearing the point that I was trying to make, and in fact I felt like there were several times where I was interrupted," as an example.

Rachel Salaman: So, along with constant interrupting, what are some of the other behaviors you might want to bring into focus like this? Ilene Marcus told me about those people who make everything about them. They may be brilliant – but they can become a big distraction.

Ilene Marcus: In Denmark, they're known as "prima donnas" – people that perform very well but get on your last nerve and take away from you driving the business agenda, and that makes it a business concern.

Rachel Salaman: Author and CEO Dana Borowka picked out the people who think they're perfect.

Dana Borowka: The "I know it all". So that's an individual that has low tolerance for correction, that blames others because they know it all.

Rachel Salaman: And then there are the frustrating people who seem to find problems everywhere.

Dana Borowka: The old "woe is me" syndrome, the world is so unfair! And they're just constantly complaining.

Rachel Salaman: Dana Borowka, co-author of "Cracking the Personality Code." Of course, some of these people might have real problems or legitimate complaints, and we should take those seriously.

That's why it's important to control our feelings, and see beyond our annoyance. And Christine Comaford gave me a great tip for this: be curious. She got me to imagine an angry-looking boss, and explained how she'd use curiosity to craft the best response.

Christine Comaford: Oh, I see him scowling, "Ha! I'm going to get curious and maybe ask him how he's doing before 'the train leaves the station' and we decide that he's disappointed with us." So getting curious about the feelings that start to come up, based on the sensory data that you receive.

Rachel Salaman: What Christine nicknames the "critter" brain is triggered – but you can still react with calmness and control. She calls that a "smart state" response.

Christine Comaford: So critter state is mammalian and reptilian brain, and smart state is all three parts of the brain working together. So you get a flame email from somebody, and you don't react, you just go, "Wow, poor George, he's probably having a really bad day." Whereas if somebody says something mean to you, or you get an email and you're not feeling quite as emotionally agile, emotionally resilient, you might go for roar, battle, and get into fight, flight or freeze.

Rachel Salaman: Being curious about a difficult person can also prompt us to communicate with them. And according to Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, sometimes we'll learn some straightforward reasons for seemingly difficult behavior.

Amy Edmondson: Very often the people outside our team, who we think are behaving in counterproductive ways, are simply behaving in ways that make sense given what's on their plate, given what they've been asked to do, and so on. And if we could step into their shoes for just three minutes, we'd actually see it differently.

Rachel Salaman: But we may have to go a bit deeper than that to discover why someone's behaving a certain way and what they need us to do in response. Psychologist and business consultant Melanie Katzman gave me the example of a person who's annoyingly confident – but only on the surface.

Melanie Katzman: Oftentimes the people who are "strutting their stuff," the peacock who seems to be telling everybody about their latest accomplishments, is really the person who is insecure, is needing more reassurance.

Rachel Salaman: Ilene Marcus pointed out that difficult people usually don't realize the impact they're having. Someone who always monopolizes meetings, for example.

Ilene Marcus: What I would say is, "You continuously interrupt not only me, but everyone at meetings." In a very short sentence, this is the issue. Then I give them a specific example: "At yesterday's weekly team meeting, you would not let the HR person – the Human Resources person – finish her report. These behaviors frustrate me, so it's hard to listen to you even though you're making important points."

I drive that point home with what's at stake: "This is affecting the productivity of the team." Then, I take some responsibility for it as the manager. "It makes me react to you in a less-thoughtful way, and I don't want to react to you in a less-thoughtful way, I want to use your knowledge and your work product." And then I invite the person to respond, "Do you understand the behaviors I'm addressing?"

Rachel Salaman: I was keen to know how people tend to react to Ilene's approach!

Ilene Marcus: Some people get defensive, some people start to squabble with you, but the important thing, as the manager, is to really set the playing field. "This not only impacts me, it impacts the whole team – which impacts the work."

And very often people are surprised. "I didn't really understand that that's what happened, I just thought you liked to yell at me." Or, "I just thought... people didn't like my ideas." Having that conversation starts the path to getting them to behave better in the meetings!

Rachel Salaman: Dana Borowka is someone else who values clarity with people who are being difficult. Say, someone who complains about everything.

Dana Borowka: One way to do that is to listen and write down the main points of their complaints.
"What I hear you saying is...da-da-da-da,"
"No, no, no, I didn't mean that!"
"What do you mean then? Let's get specific here!"
"Well, I don't think this will ever get solved."
"Well, let's pretend that we were going to solve it!"
You don't want to interrupt them, just let them go on a little bit and try to get them to be as focused as possible.
"You know, if we were able to do that, what would you want to get out of this?"

Rachel Salaman: Dana told me that this approach takes patience, but it can turn out to be surprisingly positive.

Dana Borowka: There's a benefit to a complainer, because they will identify issues that may be overlooked by people that always have that positive side, so they do have their place.

Rachel Salaman: And according to Olivia Fox Cabane, an expert in charisma and leadership, conversations like this can turn an argumentative person into an ally!

Olivia Fox Cabane: One of the most effective things you can do, also, is give them credit for the solution that you're going to be proposing. Show them how the solution that you are proposing is either inspired by them or similar to something that they've done in the past. And since people tend to like what of course they have done, they will be more willing to take ownership and participate in whatever outcome you want to go after.

Rachel Salaman: Rick Brinkman calls this positive approach "Pygmalion power."

Rick Brinkman: Pygmalion power is when you project positive on people, when you assume the best of intentions, whether or not that's really true! Let's say somebody is being negative, and we say to them, "Oh, I appreciate you pointing out the problems so we can come up with the solutions." That's projecting positive on them. You're assuming they're coming from the positive intention of wanting to improve things.

Rachel Salaman: A useful tip Rick shared with me is to separate people from their difficult traits.

Rick Brinkman: We all have people that we can't stand. And, technically speaking, it's not the person as much as a certain behavior they engage in. And it may appear to us that they're always like that, but that's really because we only know them in a limited context. Let's say our know-it-all boss: we don't realize how passive they can be in a different context, maybe with their spouse or such.

Rachel Salaman: Rick Brinkman, the author of "Dealing With People You Can't Stand." And this positive approach to problem behavior is one that Ilene Marcus takes too.

Ilene Marcus: Now remember, these employees are moral, ethical and competent. And once you decide that they are moral, ethical and competent, it's something in them, a trait, a quirk that annoys you.

Rachel Salaman: For Gretchen Spreitzer, this becomes a lot easier when work is enjoyable, and people feel safe to be themselves.

Gretchen Spreitzer: If we're having more fun in the workplace, we might be developing more trust, we might be getting to know the whole person at work in a way that then minimizes "in-civil" behavior in the future, because now we know more clearly what people's intentions are because we trust them: we feel like we know them as a whole person.

Rachel Salaman: Yet no matter how well we get to know and understand people, and how positively we react to their behavior, we'll still find them difficult at times.

Katherine Crowley told me about the importance here of boundaries. For example, imagine someone keeps taking things from your desk.

Katherine Crowley: Clarify what your boundary is, and find some positive way to state it to the other individual. So, if it has to do with your things, you can do anything from saying, "You know, this is just me, but I really appreciate that you don't take anything from my desk unless you let me know."

Some people post signs: "Keep off! Private property." You can do any number of things, but you have to take responsibility for communicating what your boundary is in a positive and personally responsible manner.

Rachel Salaman: I talked to Katherine about her book, "Working With You Is Killing Me," where she and Kathi Elster outline four steps to dealing with difficult people – echoing so many points from my other expert guests.

Katherine Crowley: "Unhooking" physically is the first step, and it's taking steps to release tension and calm your nervous system down. Unhooking mentally is assessing your situation and devising options in terms of setting limits. What's going on here, what's their part, what's my part, what are my options here, and what actions can I take?

And then we ask you to unhook verbally, which is finding the words to communicate what you want in a positive way, taking the high road. And then unhooking with a business tool is taking a concrete business action to reinforce what you've just asked for, such as emails, job descriptions, performance evaluations – any kind of thing you can use in your situation to reinforce what you're trying to establish.

Rachel Salaman: Katherine Crowley, and the four-step approach she takes with problem people – to manage herself and them in order to move forward. She sets up boundaries, and uses professional processes to embed better ways to behave. But she's also receptive to important messages from the people she's dealing with. Just like Jackie Barretta, a founding partner of teamwork specialists Nura Group, who told me about a colleague of hers called David. He reacted angrily when he didn't get more budget for a website. His outburst was uncomfortable, and difficult to deal with in front of all the other staff. But Jackie was able to push through her primal reactions, act professionally – and hear a useful warning in David's words.

Jackie Barretta: So, when David got upset about this website, his teammates... We're all sitting there, we're hearing him talk about the impact this was going to have on customers and how it's going to cause them to go elsewhere, and this is a big deal.

And so what happened from that was that we had some very good sessions where we talked about how we were going to take the budget that we did have and do the best with it, and we came up with some pretty good things. I think, though, had we not ever had that emotion expressed in the team, we wouldn't have been so dedicated to finding those solutions.

Rachel Salaman: So, what have we learned from our experts about dealing with difficult people at work? Well, problem characters come in many shapes and forms. It's important to recognize what they're doing, and how that's making us feel – so that we can do something about it.

We need to control our instinctive reactions and communicate clearly. Boundaries protect us, and the right professional tools guide people to be better. But, if we can build some personal connections, we may get some valuable insights from their behavior.

We won't always be able to do anything to help. But sometimes, if we can stay calm and be curious, we can get beyond the problem parts of someone's character – so that we suffer less, and they let their best qualities shine through.

Rick Brinkman: People will fall all over themselves to fulfill your positive expectations of them.

Jackie Barretta: And the other thing that's very positive about negative emotions is that they sound the alarm.

Amy Edmondson: It's not that you have to really get to know or love everybody else in the organization, but you do need to understand a few simple things. Specifically, what are they trying to get done? What obstacles do they see ahead, and what skills and resources do they bring? You know, Abraham Lincoln once said, "I don't like that man very much. I must get to know him better."

Rachel Salaman: Rick Brinkman, Jackie Barretta, and Amy Edmondson, ending this episode of Mind Tools Expert Voices: "Dealing With Difficult People."

There are hundreds more conversations about workplace challenges in the Expert Interview section of the Mind Tools Club, along with a huge library of articles, videos and workbooks. You can dip in for insights and ideas whenever an issue comes up.

I'll be back soon with another Expert Voices podcast. For now, I'm Rachel Salaman: thanks for listening.