Difficult people are everywhere and sooner or later you will stumble on one that can seemingly hold you hostage if you are experiencing a Difficult Manager at work here are some things to consider.
Dissociate from the Problem
The first thing to do is to disengage emotionally, difficult people are usually highly emotional and often lack control in their own emotional management.
In order to gain an objective perspective it is necessary to manage ones own state, especially if you have been attacked or treated unfairly.
Slow down your breathing, slow down your heart rate, the worst thing about being subjected to difficult people and their unreasonable behavior is that it can catch you off guard and take you by surprise.
Maintain a state of certainty about who you are and what you stand for begin to compose yourself and relax in the knowledge of the problem being theirs and not yours resolve any inner conflict.
Take the stuffing out of it
Use Submodalities to make the problem smaller and your original Goal larger. begin to change your state toward a state of neutral calm and objectivity as quickly as you can.
Time wasted on worrying about what to do, drains productivity and prevents you from doing your best work and maintaining your focus to a solution based approach.
Check your perceptual positioning
Imagine yourself flying above the two of you who are in the dispute be honest and objective in learning more about the play.
What really happened ask
What would the energy look like if you could see it ?
could you have done anything better ?
How did the conflict begin ?
Are you willing to be flexible ?
What else can you learn from this experience ?
All you need is .... More Rapport ...
Change your own Feelings and maintain your state
Find a Common ground and Build Rapport, although honestly unless the motivation to stay is super high on your list the effort this takes is not appealing, and this will be an ongoing effort on your part, and not necessarily suitable for long term situations.
Match predicates
Please See above ... this is if you can maintain the motivation to stay and overcome the energy wasted in being able to stay and be productive in this environment.
for most human beings, unless it is a short term proposition , like a sale or negotiation this will not work long term interaction will be a challenge unless you have the necessary support.
Be realistic with yourself
Be reasonable and be kind with yourself, Nobody likes to be abused and set up for failure while trying to be successful in any venture.
If you are at work, weigh up how much of your own personal energy will be drained from the experience, or can you invest time now in resolving this issue and both agree to practical solutions for ongoing resolution in the future.
In some situations communication will only fan the fire and no amount of Rapport will help.However be open and willing to resolve the issue if you still want to be there.
Pick your Battles
Difficult people can be difficult for a variety of reasons so to summarize ask yourself, Has anyone else that you know of had a challenge with this person.
Is this person notorious for making people quit ?
The normal responses are to fight or flight,
Difficult people cost companies allot of money and create an unusually high turnover rate as employees usually will quit if it doesn't seem worth making a stand.
Find out what your company has in position for those who seek resolution and whether it is worth the battle. Understand the structure of the company you are working for and what they are prepared to do for your cause.
Take into consideration that the company has chosen that person in spite of their high turn over rate in their department. Sometimes the high turnover can be swept under the rug and blamed on something else. Sometimes Senior executives hands are tied as they have their hands full already or they will look the other way.
If this is the case ask yourself, is this the best place for me to work at, is any paycheck worth the daily stress and low performance that will ensue in these conditions.
When you are Self Employed:
If you are in Business for yourself ask yourself
Do I enjoy working for this Client.
Is my overall functioning affected because of it.
Do I pass this stress on somewhere
How and where do I find my performance suffering.
Would I like to continue this relationship.
Decide on the resolution
Do further research objectively
Would anyone else agree that this person is unreasonable and makes unreasonable demands.
How do other people manage their relationships with this person
Review the ways that people manage their interaction with this person and decide if it is something you can do too.
Weigh up the pro's and cons
For what purpose would you continue in your position can you improve your relationship with this person remember you can only change your own responses, you cannot demand change from others.
Is there ultimately anything to gain in your Time and investment
What is to be gained if your adjust
What is to be lost if you decide to walk away from the Deal
Consider these Types of Difficult Managers:
The Micro Manager
A Micro manager Fears loosing control and has no trust in your work and will not allow you to work independently, they will sacrifice the importance of their own duties to micro manage yours.
They lack focus and good judgement, and do not understand the importance of delegation, they do not trust themselves and therefore will never trust you.
The more you work independently the more they become suspicious of you and interrupt your projects for an update.
They always look to take credit for your work
The Fool
A Fool will have no clue what they are doing and see you are doing your work competently and become intimidated with your preferred work style.
They will say things like Yes that's right and take credit for your work. They are very scattered they will not know what you are doing or understand your skill set, but pretend they do.
The fool is at a disadvantage and they know it, they will invent stories and rumors to support their emotionally based decisions and they will learn how to say the right things to the right upper level management and will have a dysfunctional relationship with their employees with blurred boundaries that no body can comprehend.
They will expect their employees to mind read their current priority and will have no way of effectively motivating the best work from their staff.
They will be great at one thing and slip through the cracks with the majority of their work and will depend on somebody else to cover for them and they will take the credit.
The Bully
An abusive Boss will be completely erratic emotionally, it is not that you will be surprised when they erupt it will be the combination of highs and lows in their moods that will astonish you.
They lack respect for themselves and others and speak over the top of you when you come to them to seek resolution.
Their strategy is to break people down and conform them to their own bullying system, they lack skill in communication.
They will say whatever they feel, they will shout, scream, and react completely according to their moods in their personal life and with employees and clients.
These emotional abusers will make everyone around them walk on eggshells in order to keep their job., they are unkind and hurtful and are driven by their own fear of failure.
The Slave Driver
The slave driver expects the best from you and wants you to take the job as seriously as they do, they want you to work more hours than you get paid for, commit to the job more than they commit to you and is always threatening you with your Job security.
The slave driver tells you to do something and wants you to drop everything to do it now, no matter what your deadline on any other projects, they want you to do it their way now and only their way. The slave driver leaves no room for communication or discussion when she says jump your response needs to be how high this time.
The slave driver expects you to be loyal to the end to them but does not return any consistent loyalty or kindness back.
This manager sees you as a seat filler only and lives in Desperate fear of their own skill set and worries they will fail to reach the mark themselves.
In Conclusion
In conclusion these decisions can only be made case by case.
If you are an employee, and you find yourself in this situation, my advice is to make a stand for yourself and a positive supportive environment to work in.
If this is not possible, decide what you would like to do about that, and perhaps think of it in relation to how much being there will contribute to your Goals, well formed outcomes and overall well being.
There are a lot of techniques that can be used to resolve and improve this kind of conflict and truthfully without the support of their Superiors it will be an uphill struggle.
If you are an employer and you see some patterns in your own behavior on this post then get the appropriate help to change the way you are doing things from now on.
If you are an employer who has Managers who are terrorizing your staff consider the long term cost of this to your companies development.
How will you retain fresh new talented employees, remember people who have confidence in themselves and their abilities will not stand for this type of dysfunction.
The people who have stayed for their own reasons will not be at Peak performance because they have a loose cannon to contend with which is distracting to productivity.
Please note:
Having a suggestion box is the bare minimum of inter office communication and is not proactive or solution oriented, for people who are being bullied.
If there are political groups within the company, the idea of confidentiality is unbelievable and the effort applied to resolution is tiny compared to the effect of the Tyrant.
If you know you have a Tyrant running Teams in your office, be proactive and accountable yourself.
Resolve the issue before you loose more great people, who are not interested in getting caught up in unnecessary Political red Tape.
To your success.
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