How to deal with difficult people in the workplace
Monday, 3 February 2014 00:40
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You can submarine your career and work relationships by the actions you take and the behaviours you exhibit at work. No matter your education, your experience, or your title, if you can’t play well with others, you will never accomplish your work ‘mission’.
Effective work relationships form the cornerstone for success and satisfaction with your job and your career. How important are effective work relationships? They form the basis for promotion, pay increases, goal accomplishment, and job satisfaction.
The ‘Gallup organization’ studied indicators of work satisfaction. They found that whether you have a best friend at work was one of the twelve key questions that predicted job satisfaction.
A supervisor in a several hundred person company quickly earned a reputation for not playing well with others. He collected data and used the data to find fault, place blame, and make other employees look bad. He enjoyed identifying problems but rarely suggested solutions.
He bugged his supervisor weekly for a bigger title and more money so he could tell other employees what to do. When he announced he was job hunting, not a single employee suggested that the company take action to convince him to stay. He had burned his bridges.
Top seven ways you can play well with others at work
These are the top seven ways you can play well with others at work. They form the basis for effective work relationships. These are the actions you want to take to create a positive, empowering, motivational work environment for people.
Bring suggested solutions with the problems to the meeting table. Some employees spend an inordinate amount of time identifying problems. Honestly? That’s the easy part. Thoughtful solutions are the challenge that will earn respect and admiration from co-workers and bosses.
Don’t ever play the blame game. You alienate co-workers, supervisors, and reporting staff. Yes, you may need to identify who was involved in a problem. You may even ask the Deming question: what about the work system caused the employee to fail? But, not my fault and publicly identifying and blaming others for failures will earn enemies. These enemies will, in turn, help you to fail. You do need allies at work.
Your verbal and nonverbal communication matters. If you talk down to another employee, use sarcasm, or sound nasty, the other employee hears you. We are all radar machines that constantly scope out our environment.
In one organisation a high level manager said to me, “I know you don’t think I should scream at my employees. But, sometimes, they make me so mad. When is it appropriate for me to scream at the employees?” Answer? Never, of course, if ‘respect for people’ is a hallmark of your organisation.
Never blind side a co-worker, boss, or reporting staff person. If the first time a co-worker hears about a problem is in a staff meeting or from an email sent to his supervisor, you have blindsided the co-worker. Always discuss problems, first, with the people directly involved who ‘own’ the work system. Also called lynching or ambushing your co-workers, you will never build effective work alliances unless your co-workers trust you. And, without alliances, you never accomplish the most important goals.
Keep your commitments
Keep your commitments. In an organisation, work is interconnected. If you fail to meet deadlines and commitments, you affect the work of other employees. Always keep commitments, and if you can’t, make sure all affected employees know what happened. Provide a new due date and make every possible effort to honour the new deadline.
Share credit for accomplishments, ideas, and contributions. How often do you accomplish a goal or complete a project with no help from others? If you are a manager, how many of the great ideas you promote were contributed by staff members? Take the time, and expend the energy, to thank, reward, recognise and specify contributions of the people who help you succeed. This is a no-fail approach to building effective work relationships.
Help other employees find their greatness. Every employee in your organisation has talents, skills, and experience. If you can help fellow employees harness their best abilities, you benefit the organisation immeasurably. The growth of individual employees benefits the whole. Compliment, recognise, praise, and notice contributions. You don’t have to be a manager to help create a positive, motivating environment for employees. In this environment, employees do find and contribute their greatness.
If you regularly carry out these seven actions, you will play well with others and develop effective work relationships. Co-workers will value you as a colleague. Bosses will believe you play on the right team. You’ll accomplish your work goals, and you may even experience fun, recognition, and personal motivation. Work can’t get any better than that.
