Dealing With Difficult Personalities

I spoke last week to a group on dealing with difficult personalities. I'm not sure if they chose me for that topic because I'm a difficult personality or because I'm good at doing it. But in either case, I thought I'd share my notes.

Dealing with difficult personalities (DP) is an art form. There is never one consistent way it can be done. In math 2+2 always equals 4, but with personalities, sometimes 2+2=4, and sometimes 1+1+2=4, while other times it's 1+3=4.

The first thing you have to learn about DP's is an understanding of general concepts and applied knowledge. You won't be learning a formula that is always the same. You'll be learning some general concepts and then how to apply knowledge from one situation to another.

The second thing you have to learn is that a person with a DP is not someone that is broken or wrong, they simply don't fit in with the majority of opinions or personalities in your small group acting the way they presently do. This is caused primarily by 3 situations - cultural differences, personal insecurities and/or inner turmoil. Understanding what the source of the problem is will help overcome the problems caused by the DP.

The final thing to learn is a basic understanding of how individuals form small groups where these DP's become a problem. There are 4 steps to the creation of a small groups. First proposed by Bruce Tuckman, the stages are:

1. Forming - people get together, meet and create the group
2. Storming - people voice personal ideas and opinions and push the limits of the group
3. Norming - people set the boundaries and establish norms
4. Performing - the group begins to function effectively
   

Understanding this process will help place an importance on effectively dealing with the DP earlier instead of later. If you wait weeks to deal with a problem, the group stays in limbo between Storing and Norming and never reaches Performing, which makes for a frustrating and ineffective group. By handling the problem earlier, the group can quickly move to the Performing stage, which is the desired result.

Now with a basic understanding and some background, here are the 3 steps to dealing with difficult personalities.

Establish and understand why there is a problem:

1. cultural - they don't understand what is socially acceptable
2. insecurity - they feel insecure and it causes them to react socially unacceptable
3. inner turmoil - they are going through a rough time in their life which has modified their normally socially acceptable behavior.
   Do this by perception and assumption or research by asking them directly.

Formulate a plan:

1. immediate - done to the group when something potentially harmful to the others in the group has been said or done. This brings an immediate correction to the individual. It has the potential to be harmful so it must be handled correctly and with care.
2. private - used for most issues - This method respects their self esteem and personal security.
3. public - if it has a general application that everyone in the group can benefit from if a generic correction is made. This doesn't involve singling the DP out, but addresses the entire group with a corporate issue.

Execute the plan:

1. Always keep their self-esteem a top priority
2. Always keep the performance of the group the very top priority. More important than the individual is the group. Don't let the group take second place to the individual. This empowers the individual to continue to cause problems.
3. Ask yourself, "How will this plan effect the individual / the group?" Think of all of the potential outcomes and prepare for the worst of them. If the worst doesn't happen, then things are better than expected.
4. Make notes to yourself before confronting. In confrontation, the person being confronted will often want to distract you from your original points, which causes you to be ineffective. Making notes makes your actions deliberate and keeps you on track.
5. Preface your comments with anticipated objections so you diffuse responses. Giving disclaimers doesn't weaken your position. Instead it provides assurance to them on the front side of things and helps lay the ground work to overcome any misunderstandings. By saying "I don't want you to think we don't like you, but here is the problem..." You have reduced the potential for the individual to become hostile because they are feeling attacked. You have just reassured them that you like them, which implies you wouldn't attack them.
6. Always reassure them in the end - Restate all of your prefaces again to remind them everything is going to be okay. Something like "I don't know if that came out right, but I want to assure you again that we like you we just don't want this problem anymore."

Remember these things:

• If your stuck - ask for help - find someone who can independently provide insight into the problem.
• Difficult personalities are the leaf, not the root of the problem. Try to get to the root.
• Dealing with people is an art form. Always look for the best way to solve this problem and don't just repeat what worked last time.
• You can eliminate most problems by setting the expectations for the group in the forming stage. Then when a problem arises, you can refer to the ground rules of the group.

Applying Business to Golf

Like always on vacation, I took with me 3 books that I intended to read. Like always, I read less than one chapter in only one of the three books. The book, Golf is Not a Game of Perfect, by Dr. Bob Rotella explains the mental edge that professional golfers have that many nonprofessional duffers don’t have.

In the 9th chapter (I already read the first 8 before vacation) he tells of his work with a young professional golfer who just finished shooting a 73.

“I told him that I didn’t look at length off the tee when I assessed potential. I want to know how strong a player’s mind is and how well he plays the scoring game with his wedges and his putter.”

He went on to explain to this golfer that after reviewing his round of 73 he determined that all of his strokes except 9 fell into one of 3 categories: drives, wedges and puts. Throw out the 14 drives and he played 50 strokes with his wedge or putter. After reading this, my first reaction to this was next time I go to the range, I’m leaving my driver in the bag and hitting only my wedges. My next thought was "but I love hitting my driver and it really needs some work.”

This is the reason that I, like so many others remain average at golf and never become better. We spend a majority of our time on something that doesn’t help improve our game. In this professional’s circumstance 68% of his shots were used with clubs the average person doesn’t like to practice hitting.

Now, 68% isn’t quite 80%, but I think the number is close enough to resemble an 80:20 ratio we’ve all heard of before where we spend 20% of our time working on things that become 80% of our productivity and 80% of our time on 20% productivity.

This well known principle has been quoted, cited and rehearsed at about every business conference ever conducted. It is for this reason that I feel leaving work a little early Monday to play golf with business leaders in the community at this course is perfectly acceptable. It’s not golf. It’s the application of a widely accepted business principle amongst a focus group of executives.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Why Matching Employee Values to Company Values is Crucial

Many small businesses I deal with have difficulty finding good employees. One insurance company I'm meeting with next week sent me the question, "How do I motivate sales people who are not self-motivated?"

I thought, well let me shake my magic crystal ball and rattle off the answer to you.

As crazy as that question sounds, it is the one question that at one time or another, every business owner lies awake at night staring at the ceiling, contemplating the answer to.

The essence of the question, however, goes beyond motivation and gets to the issue of how do I find employees who value what I value and value what the company values. I'm not even going to try to attempt answering that question here. I'll save that for the topic of an entire book I may someday write. What I want to mention is how absolutely important it is that you hire only the most value consistent employees that you can find for your company. I would further clarify this by suggesting you leave a position vacant until you can find such an employee and don't just jump on the first square thing that floats by that you can somehow pound into your round hole to temporarily ease your pain.

My friend, Scott Hodge, a pastor at a church near Chicago and original inspiration for starting my blogging journey, posted this video yesterday on his blog.

It's not a true example of business, customers and employees, and it's an analogy that I've received some criticism for in the past, but I think it drives home a very obvious point that for most Americans can relate to in some form. Let me explain. My analogy would place Jesus as the business or product, employees as Christians and customers as the people represented by those being interviewed in the video.

Shocking how it is easy for people to have some sort of a good opinion about a company (Jesus), but a horrible - to the point of not even wanting to comment in come cases - opinion of employees. Now, knowing that your product or service is being represented by your employees, do you want people to say I'd love to buy that product or service, but those employees make me so sick to my stomach that I can't even stand to go in the store.

If you disagree, think of your favorite kind of car. Now think of the experience you expect when you go to buy that car. If you like Chevy, I'm guessing you probably don't like Chevy car sales people. Same with life insurance. When your grandpa died and left you money, you probably liked the insurance, but you probably don't want to sit down with a life insurance sales person.

Bottom line is that before you hire a quick fix employee to help you out of a pinch, consider how their values compare to your company's values or run the risk of clients having a split opinion about your company.

This Little Piggy Was A Virus

***WARNING - images in this post may be disturbing and actually cause you to throw up a little in the back of your mouth. Having been warned, read at your own discretion.***

A dear friend of mine developed warts on his foot. We've all seen warts before. Little calloused looking things that are usually the size of the end of a pencil at most. However, this particular case is an exception to the norm.

In less than 2 years it went from one small pesky bump to this.

Now that you've swallowed your own vomit in the back of your throat, let me continue. I received special permission to post these pictures as long as I adhered to the following request. "You can blog it as long as you keep 'The Foot' anonymous and make it clear that it is a viral infection and not lack of care."

So, I will give no clues as to the owner of the foot, but I will tell you that how this case formed. According to the doctor, was a small cut on the bottom of the foot came into contact with the virus and the virus has spread. When the doctor saw this, he left the room, called his nurse and told her that it was really bad and he'd only seen one other case this bad.

The nurse came back in and began treatment, which consists of rubbing acid over the warts, covering them with gauze and then in two weeks when the acid has caused huge blisters to form all over the foot, come back and cut the dead skin off the foot and reapply a stronger acid. This process will repeat for 3 months and at that time it will be determined if surgery is required to finish removing the remaining warts. Surgery done now would leave my friend unable to walk for 3 weeks. But as the first round of treatment is concluding, he has had to spend his time on crutches and limping in his house slippers because the pain is too great to put his full weight on his foot.

Everyone shiver and let your stomache tighten a bit as you get that out of your system.

I know you didn't think that I was just going to show disgusting pictures and not relate it to something business, so here is my analogy.

One thing that small business owners must be continually aware of is do they have any employees who act like a virus in their operation. Virus employees are those who come in and spread their negative attitude to other employees and eventually to customers too. They start out as an annoying little bump on the bottom of your foot, but if time goes on and if left unattended, their viral attitude infests the whole company making it hard for your company to walk and requiring severe and painful treatment to get rid of. Along the way, the morale of your other, helathy employees will deteriorate. You will begin to lose customers too as they are either disgusted by what they see from this viral employee or they begin to believe what the employee says. Either way, you lose.

So keep a close eye on any problem within your organization. Something as innocent as a small cut can result in a major problem. This is why it is important to continually clean your company and remove problems. Sometimes it hurts to rub a little alcohol on the cut, but the pain of prevention will be much quicker and far less than they agonizing cure.

So, if you have any employees in your company that are causing a cut or are potentially bringing a virus into a cut, don't let them end up turning your beloved company into this.

Valuing Employees

We all know in theory how important it is to take care of your employees. We study leadership, we work to improve managerial skills, we learn to communicate in their style and reasons why we should show them appreciation. The book shelves are filled with books on employees, but (and answer honestly) how many actually practice what we use?

I've heard statistics that something like 95% of the people who attend a seminar never practice what they've just learned and I thought what a waste and then wondered if I was part of that 95%.

Well, feeling convicted about this today, I decided that our balmy weather is the perfect opportunity to appreciate our staff who has been working incredibly hard. So, we're having what I call an "anti-snow day". It's not my word, but I like it so I'm using it. In the event that the weather becomes too nice and the majority of the work is getting done, the office should be closed. When I heard they are giving free ice cream out just up the hill it seemed like a natural fit. Go get some ice cream and then take off to enjoy our first beautiful spring like day.

What have you done recently to show your employees you value them?

Blending Personal Life With the Work Place

Today's workplace is a consistent fluid state of change. That is why people struggle so hard in managing it effectively. What was once appropriate is now forbidden. What was once a mistake is now considdered good managment.

The difficulty of managing, when the rules are continually changing, is that it is like trying to understand your wife's emotions. You might get lucky and guess right one day, but try the same thing again the next and you'll find yourself with a woman crying, angry or worse. I'm not being chauvenistic. Let's just face the fact that men are cluless when it comes to women, which illustrates my point that it is difficult to manage an office when rules continually change.

One such example of this is bringing your personal life to the work place. In the not to distant past it was considdered unprofessional to bring personal problems to work. "Check them at the door" was a common phrase used in employee training. Now, the workplace has in many regards replaced personal life, and so it has become a natural extension to discuss personal problems, struggles and successes with others at work. In larger corporations this isn't such a big deal because problems can be more easily solved by transferring to another department, but in a small business environment there's no place to hide from making a blunder in this area.

I'm not saying this is right or wrong to any extent, I'm simply observing the trend. What I do want to leave you with is several things to considder before dragging out your personal laundry, running a clothes line from your desk across the room to the water cooler and back into the copy room and proceeding to hang your intimate garments or your soiled briefs for all to see.

Here are four things to measure before you bring your personal life into the workplace.

1. Measure the risk before speaking. Understand that most people are going to be willing to listen to problems. Why? For some they want to help because they care. For others they want the dirt on you. Be cautious about who you talk to. Make sure you trust them before you spill it all.

2. Measure the consequences before speaking. Different than risk, where someone might use your personal information as an opportunity to sabbatoge your plans for promotion, consequenses deal more with how you will be perceived after you share the information by the person you shared it with. Again it goes back to trust, but because we mix personal life and work so closely, we often count coworkers as friends when they are simply friendly coworkers. If you're willing to share personal problems with coworkers, be ready for the possibility that they may perceive you differently afterward, and the dynamic at work may change.

3. Measure the potential benefits. The argument for combining personal with work is that it creates a stronger bond between everyone. As we let our guard down and expose ourselves to others it signifies trust, which often times can causes a response from others to do the same. It is a balancing act to keep it all from being personal, but sharing some personal fact has the potential of allowing someone to feel closer to you and strengthening a bond between you. I read somewhere that President George W. Bush would share some sort of personal secret with new people he meets and then watch to see what they do with the secret. If they let it out, he knew he couldn't trust them. If they kept it quiet, he knew he had a bond of trust.

4. Measure the other person's desire to hear what you have to say. While some people want to hear all the latest, juciest gossip about your life, not everyone does. Before unloading every last tear jerking detail about your life, considder that you are giong to be burdening the other person with that knowledge. It's never impolite to ask the question, "Could I share something personal with you?" But be prepared for an honest answer of "No" from time to time and don't count it as rude.

Jack Bauer: Office efficiency guru

It's Friday and I'm in a great... make that a half silly mood. We have plans to go out to eat and hear some live music tonight. I have free lunch today and a fluff meeting before. I lost almost 3 pounds this week and I'm just feeling fine. So I thought I'd post some silly humor to add to my mood.

I don't watch 24, but I'm aware of the basic concept. No I dont' live under a rock and no I'm not a socially backward loser, though some may debate the later.

I did however find this to be rather funny. Partly because I've worked with people like this and partly because I've often felt like this, but have managed to repress my feelings.

Jack Bauer on office management:



I'm thinking of bringing him in as a consultant to help improve office efficiency.