Managing Difficult People

From the annals of my people management skills, here's some guidance on managing an employee exhibiting a bad behaviour. This is actually from an exchange with someone who was asking for guidance with one of their kids, but in conflict resolution, it's mostly about people, regardless of what role they are in employee, friend, child, spouse etc...

A helpful concept from conflict resolution suggests that trying to ensure your 'opponent' has an easy way out is an important consideration in your actions. Sometimes you can make a problem bog down because you haven't given the other side an easy way to capitulate to your position without losing face.

They also say you shouldn't use the word 'opponent' - but whaddaya gonna do.

Given a person who is compulsively lying, for example, it's tempting to try and repeatedly catch them in lies, preferably totally undeniable lies. In reality, once you've confirmed that they are lying, there is no additional value in attempting to continually hammer them with further examples.

So while the lying is a problem, focussing on it too much, or always trying to set up the situation to see if she lies could fail by trapping her too much, as she gets into the lie then has no way out.

Think of the example of a grounded daughter, prohibited from using the computer, but who you discover has gone online to tell her friends the score.

While it's tempting to ask "were you on the computer last night" to see if she takes it to a lie, it might be more constructive in the long run (ie to get away from lying behaviour) to say, "I see you were on the computer last night - If you needed to let your friends know you're grounded, you should have asked first. We're serious about not using the computer."

By setting the other side up to repeat their bad behaviour, it entrenches the behaviour. If you can set them up to "model" or "act-out" good behaviour, it ends up building a path towards doing it on their own later on. Also, reinforcing the prohibition, indicating that there are plausible options around it, yet pointing out the right way to determine that, also helps to avoid trapping the person in a no-win situation.

For what it's worth, a bit of advice from the people-management lexicon.

Researchinator been there, seen dat...