How to Deal with Challenging Team Members

As a leader, you probably have at least one team member who has a knack for pushing your buttons. Your challenging team members may be high performers in many ways. But their negative behaviors still make life harder for you and the rest of your team. Today I want to share some ideas on how to address a difficult team member, as well as some specific responses you can use in the moment to redirect them.

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Give Timely Feedback

It’s easy to delay giving feedback, especially when you’re busy. But the cost is high — for you, for the rest of your team and even for the challenging team member — if you put off addressing the issue. Remind yourself that you are offering feedback out of genuine concern for everyone involved. Remember also that your team member probably wants the feedback because they know it’s important for their career development.

Focus on Impact

Once you’ve decided to offer feedback about a team member’s challenging behavior, the next step is thinking about how to present that feedback effectively. Help the employee understand their behavior by identifying it, providing information on when and where you’ve noticed it occurring, and sharing its impact. For example, maybe their habit of shooting down ideas surfaces primarily in meetings with a key stakeholder group. Talk about the effect, from what you see or what you’ve heard from others. “I know this isn’t what you intend, but I’ve heard others say that your communication style leaves them with the impression that you are resistant to their ideas.”

Next, offer ideas about what your team member should do more often or less often. Sometimes it can be very powerful to ask the employee to focus on how they want to show up in interactions with others. In other words, by helping them identify what they do want others to notice about them (for example, openness to ideas), they may stop engaging in the other limiting behavior.

You can supplement your own coaching and advice by connecting your team member with development resources like our award-winning New Lens® app. An assessment within the app helps them identify their developmental needs.

What to Say in 5 Challenging Situations

In addition to making a plan for giving feedback and providing development opportunities, you can also think about what to say when your team member engages in the problem behavior in a setting like a meeting. When others are present, it’s not appropriate to deliver the same kind of feedback you would one on one. But you can make statements that help your employee course correct and that keep the larger conversation on track. Here are a few examples.

• Challenging behavior: Naysaying. Your team member always seems to focus on why ideas will not work.

How to respond: "I understand your concerns and appreciate your perspective. What could we do to make this idea succeed?"

• Challenging behavior: Complaining. Your team member has a knack for seeing the glass as half empty and griping instead of resolving the problem.

How to respond: "Let’s take a few minutes to vent and then shift to finding a solution." 

• Challenging behavior: Derailing. Your team member distracts others from the core issue at hand.

How to respond: "I appreciate your comment. Just so I’m clear, please help me understand how it ties to what we’re trying to accomplish?"

• Challenging behavior: Taking on too much. Your team member has a habit of volunteering for tasks during a meeting, but then getting overwhelmed and creating a bottleneck.

How to respond: "If you take on this work, how much time will it entail? How does that fit in with other priorities you already have? What support might you need?"

• Challenging behavior: Getting lost in the weeds. Your team member gets bogged down in details and loses sight of what's really important.

How to respond: "Let's take a look at the bigger picture to make sure we’re considering the 'what' before we get into the 'how,’ and that we’re meeting our objectives."

This week, pay attention to your team members’ habitual behaviors and how they affect you and the rest of your team. Are there opportunities for feedback and coaching? And how do you want to respond when these behaviors surface?

Fed Up With Someone? Ask Yourself These 3 Questions

Have you lost your temper with a colleague recently — or had someone lose their temper with you?

Stress has a lot of us on edge lately. On top of that, remote work can make it more challenging to address conflicts before they boil over.

So how can you maintain your professionalism and protect your relationships when it seems like everyone is pushing your buttons? Let's take a closer look at what might be happening and how you can find a less stressful way to work.

Why Are Things So Tense?

First, please know that you're not alone. Communication in a dynamic, uncertain environment has its challenges. 

With added pressures and workload, many people are moving rapidly and less thoughtfully. Your colleagues may have gotten worse about looping you into discussions. Or perhaps your boss has started dumping more tasks on you at the last minute. 

Another factor is that we're missing out on a lot of the nonverbal communication that happens when we work face to face. Over email or instant messaging, we can't read each other's body language or tone of voice. As a result, we can come off as harsher than we intend. It's also harder to tell if we've offended someone else because we don't see them bristle or frown at our words.

Finally, it's easier to defer difficult conversations when we don't see the other person face to face everyday and when there's so much else going on. Although you might be thinking, "It's just not worth bringing this up right now," ignoring the issue won’t stop resentment from building up. And, eventually, it's going to blow.

How to Communicate Constructively

If an issue with a colleague has been nagging at you, stop ignoring your feelings. Instead, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What is this really about for you? 

When someone gets on your nerves, it can be less about what they did and more about them violating a value that you hold near and dear. If your boss's micromanagement drives you crazy, that's a sign that you value trust and respect. If you strongly value professional growth, your boss's failure to coach you and give performance feedback can feel out of sync.

2. What do you want this relationship to look like? 

To address these types of issues, get clearer about what you want and expect from the other person and yourself. For example, do you want to feel heard, respected or appreciated? 

And how do you want to show up in this relationship? What do you want the other person to understand about your leadership? For example, you may want to come across as calm, professional and reasonable — even under pressure. 

3. How can you provide "feedforward"?

I'm not going to recommend that you schedule a Zoom call with the other person so that you can share your frustrations. Instead, try Marshall Goldsmith's approach of providing "feedforward" instead of feedback. Frame the conversation in terms of the behavior you want to see and your positive intent. For example: "I appreciate how involved you are in my work and know that you're really busy. To maximize your time and give me an opportunity to grow, I am happy to take the lead on this project and schedule periodic check-ins to get your input and share the progress."

Business communication might look different these days, but fundamentals like clarity and respect still hold true. I want to challenge you to identify and address one communication sore spot this week. For additional strategies, pick up "Communicating With Impact" from my Leadership EDGE Series℠.

How to Keep Your Cool and Communicate Clearly

Have you lost your cool at work lately? Or been on the receiving end of someone else losing their cool?

You're not alone. These are stressful times (to put it mildly!). And when we're under stress, it's harder to communicate effectively. Showing up the way you want to with your colleagues takes some extra intention, especially during difficult conversations.

How Stress Undermines Communication 

Even if you normally communicate with ease at the office, you might notice that it's more difficult lately.

That's because your brain can shift into a totally different mode under stress. Instead of being calm, creative and empathetic, you may be in "fight or flight" mode. So if you surprised yourself by using a sharp tone and harsh words during a recent encounter, this is probably what was happening.

If the person you are talking to is also stressed, it compounds the issue. They will have more trouble processing what you're telling them and are more likely to get defensive. For example, maybe your direct report failed to do something that you requested even though you thought you had explained it clearly more than once. Or perhaps they acted offended after you made a seemingly neutral statement.

On top of stress, many of us are communicating more via phone and video calls these days instead of in-person meetings. This makes it even harder to understand and be understood. More than half of communication comes from body language. So we're losing a lot of important cues even on video calls.

Do Others Hear Your Words or Your Tone?

You can see all of this play out in a recent coaching call I had with a client.

She needed to have a conversation with an employee who hadn’t completed critical, time-sensitive work. It's one of those talks that nobody looks forward to, even in less-stressful times. So we decided to role-play the conversation to help her prepare.

When we acted out the conversation together, her tone has such an edge that I couldn't even hear what she was really saying. Her annoyance and frustration clouded the entire message. It didn't feel like she wanted to understand what might have happened. Instead, it felt like my client had already made up her mind that the employee couldn’t possibly have a good reason.

I asked my client to go through the role-play again, this time from a place of curiosity, truly seeking to understand what had happened from the employee’s perspective. Her tone was more neutral this time, but she shared so much detail that I got lost.

On the third try, I asked her to keep the same tone but to focus on the "headlines" first, and then details. This time she nailed it. When we debriefed, she laughed, telling me that she simply repeated what she had said in our first role-play. The difference was that this time I “heard” her, because her tone was more open and not so accusatory.

This exercise was eye-opening for my client. She realized that in her drive for results, she doesn’t always stop to evaluate her approach and how it could affect the relationship with her employee.

If you find yourself on edge a bit more lately, a role-playing session like the one I had with my client could help you prepare for a difficult conversation. It can help keep those strong emotions in check and prevent things from escalating.

Before you move on with your day, I want to challenge you to identify one action you will take this week. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Assess your patience level on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being high. Self-awareness can do wonders in helping you make a shift.

• Find a safe place to vent your frustrations. And, no, that safe place is not at work. Remember that handwriting your thoughts (uncensored) on a piece of paper can quickly do the trick.

• Identify one action you can take to reduce your stress level and infuse some positive energy into your life.

Review the key principles of clear communication, which are more important ever right now. My guide "Communicating With Impact," from the Leadership EDGE℠ series, is a great starting point.