Navigating the Maze: Leading and Managing Challenging Team Members Effectively

Do you have challenging Team Members?

When I ask this, what is your perception of a difficult member of staff.? When you see a particular person do you already pre-empt what they are going to say?? Do you feel that feeling of ‘head in hands’ after they’ve spoken to you or how they interact with the team, causing frustration and conflict?

On the flip side, wouldn’t it be a bit boring to have the same personalities in a team?

Perceptions can be that these are team members who seem to make it their mission to be as challenging for you in leading them, as well as within their team.

Is this a true perception?

Difficult Team Members Can Take on Different Forms

These can be people who try to bully their way through with their views; those that moan or procrastinate, which impacts on those around them regarding deadlines and impacting negatively on performance; childlike responses to decisions that they don’t agree with; negative team members who look at the worst-case scenario to team members who always seem to have some personal disaster constantly which means they are distracted, distraught and unable to focus on tasks.? They can suck the energy out of you and those around them.

It is good to remember though, that as human beings, we are all unique and how you would deal with one person, may be completely different to how you would deal with another.? So, what should you do?

What are your Team Members Personalities?

Yes, I know, you are not psychologists.? However, you can learn who you staff are and their personality traits.? There are plenty of free tests online.? This could be a good team building exercise for your teams to get to know one another, how they best learn, how they best take in information, how they best interact.?

By doing this, you will be able to recognise which personality traits may prevent them from working within a team and more importantly, how to support them better in leading them and maximising their strengths from the personalities – yes, there will be some!

Using Coaching for Challenging Conversations

Firstly, take a step back.? You may have bias with these individuals.? So be mindful of what is going through our mind.? Sometimes individuals actually have credible concerns, but are not heard because of bias or ‘here they go again’ feelings/emotions.? This can be difficult to keep yourself in check, especially when you are under pressure, so ensure you have a safe space with a trusted colleague/mentor/coach, where you can offload these feeling and reflect on your own feelings/emotions.

There is a great little book called ‘The Coaching Habit – Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier’.? It is a simple way to have a coaching conversation with all staff who you want to develop or tend to give you problems instead of solutions.??? These are based around 7 questions. ?It’s all about their mindset and yours.

• The Kick Start Question - What's on your mind?
• The Awe Question - And what else?
• The Focus Question - What's the real challenge here for you?
• The Foundation Question - What do you want?
• The Lazy Question - How can I help?
• The Strategic Question - If you're saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?
• The Learning Question - What was most useful for you?

Use clean language – there is a TED talk by Caitlin Walker where you can ask questions, you don’t necessarily need to know what the answers are, but you can gain a lot of knowledge from that individual.? This is a technique used not only in psychology and counselling, but also coaching.? It consists of approximately 20 questions which use the individual’s words as part of the questions, reflecting what they have said back to them and expanding on these.

Be Professional

Bad behaviour is never acceptable.?

Enabling a team to come up with their own Team Values can help with challenging this.? What is acceptable, what do your team feel is unacceptable, so that they can challenge behaviour with living their team values and as a leader, challenging behaviour with an individual outside of the team setting – discussing how their actions are affecting other team members and being courageous with conversations to see if there are any other underlying issues.? It is about trying to remain calm and approaching this for a sensible way forward.

By accepting bad behaviour can result in long-term consequences.? The team need to live and breath their values.? This does not mean that there are not challenging conversations with views being heard, but that it should be done professionally and with mutual respect that not everyone will have the same views.

Understanding transactional analysis is also helpful.? This is where there are three different ego states, parent, adult and child.? There are various You Tube videos which can give you more information about these to improve your knowledge.? In a professional environment it is essential to support staff to be in the adult ego state at all times.? Otherwise, you either become the parent or in extreme cases, the victim.?

Get to Know your Team

Having regular catch ups with your teams individually may get to the root of problems which may be impacting a team member’s behaviour.? Especially when it is not normal.? Regular check ins, creating a trusting culture, means that staff will come forward about potential issues.? This may not always happen, so being brave and courageous in having open conversations with team members are essential.? This means that you will also be supported if you are out of sorts by your team.?

Team Work Makes the Dream Work – you should have each others backs.? Life is hard and trying to keep work and home separate doesn’t always happen.? Having an empathy for this, but also still living your team values, means that trust builds.

If behaviours improve, catch up with the individual and give them some positive feedback.? This enforces the good behaviour.

What if Behaviours Don’t Improve?

It is important that you have open conversations with the individual about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable behaviour.? They should be given the chance to improve and to understand their impact on you and the team.? Using language such as ‘when you behave like this, this makes me feel ….’; ‘Can you explain why you behaved in this manner?’; ‘When you act like this, how do this make you feel?’.

However, there comes a time that if things do not improve, that more formal processes need to be followed.? Document every conversation and share with the individual if you feel this is not going to improve, so that this can be provided as evidence.? Your HR Department should be able to support you through this process, such as supportive methods like mediation, or more formal processes such as grievances, investigations and disciplinaries.?

Remain factual, supportive and empathetic, but firm in your expectations.?

Normalise good behaviours into your culture and they will start to embed – and accept that there will be some wobbles along the way – humans are not perfect!

Share your Good Work

If you learn various techniques, share with your leader colleagues.

Please comment on what has worked well for you on this blog – I’m interested in what works well and it's good to share good practice.

Supportive Materials

Dealing with Difficult Team Members

How to Manage a Brilliant but Difficult Team Member

Forbes Dealing with a Difficult Team Member – 5 Tips

Transactional Analysis - Ego States, Games & Gimmicks

Free personality Test – 16 personalities

The Big Five Personality Test

The Coaching Habit – Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier

Caitlyn Walker –Clean Questions and Metaphor Models TED Talk

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