Let’s face it. Sometimes people just plain don’t like each other. So what’s a team leader to do in these situations?

People usually attribute this sort of problem to strong personalities.  Labeling the problem this way seems to be a justification for not doing anything about it.  After all, one cannot change the basic nature of another person, right?

There are actions you can take as the team leader.  Here are four.

• Establish the Ideal. Engage the group in a conversation about what kind of team they want to have.  Get them talking about behaviors that will make the team more successful and interesting for the members.  Groups have their own unique cultures.  Your job is to get the group to compare the culture they have to the one they want.
• Clear up fuzzy leadership. Sometimes people clash in the absence of clear leadership.  Perhaps these two are positioning for power and control of the team.  Assuming neither is right for the role, make it clear who is in charge.
• Try the obvious. While it may be the least attractive option, it is probably the most effective.  Talk with these people individually or together.  Let them know that their behaviors are affecting the team.  Work with them to understand the underlying problems and together develop solutions that will address the conflicts.
• Clean house. As a last resort, the leader may want to remove one or both of these people from the team.  If your gut is telling you that they are significantly cutting into productivity and effectiveness, and you have tried everything you and others can think of doing, this becomes a reasonable action.  Take it.

This shutdown is quite visible, thanks to a hard deadline and serious consequences for not meeting it. That’s a good thing. As I work with organizations of every type, I encounter similar circumstances to what’s happening in Minnesota. There’s a big problem or big opportunity, depending on how one looks at it. There are vastly different opinions about how to deal with it. And nobody budges. The result is a decision that doesn’t get made.

What makes it different is that there usually isn’t a hard deadline. Instead the parties just continue talking, never reaching a decision. Without a decision, opportunities are missed and problems linger as the ramifications become more obvious and serious.

Look around your organization. Where are the decisions that aren’t getting made? Who’s involved? What’s the sticking point? What’s being done to get past the impasse.

As side-liners in the state’s budget debate, we are cheering, jeering, or doing our best to ignore the whole thing. Within our own organizations and in our lives, they are us. We are called to decide. Sometimes this means giving in. Sometimes it means finding another answer that works for everyone. Sometimes it means standing strong and fighting for what is right. Regardless of the strategy, the problem must be resolved.

Whether or not our elected officials resolve the disputes they find themselves in is not in our control. We do have control over the disputes we are in. Work them out. Please.

Photo by Fibonacci Blue

When it comes to life at work, most people don’t like conflict. It makes them uncomfortable and increases their stress. If given a choice they will avoid it. What they don’t realize is that by trying to avoid it, they are only missing an opportunity to do something positive about it.

Here’s the organizational leader’s challenge. Help employees understand that the potential pay-offs of conflict are innovation, personal growth and stronger relationships. Prove to them that the rewards outweigh the costs.

One way of doing this is by making your expectations clear and modeling them through your actions. Develop, communicate, and reinforce a set of conflict standards that everyone can follow. Imagine the impact on your organization if these statements were true:

• We address problems immediately and directly.
• We understand others before trying to make them understand us.
• We balance being kind with being right.

Another way to stress the importance of resolving conflicts is to give people the skills they need for doing so. Put all employees through conflict management training upon joining the organization, and supplement with regular follow-up. Employees will feel more comfortable with conflict if they are confident in their ability to deal with it.

If you want an organization that effectively addresses conflict, you’ll need to begin by changing employee attitudes about it.

Conflict can be good for an organization. Ice cream can be too. In either case, too much of a good thing usually leads to problems.

If you think your organization is plagued by more than its fair share of conflict, it’s time to investigate the underlying causes. Often times there are unresolved problems that act as massive conflict generators.

Tackling conflicts one-by-one is akin to swatting at mosquitoes. You know that smashing one might provide a psychological boost, but will do very little for your long-term comfort. If you want to have a lasting impact, you need to tackle the problems that are creating all the conflict in the first place. Here are eight that are often at the bottom of things.

• Unclear goals
• Fuzzy processes
• Undefined authority
• Extreme segmentation
• Poor modeling by senior leaders
• Scarce resources
• Favoritism and excessive politics
• Unmanaged stress

There isn’t an organization in existence that doesn’t have at least a few opportunities in this list. Figure out which ones are causing problems in your organization, bring together some smart people, and do something about them.

Photo by rmlowe

The number one objection I hear when suggesting that people be more inclusive during decision making is that it takes too long. Whether this is true depends on the time span you are measuring. Let me explain.

Imagine you are the new supervisor of a 10-person work group. On any given day there are four activities that need to be staffed. For years the previous supervisor started each shift by making daily assignments. The assignment strategy was to mix it up. That way every person would know how to do every job.

With a couple months under your belt, you’ve started to notice that some people perform much better on certain activities than on others. You are thinking about making assignments more or less permanent to take full advantage of these performance differences. Should you simply announce the new plan or involve everyone in the decision? You really want to go with the former because it will be much quicker; or will it? Let’s examine how the two options would likely work out.

• Option A: You’ve been thinking about it. You know what you want to do. Announce it to the team. Done. From start to finish this is a relatively short process.
• Option B: You introduce your ideas to the group. Together you discuss it. Some like the idea. Others don’t. You give them time to think about it. You talk about it some more. Make a few modifications, and eventually everyone agrees. From start to finish this is a relatively long process.

If time is your concern, Option A is the clear winner, right? Not so fast. In both cases the place you start the clock is clear. But where do you stop it? If you think it is when the decision is known, then Option A does win. But that’s not the important end point. Instead, it should be when the decision is fully implemented and working well. If you stop the time at this point, the winner usually changes. Here’s why.

In Option A, you make a really quick decision, but people don’t like it. They weren’t asked for their opinions and don’t think it’s the best approach. While you can force them to do the new assignments, you won’t get the better productivity that you had hoped for because your employees are showing you that they have some control too. Foot dragging, sabotage, low morale and every imaginable bad reaction leads to a very long time before you can eventually stop the clock and say that the plan has been successful implemented. And in some cases that end point never arrives.

In Option B, there is more time in decision making, but once you sort things out, full implementation happens much more quickly. Why? Because people had their say. They are bought into the solution, and want to make it work. It is, after all, their solution.

Working through tough decisions as a group doesn’t necessarily take more time, especially if you measure the right end point.

As usual, there is not a simple or easy solution to this problem. If you will for the moment imagine one of those people to be you, then I can offer you these ideas for moving things in the right direction.

1. Listen to each other. Before the fight starts to escalate, it helps to simply listen. What exactly does the other person need? Why is it important to him? How will he use what you provide? What does he believe to be the consequences of not getting what he has requested. Ask that he hear your story as well. This is not the time to rebut or convince; rather it is all about understanding.
2. Try to identify the issue. Are the goals mutually exclusive? Are there really not enough resources? Could there be a misunderstanding? What about past history that has created bad blood? Maybe it is a combination of all the above. You need to know what the problem is that you are trying solve.
3. Brainstorm potential solutions. If so far you only have two options (yours and his), it is time to begin developing alternatives. Work together to toss out all the ways you might solve the problem. Somewhere in the list, there is usually something that might work for both of you.

In my world view, most people are half-way decent human beings. They try to do what’s right and get along with others as they go about their work. Most, however, doesn’t mean all. And if you are unlucky enough to have one of the exceptions working in your department, you are well aware of the problems these folks can create.

In dealing with this issue, there are two challenges. First, you’ve got to figure out if the person really is a bad apple or is just temporarily behaving badly due to a wide range of causes that might include home life, health, or bad working conditions. If you decide the person is rotten to the core, you need to figure out what to do about it.

Identifying Toxic People

First things first. How do you know if the person really is a bad apple? You examine the evidence. In their book, The Orange Revolution, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton offer the following behaviors you are likely to witness in a truly toxic employee:

• Constantly complain about other employees.
• Others are at the worst when this person is around.
• Attack people rather than issues.
• Have plenty to say in hallway conversations, but won’t say anything in the room when it counts.
• Extremely disagreeable.
• Words don’t match actions.
• Claims to understand own bad behaviors but never changes any of them.

Options for Dealing with Problem

If several of these behaviors describe your person, then you can be reasonably sure this isn’t a temporary problem. It’s time to act. You have several options.

1. Do nothing and hope it goes away. You shouldn’t and it won’t. Far too many leaders choose this option out of a sense of hopelessness or fear of confronting the person. This option is bad for the team, bad for you, and even bad for the person creating all the problems.
2. Coach the person. This is always a good place to start. But due to the last behavior in the indicators list, it isn’t likely to succeed. The bad apple isn’t lacking skills or dealing with some temporary difficulty. The person is choosing to behave badly, but won’t admit to the behavior or the negative impact it is having. Chances are he or she has no intentions of changing. Still, everyone deserves a chance to get back on track. The trick is not letting this go on too long.
3. Enforce the expected behaviors. Your organization already has plenty of policies and behavioral expectations on the books. Hopefully, you have been clear about the behaviors you expect from members of your team. If this person violates them and hasn’t responded to coaching, enforce the rules. Use your progressive discipline process. Provide other consequences that will get the person’s attention. Sometimes people won’t change because they don’t think they have to. If you can demonstrate that bad behavior has consequences, you just might get the person’s attention.
4. Fire the bad apple. If your gut is screaming that this person is wrecking your team and you’ve already done 2 and 3, it’s time to send this person on his way. Organizations typically have a process for terminating an employee. Sometimes that process seems overwhelming. It doesn’t matter. It’s worth the effort. Work the process. You’ll be glad you did and the rest of your team will be too.

Nobody wants to deal with a bad apple on the team. The reality is that they do exist. If you find yourself needing to deal with this issue, my advice is simple. Plan your approach and get on with it. Things are not going to improve unless you act.

“What if it’s hard” asked a recent team-building workshop participant after we had just completed an exercise about working with people who have styles quite different than our own. At the time I thought he might be joking, even though his face suggested he was being quite serious. So I tackled his question straight up.

First up, agree with the premise of his question. It is hard. People who are different from us challenge our values and beliefs. They force us into doing things that aren’t comfortable. They somehow manage to push our hot-buttons; leaving us frustrated, angry, and exhausted.

With that out of the way, I decided to make the case for why it is worth the effort. Here’s what I came up with. If you can add to the list, please do so in the comments.

• Reciprocity. If we go out of our way to accommodate others, perhaps they’ll one day return the favor. And if we don’t see ourselves as being difficult for some of the people we work with, well then it’s time to develop some self-awareness.
• Learning. When people force us out of our comfort zone, we can’t help but learn something about them and ourselves in the process.
• Results. Let’s assume for a minute that we don’t always know the right thing to do, nor do we always know the best way for doing it. Mixing it up with people who are different from us helps us discover new and often better approaches. Together we are able to more effectively solve problems than we could have on our own.
• Necessity. Finally it all comes down to this. We live and work together. We are social beings. For most of us, we aren’t financially in a position to pull out of our jobs or society and live in isolation. With this reality as a backdrop, what choice do we have?

Is is hard? Yep. Is it worth making the effort? Absolutely. Look around at the people with whom you work, especially the ones you don’t like. Now find a way to connect and succeed together.

Powerful employees are successful employees.  And it’s successful employees that create organizations that thrive, even in tough times. Imagine your organization filled with people who…

• Take an active interest in the organization and are able to voice their thoughts, concerns, and ideas in a manner that is timely, effective and respectful.
• Are filled with confidence that they will complete the tasks and goals they have been assigned.
• Are connected to others who can provide the support they need when it is needed.
• Can respectfully and quickly work through disagreements with coworkers.
• Manage their stress when times are tough.
• Remain productive during workplace transitions.

If you want employees who behave in this way, you’ll need to use a multi-pronged approach.  The first involves increasing skills for employees.  This is usually accomplished with workshops and webinars.  The second is changing the environment in a way that allows the desired behaviors to flourish.

For years the past 13 years I’ve presented thousands of seminars focused on developing skills in employees.  Recently I completed a new series of management workshops focused on changing the environment.

Currently there are six workshops in the series.  Each can be delivered as a two hour mini workshop for leaders in your organization or expanded into a more robust organizational improvement planning sessions.   Here’s a brief summary of the topics.

Speak Up:  Helping Employees Say What Needs Saying

How many employees see problems that could create serious issues for the organization, but say nothing because they don’t want to be viewed as complainers?  How many employees are angry about a coworker’s comments but don’t talk to that person about their concerns because the conversation might get ugly?  And what about all the great ideas that are going unmentioned because of the perception that nobody listens?  Powerful employees speak up.  In this workshop we will explore ways to help employees with a passive communication style be more assertive with coworkers and managers to improve organizational effectiveness.

Mission Accomplished:  Increasing Confidence with Productivity

Think about how good it feels to go home at the end of a long day knowing you accomplished some important work, contributing to your organization’s success.  Do this day after day, and your confidence and self-esteem will rise.  You will not only feel like, but also become a powerful employee.  Today many employees report that they have too much to do and not enough time to get it all done.  As a result they often end their day filled with frustration at how little they have to show for their efforts.  The purpose of this workshop is to identify strategies employers can use to help employees feel more productive and confident in their ability to accomplish their goals and recognize the contributions they make to the organization.

Making Connections:  Building a Networked Organization

If you believe the adage “It’s not what you know but who you know,” than it follows that helping employees know more people is good for the organization and the individual.  Powerful employees build strong networks of people both in and out of the organization that they can draw on for support and ideas.  We all need people we can lean on when faced with tough obstacles, unfortunately most people don’t think about developing this support network until they actually need it.  This workshop will show employers ways they can encourage employees to build networks and help them develop the skills necessary for effectively networking.

Working it Out:  Making the Most of Interpersonal Conflict

Conflict doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  Unfortunately too many organizations treat it as a problem rather than an opportunity.  Unresolved or poorly managed conflicts are a huge source employee stress.  Organizations cannot and should not eliminate conflicts, but they can become great at managing them.  This workshop will explore ways organizations can help people become powerful employees by more successfully working through their differences at work.

Stress Busters:  Working Through Crazy Times

The pressure is building and employees aren’t handling it well.  People are behaving badly and it’s affecting the results.  While we want to tell everyone to chill, that isn’t likely to help much.  When things are tough at work, powerful employees know what they can do to manage their own stress so that they can remain effective in spite of the less than ideal situation.  In this workshops we will look at the three major stress management strategies and explore specific actions the employer can take to help employees implement these strategies in their lives at work.

Navigating Change:  Succeeding During Workplace Transitions

Organizations are always changing, and from the employee’s perspective, these changes often viewed negatively.  The negativity surrounding the change increases stress and lowers productivity throughout the organization.  There are plenty of ways an employer can make transitions easier for employees.  There are also skills and ideas that when introduced into the organization will create powerful employees who are resilient, flexible, and optimistic about the future.  This workshop can’t stop change from occurring, but it can help your organization be more equipped to deal with it.

Have you ever led a meeting when it seemed the group kept running away from a decision? As the leader, it is your job to help the team recognize and make the decision. Here are five strategies for helping you do so.

Point out the decision point

While it might seem obvious to you, others in the group might not recognize that they have arrived at a decision point. You can help them see this by saying something like, “It looks like we have a decision on the table.” State what you view to be the question, and check with the group to see if they agree.

Clarify the options

Once people agree on the question, your next task is to identify options. Lay out what you view to be the options. Encourage the group to add to the list. It helps to write them on the board, so they are visible to everyone.

Discuss decision criteria

Before choosing, the group should decide what criteria it will use to make its choice. If everyone agrees on the criteria, making the decision becomes a simple exercise in applying the criteria. If participants don’t agree, things get a little trickier.

Allow everyone to have a say

One key to helping the group make the decision is to get them to stop evaluating the options. This point will not come until everyone has had a chance to voice an opinion. Be proactive in asking all group members what they think.

Call for the decision

Eventually, you will sense that everyone has had his or her say. A simple thing you might say to the group at that point is “Are you ready to make the decision?” If you get agreement, ask for everyone’s decision or vote. Use the results to determine what will happen next.

Using these strategies does not guarantee an easy decision, but will at least keep you focused on where you need to be, wrestling with the question.

Photo by Steve Snodgrass