How to handle conflict with a difficult employee
In which we apply the Rules of Engagement at the office
So you’ve got an employee who gossips and badmouths and doesn’t play well with others — they don’t participate at team meetings, they blame colleagues for their own mistakes or oversights, and they have offended enough people that you’ve received numerous complaints about them.
Just one of these issues would require attention from you, the boss. But ugh!! Every one of them means conflict, means telling someone something they don’t want to hear, risking tension and uncertainty, pushback and argument, bad feelings all around. Not to mention possible escalation of the original bad behaviors! Wouldn’t it just be easier to let it go? To reduce the employee’s responsibilities, to limit opportunities for them to interact with others, to just keep the peace by (minutely, barely discernibly) tweaking the status quo?
Yes.
But that would mean the asshole wins.
Which contributes to the ruination of our wonderful world.
Let us revisit the Rules of Engagement
Assholes are assholic for a reason. Whatever that reason is (and there are ways to make good guesses about the reasons if you want to), your job as a boss is to connect with that asshole so as to offer them corrective action.
Corrective action being relational. Connecting with the asshole in ways that uncover and reduce the stress that leads to the assholic behavior in the first place.
How do you connect and correct relationally, you ask? Here are some ways:
Get in your Garden — and stay there
Describe
Ask
Listen
Come up with a plan of action
Get in your Garden
What this means is that, no matter how “good” a boss you are, you must not take on your asshole’s failures! Yes, you are responsible to your employees. But you are not responsible for their behaviors. They are responsible for their behaviors. Your job is to draw their attention to their behaviors, wonder with them about those behaviors, and come up with a way to support your employee in changing those behaviors (which only they can do).
That is, your job is to engage.
Engaging with your assholic employee does not mean jumping into their garden, looking around at the big mess there, and telling them how to clean it up — or else. That is gladiator behavior; it’s a boundary violation that can easily be perceived as belligerent. Your employee will not appreciate feeling judged and attacked. Nor should they.
Getting in your Garden means reminding yourself of your values and principles as a boss. You want to be clear. You want to be communicative. You want to be confident and calm. You want to be supportive and honest. (I’m guessing. These are things I want in a boss.) But how do you embody these values and principles? How do you get in your Garden in the first place?
Answer: Meditate. Full stop.
Developing the habit of mindfulness deliberately, through regular meditation sessions, will translate automatically into your everyday life, allowing you to still yourself even in the face of unexpected and utterly unwelcome attack.
If you’re not a meditator (yet) and find yourself in a sticky, possibly conflictual situation, try these moves:
take a deep breath
turn your attention inward
notice what is happening in your body
if you can, label what you’re noticing
acknowledge that whatever you’re noticing is appropriate and meaningful — even if you don’t have the time or wherewithal to uncover the meanings right now (save them for later)
recite to yourself a handy mantra you know will calm you (“I am enough.” “I’m here doing my very best.” “I’m glad and grateful to be me.” “Fuck you and the smog you blew in on.”)
make an appointment with someone like me to work through the data you gathered when you were busy noticing
Next?
Describe
What are you seeing? What are you hearing? How can you describe these things as if Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragnet had just asked you for “just the facts, ma’am”?
For example:
“I want to share what I’m seeing so we can compare notes on how you’re doing these days:
You’re quiet at meetings. I miss your perspective, which has always been helpful. (This is descriptive, yes? If it’s true. If it’s not true, you can say something like “I’d love to hear your perspective, as we need all voices chiming in.”)
When you miss a deadline, you don’t seem to have had a hand in the oversight. I wonder if you’re worried about negative consequences.
Some of your colleagues have shared with me that you’re dissatisfied with some of the decisions I’ve made. If that’s the case, let’s talk. I’m the best person to bring that dissatisfaction up with!”
OK, so these aren’t just descriptive. They also include honest positive feedback (“your perspective has always been helpful”), Good Guesses (“I wonder if you’re worried about negative consequences”), and redirection (in effect, “talk to me about your dissatisfaction rather than your colleagues”).
An important part of this step, I think, is to clarify the purpose of these descriptions. It’s not “I want to paint you a really accurate picture of what an asshole you are.” (You should probably get that off your chest while you're flossing your teeth or something in private.) In this case the purpose (and outcome) might be “I want to work together to get a sense of how you’re approaching your job right now so we can agree on what needs changing and how.”
Describing like this is very direct. And it’s got to be honest. If this approach scares the shit out of you or rubs you the wrong way, re-arrange the steps and start with asking (see below). (Don’t leave out the purpose and desired outcome of the meeting, though, ever.)
Keep in mind that at some point you’re going to need to describe what you perceive because your employee deserves to know how they are coming across, what impact they’re having. In short, they need to know what you hold them responsible for. Engaging requires that two people show up (that would be you and your employee). If you hold your cards close to your chest and keep yourself and your perceptions secret — if you don’t show up — your employee will have to be Iron Man to avoid feeling intimidated and anxious. OR if you’re super nice and accommodating and constantly circling the issue but never stabbing it — that is, if you refuse to show up — your employee will have to be a mind reader to figure out what you want.
The idea is to describe the issue, the difficulty, the purpose and desired outcome and to put it all on the table (so to speak) as an object of shared interest so both you and your employee can sit back and take a look at it.
Ask
“So where am I wrong?”
“What am I missing?”
“What do you think about what I just said?”
Ask questions that address the information you have shared, questions that focus on the content. This is important. I think it’s a good idea to avoid asking how your employee feels when you’re engaging with conflict. Here’s why:
Asking about feelings gets you into subjective territory, which threatens boundaries, which must stay rock solid. That is, you need to represent and take responsibility for your reality (what you see, what you hear, what you need). And you must allow your employee to take responsibility for theirs.
Rushing into someone’s garden to make them feel better is a perfect way to alleviate any (understandable) tension you might be feeling about respecting boundaries and expecting them to hold. It’s a distraction from the hard work of engaging. And it sends a confusing and unhealthy message to your employee, which is that their feelings are your problem (which also implies they can’t handle their feelings themselves) and that boundaries ultimately don’t matter.
The hard fact is that engaging with conflict rather than avoiding it means doing what is necessary, which is holding your employee (or any other relational partner) accountable for themselves — their actions, their feelings, their thoughts, their reality. (Reminder: This is not cruel. It is simply real and can even be considered kind.)
Sticking with thoughts and observations means you and your employee can look at the dynamics between you — how you fit together, what you’re seeing or not, how you’re interpreting what you see either accurately or inaccurately, how these interpretations determine your behavior, etc. — rather than at your individual suffering.
Asking about your employee’s feelings might imply that your feelings are relevant, too. They’re not. Sharing your own feelings teaches your employee that they are responsible for you. They’re not.
Respecting and expecting boundaries, though possibly difficult to do at first, will become easier with practice.
Of course, there are myriad other questions you could ask. They must all be genuine, though. Authentic. No leading questions. No gotcha questions. Leading and gotcha questions will teach your employee that you are not trustworthy. That you’re playing games with them. That you are one-up and they are one-down and nothing they do will change that dynamic.
But, let’s face it, you are one-up and they are one-down. Engaging means embodying your position of authority — because it would be dishonest not to and because you are going to make decisions about your employee — but also setting up a discussion in which you can be genuinely curious and open-minded and which honors the expertise, both personal and professional, of your employee. It’s a tilted playing field, for sure, but playing — being clear-seeing and creative, considerate and constrained — still has to happen.
Listen
The danger of engaging with conflict rather than running away from it is that you might not like what you hear. Ugh! Staying in your garden and asking questions about what’s going on in your employee’s garden (without highlighting emotions) means you might get some truth out of them.
“The instructions about the project weren’t clear, so we missed our deadline.”
“You’re really unapproachable.”
“I feel like no one’s staying in their lanes, which confuses everybody.”
“You’re a sadist.” (I actually got this one from a student teacher who was having a hard time finishing a very difficult but significant assignment in my class.)
Whether your employee is astute enough to use “I statements” or not (and you might sometimes feel it wise to suggest they turn a “You statement” into an “I statement” to encourage at least the formulation of personal responsibility), you will probably hear some criticisms of how you’re doing things.
Do not take these criticisms personally.
Yeah, right. I remember hearing this exhortation back in the day and thinking the exhorters were so completely full of shit! I mean: How can you not take criticism personally? It is personal! It is an attack on you and how you do things! It is a hurtful condemnation of your character, your competence, your perfection, your very right to exist!
How THE HELL can a person not take criticism personally? Consider:
Words are valuable data. They come out of someone else’s mouth and capture as best they can that person’s perceptions and interpretations of you. Not taking it personally means accepting that person’s right to have their own perceptions and interpretations, even if they’re wildly inaccurate. They can’t completely help it. They’re in their own Garden and their words are teaching you something about what it’s like in there.
A criticizing person is not an authority on you. They are the authorities on themselves (to varying degrees of accuracy). Do not give them authority that they simply do not, cannot, have.
You do not need to take the words from someone else’s mouth and Garden into your own Garden. You can (and, really, should) blast those words with a force field (like Violet in the Incredibles) (obviously, the Incredibles have had a profound impact on my thinking) that suspends them in the air between your two Gardens.
You can then look at the words for stuff you can use. Stuff like
germs of truth about you
revelations of what is true about them
good ideas you can implement going forward
Germs of truth about you
Your employee’s (or anyone’s) criticisms of you reflect their subjective experience, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t truth in what they see and say. And why fear the truth? If your instructions weren’t clear, how can you make them clearer? If you’re unapproachable, what does that look like? If you need to clarify everybody’s job, why wouldn’t you want to do that? If you’re a sadist, wouldn’t you like to know more? (I did. I asked my student teacher to give me examples. She couldn’t come up with any. Very helpful.)
Revelations about what is true about them
Again, because your employee’s criticisms of you reflect their subjective experience, their words can tell you a bit (but more likely a lot) about them. Like what they expect or need from a boss (expectations or needs you might have to gently disabuse them of); like how they behave under stress; like what emotions they’re trying to offload onto you; like the way they see and interpret the world; like how they think they’re finding what they expect from the world in you (but might not actually be there). Taking note of these possibilities and either addressing them in the heat of the moment or (more likely) thinking about them afterwards is the very essence of not taking it personally.
Good ideas you can implement going forward
If, as a result of engaging with your employee, you learn some things you could do differently to make your team work better, FANTASTIC. But that is rarely enough. Your employee, especially one who has exhibited dysfunctional or toxic behavior, is part of whatever problem or criticism they bring up. Because every relationship, every interaction, is two-way. Working to figure out how the problem was co-constructed — how your and their different perceptions, expectations, and interpretations contributed to the problem(s) you have described — and what you can do differently in the future is the goal of engaging.
Which leads us to the final step:
Come up with a plan of action
If all goes well, this shouldn’t be difficult. You and your employee can agree on things like
the questions they get to ask you when they’re confused
what each of you gets to say when (predictable, because you’ve talked about them) misunderstandings arise
how to bring up new problems
what you will say when you see behavior that needs to be corrected
when you will say it
how you will follow up if you see no change
That sort of thing. I’m a big fan of anticipating future enactments, or repeats of habitual behaviors; planning for those enactments based on mutual understanding; and agreeing ahead of time on what each of you gets to do if anything goes awry. Saying the words (and documenting them so you can refer back to them) makes these actions and responses real and, importantly, neutral so no one can take offense when the plan is implemented.
If all doesn’t go well, you may have to be more draconian than you want to be. Meaning you’ll have to pull out the PIP. Not every employee can or wants to change ingrained behaviors that work for them (even if they don’t work for you). Some just need a nudge. Some, of course, need more. That’s for you to decide.
I’d love to hear specific stories about employees (or others) you just don’t know what to do with. Click Share a Story at the top of this page and give me deets — totally confidentially. I’ll get back to you!