Executive coach and author Nick Robinson illuminates the challenging traits of work colleagues and shares strategies from his book — The 9 Types of Difficult People: How to Spot Them and Quickly Improve Working Relationships — that professionals can employ to improve relationships on the job.
Robinson, a speaker at UK & Ireland ENGAGE earlier this month, explores the interplay between organisational pressures, psychological stressors, power dynamics, and how those factors can influence the development of traits and behaviours that make people difficult to work with.
He also shares strategies managers and professionals can explore to help get to the crux of performance issues, improve communication skills, and gain a deeper understanding of peers.
“When you ask a difficult person why they’re doing what they do, they don’t think they’re difficult,” Robinson said. “They’re trying to do something that they think is right.”
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- Four pressures that can negatively affect our ability to work with others.
- Three common types of difficult people in the workplace.
- Advice for managers and employees to navigate challenging relationships and dynamics.
- Steps for surviving a difficult boss.
- Tips for “unlearning” bad habits that make you appear more difficult to work with.
Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:
— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.
Transcript
Steph Brown: Welcome to another episode of the FM podcast. Live from UK and Ireland ENGAGE, I’m Steph Brown, your host for this episode. I’m joined by Nick Robinson, executive coach and author of the book The 9 Types of Difficult People. I’m sure there will be people tuning in already wondering how many of those types they’ve worked with, maybe still working with in some cases. Or possibly if they have ever been difficult.
Before we jump to any conclusions, Nick is going to explain what it means to be difficult, the kinds of workplace environments that can contribute to people being perceived as difficult to work with, and how we can actually work better with those people.
Welcome, Nick. Thanks for joining me.
Nick Robinson: Thank you, Steph. Really nice to be here and to meet you today, cheers.
Brown: Thank you. I’m really excited for this conversation because I think most of us have ended up in tricky social situations at work, and it can be relatively easy to get off on the wrong foot with people. But I suppose it’s often more complex than that.
In your book, you address what you refer to as “the perfect storm” of organisational factors that can contribute to someone becoming more difficult to work with. In a few words, what are some of those factors?
Robinson: That’s a great question because you’re right. Most of us have experienced that and I don’t think any of them. As I go through them, I think people will probably recognise them. I often say there’s four things. I call it, as you say, “the perfect storm”. The first is simply just the everyday stresses and strains of working life and how people respond to those and how people behave when they’re under pressure or outside their comfort zone, when they’re doing things that they’re unfamiliar with or that they just don’t feel confident in. That’s often the very first thing, and I call it stress strategy, how they respond to that.
Then the second one that comes up a lot (and this is probably the most important one for people to get really is): When you ask a difficult person why they’re doing what they do, they don’t think they’re difficult. From their point of view, they’re just someone trying to make the most of what for them is a very challenging situation and just do what they think is the right thing in that situation from their perspective. Often people don’t know that they’re difficult because they’re not being difficult. We call that positive intention in my jargon, Steph. That’s really important to understand that, from a difficult person’s point of view, they’re not being difficult.
Then, the second thing is one of the things we talked about off mic earlier is the self-doubts, imposter syndrome, believing that you’re just about to get found out for not knowing what you’re doing, the sense of it’s all going to go horribly wrong. Those self-doubts and self-criticisms, they can really add to people’s stress responses and keep them stuck in a cycle of negative behaviour.
Then the fourth factor is inflexible approaches, always doing things the same way because that’s how you’ve always done them regardless of whether or not the situation has changed, or if the needs of the people around you are different now.
When those four things come together, you’re quite likely to get someone who, for other people, is perceived as difficult.
Brown: That’s great. Thanks, Nick. As you mentioned, with this stress strategy and this inflexible attention focus, you said in the book that it can become difficult to work with when those two meet. What does that mean, and how could that play out in the workplace?
Robinson: When those two things — those are the primary drivers, how someone responds when they’re under pressure and the fact that they’re not changing the way they do things to meet the needs of the situation and the people around them. That is most likely what is causing other people to find them difficult.
Those are the things that determine the kind of flavour of difficult person you might meet. I think it’s probably quite relevant to us here today is one of my favorite types of difficult person is the scary specialist, the expert who’s not afraid to let you know that they’re the expert, let’s put it that way. They have a stress strategy which is all about disconnection. If you put them under pressure, they want everybody to go away and leave them alone to get on with things how they think it should be done, according to their own standards.
Of course, in an organisation, you can’t always do that. You need to build consensus. You need to do things that are maybe not perfect but what the team of people around you, or what the whole organisation, needs. You can’t always be that scary or that specialist about it. That’s when people get stuck in one way of doing things. Scary specialists, for example, they tend to focus on the tasks that need doing, and they’re not that bothered around the impact that they’re having on the people around them.
Brown: That’s interesting. I suppose with how you mentioned the inflexible attention focus and stress strategy, I suppose, maybe that collision is more noticeable because it comes out more externally than maybe if someone’s having self-doubts and things that they might not show to people.
Your book is called The 9 Types of Difficult People. As we said, we’ve probably all at times worked with so-called difficult people, and we just lump them into one category: difficult. But I guess you’re saying there are different types of difficult people — you referenced the scary specialist. Are there any other ones that are quite notable and common that people might have run into in the workplace?
Robinson: Yeah, I think so — it’s interesting, you said earlier about scary specialists, you can see on the outside that they’re being like that. Some of the other types like the rock, for example — I call them the rock because they’re just the person you rely on to keep things running. One of the things that they will do is if they think you’re doing something which is too risky or stupid or that shouldn’t be done, they won’t tell you. They just will not participate, so they won’t do it. They’ll keep their head down.
They’ll just put things off for as long as possible so that they don’t have to do something that they think is too risky for the organisation, that will break something if they did it. You don’t always know from the outside that someone is being difficult until it gets to the point where you ask, “I thought you were doing that IT project, it was about to go live?” And they’ll say, “No. I didn’t do that because I thought it was a bit stupid.” So, you don’t always know. It’s very important to understand that there’s a massive variety in how people behave.
If you want to be able to help people and help them be at their best in whatever situation they’re in, it’s really important to just understand what’s driving it. What flavour of difficult are they being? Are they a scary specialist? Are they a rock? Are they people pleasing, for example? One of the things that people pleasers do is go miles out of their way to avoid having a difficult conversation. That has consequences in the workplace. I’ve seen leaders who are people pleasers just let other people in their department get away with awful behaviour for months, years even. When they could have just had one difficult conversation and got it over with.
It’s very important to understand that there are flavours of it. Also, I think one of the things that’s in my approach that’s different from other things is that these are traits. What kind of attention focus you have as a preference, whether it’s tasks or systems or people, that’s something you’ve learned because it worked for you one time, so you repeat it. It works again, so you carry on repeating it. And you forget to change if the situation changes around you.
But that’s a learned behaviour. The stress strategies? They’re also learned behaviours. My principal, Steph, is if they can be learned, they can be unlearned, and new things can be learned in place of them. It’s very important to remember there are different flavours and that you can unlearn and relearn what’s causing them.
Brown: For someone who manages an employee that they do consider difficult, what’s your advice?
Robinson: There’s a number of tools that will always work, and I talked about some of them in the presentation earlier. But as a general principle, it’s trying to understand that from their point of view, they’re not trying to be difficult. They’re trying to do something that they think is right. Even if the rest of us feels like they’re deliberately being difficult or what they’re doing is completely counter to what the rest of us need them to do. From their point of view, it’s the right thing to be doing.
As leaders, one of the greatest skills is just to get really curious about what’s driving this person’s behaviour. What is behind why they’re doing that? That then gives you a doorway into whether it’s a communication issue, so you need to spend more time talking to that person about what the purpose of your department is and what it is you’re all trying to achieve together, so they can’t go off doing their own thing. Or it might be something that there’s a boundary They might not know that they’re crossing a boundary and what they’re doing. The way that the scary specialist is being really critical of other people rather than helping other people learn and grow — they might not realise they’ve crossed that boundary.
But the first point to start with is that curiosity, what is behind this? Then that opens the door to you to having a different type of intervention depending on what is actually happening.
Brown: Sort of like don’t assume the problem, try and work out what the problem is and where it started from?
Robinson: Yes, and I think even look beyond the problem to what outcome would you like to achieve?
Also, for leaders, what’s your belief about how you should deal with people? Should you be using kindness? Should you be really strict? What’s your preferred way of doing things? So that you can be at your best as well when you’re dealing with that and not have to be someone you’re not.
Brown: I suppose there’s easier maybe steps in place for managers, guidebooks, things that they can talk to staff about if they’re having these difficulties. But if you’re a peer or a teammate having to work with someone that you perceive as quite difficult, how can you go about improving that working relationship?
Robinson: I actually think as a peer, it’s almost harder because one of the things that really helps is to have some position or authority over someone. It’s the stick approach. If you haven’t got a stick that you can wield, then it’s really hard because there are no consequences for that person.
The thing to do if you’ve got a peer or a colleague who’s being difficult is to be absolutely clean about your own behaviours and to role-model what good behaviour looks like. If you’re not doing that — that’s the place to start. If that person isn’t cooperating, or they’re not communicating, or they’re not taking into account the impact that their behaviour is having on people’s feelings — just to role-model that for yourself as a starting point.
You really have to do that, and don’t underestimate the power of just showing people there is a different way of doing stuff. I would always start there as a peer. Get your own house in order and role-model that because role-modelling is such a powerful tool. What people see us do and what they hear us say, that is our main tool for how to influence people’s behaviour at work.
Brown: I suppose that would be key as well if it’s someone maybe not intentionally being difficult, but they’re struggling, and if they can learn from someone else, maybe that’s the step they need to get to where they want to go and how they can be a better collaborator as well.
It gets more tricky, I suppose, when there are difficult people in quite high-up leadership positions. How can employees best approach this challenging dynamic, especially if they’re dealing with this leader without harming their future at the organisation?
Robinson: That’s a really crucial question and one that comes up a lot. Especially when there’s a power imbalance. If you’re junior to someone who’s senior and who is behaving badly, you don’t really have any power over that person, and you need to make sure that you’re protecting yourself first.
When I talk about boundaries, setting the boundaries of what’s acceptable behaviour for you and what’s not. One of the people in the session earlier said, “You have the right to be respected, you have the right for your boundaries to be set out and to walk away if those boundaries are not being respected.” I think that’s really important to know. There’s a quote I love, I think it’s from Maya Angelou: “The reason people give away their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” We always have some power to act.
I would say act with caution, but do patrol your boundaries. But the main thing is actually don’t do it on your own. Look for allies. Who else is on your side? Because I guarantee you if there’s a difficult leader in your organisation, you will not be the only person who knows that. Some of the other leaders might be tolerating it because no one has said to them, “This is not working. This is really unacceptable.”
Sometimes those leaders will only act because there’s what I call a great escape, loads of people have suddenly left because there’s a bad leader. One of the facts I love to quote is — I can’t remember who the survey is — as many as 75% of people who’ve quit a job say that a bad manager was part of their reason for quitting. For companies, if you’re tolerating someone who is behaving in a way that impacts negatively on the rest of the organisation, that’s going to cost you eventually.
Brown: That’s a great point. I suppose it’s one thing to look at. If there are issues with things like staff turnover, where’s that coming from? If it’s in a particular team as well, then that’s an indicator.
Robinson: Yes.
Brown: If there’s anyone who’s listening to this and recognises — you’ve talked about the scary specialist, the rock, people pleasing, probably quite a common one for people that might struggle with that. If there’s anyone listening that recognises some of those difficult behaviours that we’ve covered today in themselves, what principles would you encourage them to explore to help them develop better ways of working and communicating?
Robinson: There’s maybe three things to look at. One is just facing up to the fact that you might be really outside your comfort zone and really under a lot of pressure. That’s hard for people to do because some people feel like they’re just hanging on by their fingertips. And if they fessed up, if they said, “You know what? I’m really struggling.” It often feels like you might suddenly fall off the side of the building that you’re just clinging onto.
But that’s not the case. Most of the time, it’s much better to say, “I’m really struggling and I might need some help with an aspect of my work.” Or I’m a senior leader, I’m being asked to do presentations, and I really don’t like doing them, they’re outside of my comfort zone. Or I’m having to talk to these suppliers, and the suppliers are really tricky to deal with. Whatever it is that has people outside their comfort zone and responding from a place of stress, much better to face up to it. That’s the first thing.
Then the second thing is to deal with the stuff that goes on inside your head that makes that worse. That sense of imposter syndrome. That sense of, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m just about to be found out for not doing it. Or a belief that everything’s going to go wrong all the time, or that I’m just going to fail every time I try and do something. To really tackle those, I call them self-doubts or self-sabotages. It doesn’t really matter what they’re called. But just tackle the stuff that’s going on inside your head around that.
Again, seek support for those things from someone like me or from a colleague — HR teams know all this stuff. If you’ve got a good relationship with your HR team, they know what it’s like to be under pressure. They know what self-doubt and imposter syndrome is. Go and talk to them. Those are the first two things.
Then the second one is just to relearn that there are different ways of doing things. Just because what worked for you in the past worked for you again doesn’t mean it’s going to work now. Always possible. One of the things, if I’m working with someone who other people are finding difficult, and again, they don’t think they’re difficult. I say to them, I’ll do that positive intention, “What is it you’re trying to achieve with this behaviour that other people might be saying is difficult?” They’ll tell me, and then I’ll say to them, “Is that working?” They say, “No actually, it’s not. Everybody now thinks I’m a right pain because of it.”
Then you can say to them, “If there was a different way of doing things that might get you better results, would you want to give that a go?” I’ve never had anyone say no. Everybody’s really keen. Once they realise that the thing they’re trying to achieve is perfectly valid and there might just be a smarter way of going about it, then they’re really happy to be flexible about that.
Brown: I suppose on a more positive note, what would you say to someone that is, whether it’s someone on their team or it’s someone that they [manage]. They see a lot of value [in them], but they’re really having difficulties communicating with them and getting through to them maybe because of something like imposter syndrome. What would you encourage them to explore that they maybe haven’t already?
Robinson: One of the principles in my book is a thing I call fierce kindness, and it’s about being really compassionate, but also not tolerating things that you shouldn’t tolerate. Over the years, I’ve seen the best leaders have this really dynamic combination. Almost second-by-second, they’re switching between being really compassionate, really understanding, having loads of empathy. And they’re saying, “But this thing can’t be tolerated.”
I always like to start from the compassion point: How do I relate to this person? How can I soothe their fears? What’s my communication style like? Is that landing with them? I would say this: “I’m not difficult.” And if I’m not difficult, that means I can change the way I’m doing things. I’ve got flexibility and choice about how I go about things, so I can just keep trying how to relate to that person until I find a way that works.
I think that’s a really empowering thing to say to people: “You’re not stuck. You’re not difficult.” If you’re not relating to that person, try a different way and keep trying until you get it.
Brown: I think that’s great advice. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, Nick, and for providing all these insights. It’s been a great conversation.
Robinson: Thank you, Steph. It’s been terrific and I loved your questions, thank you. They really made me stop and think about things.
Brown: Thank you so much.
