The ultimate responsibility for difficult situations lies with the leader. The wise leader knows to create and use all the support they can find.
BY MICHAEL F. BROOM, Ph.D. | CEO, Center for Human Systems
Leaders deal with people, and people are highly variable, often emotional and not logical. They can, therefore, present leaders with significant challenges. Challenges can range from managing problematic performance to personality clashes to intense conflicts to people you just don’t like.
There is a common element in all such situations. That element is you, the leader. How you manage yourself in these difficult situations is the key to useful outcomes.
We divided difficult situations into three areas: problematic performances, problematic personalities, and consistent conflicts. Let’s take each one at a time.
Problematic performance
A leader of an accounting unit came to me with the problem of her second in command, who, in her mind, had a messy work environment. I asked her how well he got his work done. She said fine in all areas other than his cluttered desk.
I asked her why his messy desk was important to her. She said she had been raised to equate neatness with quality. Before responding further, she said, “Oh, I just told you that his work was great. Guess I need to rethink.”
She realized her faulty belief system was the problem, not her second in command.
In a different organization, a client asked me to help with the problem of a super-star engineer no one wanted to work with. He showed no improvement despite being coached and counseled about his problematic behavior.
I asked the leader to estimate as best she could the cost to her and to the organization of managing the constant upsets the star causes and if that cost was worth it.
After much deliberation with colleagues, the answer was straightforward: no. The next step was to let the star know he would improve or, after due process, lose his job. She followed through, and he left on his own within three weeks.
The same applies to situations where an employee improves temporarily after counseling. Then, return to underperforming within a few weeks. Or the very popular, long-term employee no longer performing to standard.
In all these cases of difficult people, the cost in morale and management time is heavy. The problem, then, isn’t a problematic employee but making tough management decisions.
Problematic personalities
Sometimes, you find yourself with people you just don’t like. I remember leading a team in which not just one but two team members rubbed me the wrong every time I interacted with them. They were performing OK and weren’t offensive, but they were so irritating.
I talked with my mentor about moving them out of my team. He asked me what about them tortured me so much. I thought about it and identified that I saw them as subordinate and wimpish. My mentor then asked me if I had ever been like that.
For a moment, I hated him for that question. I had put the years of wimpishness behind me as if I’d never been like that. A powerful realization: what I couldn’t stand about them was something I couldn’t stand in myself.
From there, I could judge them for themselves rather than what I didn’t want to see in myself.
Consistent conflict
A head of a government agency asked me to help with two employees who were excellent performers and teammates unless the other was around. The leader has spoken with them both individually and together.
The best they could resolve was to avoid each other. An untenable solution. Their responsibilities often overlapped and required a coordination they couldn’t achieve on their own.
Individually, I interviewed them and their bosses, including the agency head. The result was a tangled mess of stories of who did or didn’t do what to whom back when. It surfaced that their areas of responsibility were vague and could be interpreted in many ways. Of course, they chose opposing interpretations.
When I met with all four of them, two solutions were devised. The first was that the leadership team would work out more explicit statements of responsibility. The second was more important. Even with clearer responsibilities being the genesis of the conflict, it has gone on so long that their antipathy toward each other had become automatic and habitual.
The cure for that had two parts: coaching with me to help them understand how to manage their beliefs and behavior better and identifying and recruiting a support system. Colleagues who would, as forcefully as needed, remind them to behave more professionally whenever they needed to coordinate.
The common thread in all these situations was leaders’ tolerance of problematic, organizationally costly situations for much longer than is conscionable. The resolution in all the situations includes looking at how they, the leader, often contributed to the situation by putting up with it for too long. And the recruiting whatever support they might need to end it.
The ultimate responsibility for difficult situations lies with the leader. That may feel like a heavy burden. Still, the wise leader knows to create and use all the support they can find. Using such support as a matter of course, you will discover that difficult situations do not last for very long.
Michael F. Broom, Ph.D., is an organizational psychologist with 45 years of experience with various people and organizations. He is the author of “The Infinite Organization” and “Power, The Infinite Game” with Donald Klein.
Formerly of Johns Hopkins University, he founded the Center for Human Systems and is a Lifetime Achievement Award honoree of the OD Network.
Contact Dr. Broom for coaching and consulting for your organization at michael@chumans.com. For more information on the Center for Human Systems and to check out its intensive programs and two-hour workshops, visit chumans.com. You’ll be surprised by the difference a single hour can make!
