Handling Difficult People

Focus on the problem, not the person

Difficult employees are hard to deal with. Some have niggling issues for which no solution seems apparent. Management is slow to react. The situation festers. The politics around it grow complicated.

In most jurisdictions there are clear-cut rules for dismissible offences. More challenging are people who are simply ‘difficult’. They may be chronically late, disrupt team efforts, indulge in excessive politics, be rude and aggressive, or passive and non-compliant.

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Playing to strengths

Buy low; sell high 

Two things, very simple; makes sense. In 40 years in finance I rarely found people who were consistently good at both. The industry has a natural bent to invest rather than divest. In early years as an analyst, people asked me what to buy; few asked what to sell. 

Some were better at shorting, ie selling, but not always good at covering the short, ie buying. When natural buyers or natural sellers had to do the opposite of their strength, it was often too early or too late.

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Beware the Big Wins

Successful learning

Recently published research suggests smiling excessively in victory can lead to defeat in the next round. 

There may be something to it. The results, yet to be widely repeated, touch a nerve. I do know that in business the after-effects of a big win can be dangerous.

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Work happens to be part of life

Is work-life balance such a good idea?

It has a nice ring to it, like it’s a state of calm. In the office, we’d competently manage stressful issues. At home, the family room would overflow with fulfillment.

Yet the conversation is never balanced. The focus is always on time, mainly a demand for more of the free variety. Work is the enemy, somehow divorced from life rather than an integral part of it.

Other judgments intervene. Women feel guilty of being absentee parents. Men feel they should be more than just providers. The conversation gets hijacked by working mother arguments.

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The Mindfulness Thing

How doing nothing helps.

What do Google, Rupert Murdoch and KPMG have in common with Apple, eBay and Ford Motor Company?  

All of them embrace the notion of mindfulness.

A decade ago, it was virtually unheard of outside spiritual circles. Now everyone is trying it. Even Goldman Sachs offers employees in-house courses on the practice. That’s a firm that regularly turns up in lists of the world’s least-respected corporations. What’s going on? 

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