Dealing with a Toxic VERY Difficult person at Work

[didficultemployee]

Hey everyone, NC just to be sure this is confidential

I'm in a bit of a tricky situation at work and could really use some advice. I'm supposed to be working in partnership with a senior colleague. Technically, I manage this person, but we are both very senior in the company. Here's the problem: this colleague cannot take being told what to do. Everything has to be sugarcoated and glossed over. Additionally, their productivity is slow.

Anytime I try to address these issues, it turns into a huge conflict, no matter how diplomatically I approach it. I believe it's a cultural fit issue, but changing things now is not an option without first trying to resolve.

Does anyone have any tactics or strategies for managing someone like this? How do you handle a senior colleague who resists feedback, especially when it comes to their productivity and performance targets?

@Hillarious about 9 months. They are older, only marginally but they are older

@Nicebloomers what makes you say this?!!

Do you have regular 121s with this person? If you aren't then I would suggest you start doing that weekly. Use it as an opportunity to talk with them, let them raise issues they have with you and it also gives you space to tell them what you expect of them as well. Make a record of everything you talk about and save it incase you need to manage them formally later. Have you spoken to your line manager about the problems you are having? If not you should, they might be able to help you.... I have seen it happen that for whatever reason a worker just doesn't respect their line manager but will be the perfect worker for a different manager 🤷🏽‍♀️

You say in your first post you are "I'm supposed to be working in partnership with a senior colleague."

Which of the following do you think is closest to why you've been given this person to work with:

1. Your colleagues & bosses know this person is difficult and have given them to you to work with because they rate your skills and therefore trust you will improve the difficult person
2. Your colleagues & bosses know this person is difficult and have given them to you to work with to test you (or worse)
3. Your colleagues & bosses didn't give this person to you because they were difficult (e.g. they didn't know this was the case)

As how I'd proceed would depend partly on this

As in they are aggressive towards you? If that's the case, you need to involve HR and performance manage and potentially discipline them. Underperforming and not meeting expectations is one thing but you need to deal with inappropriate behaviour.

This person is likely to raise a grievance against you if you try and performance manage them - you need evidence of the conversations/emails in which you've set expectations for both.

So they don’t turn things around on you and call you difficult to work with/ bullying them/ setting unrealistic goals/ not supporting them when they undoubtedly don’t hit a deadline/ KPI/ under perform etc. If you need to involve HR or they involve HR you have evidence that covers your arse and evidence to manage them.

@dcsp the last option you gave;

• Your colleagues & bosses didn't give this person to you because they were difficult (e.g. they didn't know this was the case)

@MotherofChaosandDestruction a little at time yes - I never feel threatened literally but I would at time say they have displayed this

@sunflowrsngunpowdr suggesting weekly would cause issues - perhaps monthly as weekly may seem overkill

i think the problem is that responsibilities and authority are not clear, even in your own OP it’s unclear whether you are line manager or not. A difficult person is bound to take advantage if roles are unclear.

Honestly OP you are not cut out to be a manager.

The other person feels that.

If you want to be a manager start acting like one.

Be supportive and listen to what team members have to say but also be clear about targets/KPIs.

Have regular one to one meetings with all your team to check on progress.

This is really basic stuff...

And what do you mean by 'cultural fit'? you have to be careful that what you do and say also does not come out as discriminatory and personal.

@Startingagainandagain that's a fair comment - but we are where we are, I cannot just give up! So I'm trying to fix the situation

@Startingagainandagain cultural fit is definitely a thing - I'm not talking literally about their culture - I mean values and behaviours of the existing team and how we work. It's an accepted fact that not everyone is going to be a fit for every team - to me that's basic

@Chchchchnamechange can I ask what about what I said made you conclude this?? I'm not being funny when I say that I genuinely want to know so that I can reflect

@Startingagainandagain can I ask what about what I said made you conclude this?? I'm not being funny when I say that I genuinely want to know so that I can reflect

Hi OP it’s because you said “technically I manage him” and you mention that last. So it gives me the impression you don’t actually manage him in practice and maybe you don’t want to? I may be wrong of course. I would suggest you try and establish some new working practices. Once a month catch up sounds not enough, though obviously I don’t know anything about your work and it’s norms.

I would suggest once a fortnight one to one if you have wider team catch up meetings, once a week if you don’t. You aren’t going to overcome difficult issues if you meet once a month.

@Moanranger i don’t see how she has indicated anywhere that that’s her management style at all. You have to at a baseline lay out what a certain project includes which may include ‘telling people what to do’ by simply explaining tasks, setting goals and deadlines.

Do you every say “yes, why do you ask?”

could it be they want to get into this area of work?

And if this fails, you follow your performance management guidelines to the letter.

I've seen managers twist themselves into knots trying with people who are either none idle or utterly resistant to anything that is not their will.

In this situation I'm would be having twice daily on to ones. Ten minutes in the morning, these are you objectives for the day. Ten minutes at end of the day to see how they got on. Add in a midday one if they are routinely not completing the work set. It's exhausting, but they will soon realise you mean business and knuckle down, or leave. I did this very successfully when I inherited a team if 14 intransigent sales reps. They were all gone in 8 weeks and I could recruit my own team. This was in a 1000 seat call centre and I never got grief again as they saw I meant business.

I'd escalate this issue to your own line manager or with HR tbh. There's no reasoning with unreasonable people.

Keep a log of EVERY interaction
Get a summary of conversations in email back to toxic colleague
Get every meeting set up with a clear agenda and Aims/Objectives.
Deal in facts only not emotions.

It's a horrible stressful situation.
I've been there and ended up leaving for a better paid job in a nicer org who would not tolerate this behaviour. At my last job bullying at a senior level (by men mainly) was rife.

How do you manage someone without telling them what to do?

The employee is probably a man who can’t get his head around a woman being more senior than him. Not sure being “supportive” Will help with that.

Agree with @Doggymummar on very frequent but short meetings. If small teams have a daily stand-up meeting to plan work, highlight problems, etc, there's no reason that a team of 2 can't.

Agree with @LoveRules on keeping a log of every interaction. I'd give it a week of this and the super-frequent stand-ups before escalating to your manager though.