How to Manage a Team
Firstly, what makes a team member difficult?
Is it just a case that they don’t want to be there? That they don’t want to be managed by you? Or could there be another reason that is a lot less confrontational?
Could it be that there is something going on outside of work? Is this a new behaviour or something you’ve inherited that you’ve been aware of for some time?
Might they be struggling with workload or their capability? Is there an environmental factor at play – are they struggling to work in the set-out hours, in the office environment?
There are many, many explanations for why someone might be perceived as “difficult”. The skill is finding out exactly what that explanation is, so you can adapt your approach to match it. Sometimes, it is just because they’re in the wrong job and there is a mismatched set of values at play.
But not always.
So how do you handle it?
The main thing you need to do is to get inside of that person’s head. Get to know them, and use your empathy skills to put yourself in their position. Find out what they’re motivated by, what drives them and what they want out of working with you and your company.
If you’re not in an environment where you feel you could naturally catch them for an after-work conversation to find out more about them, then perhaps orchestrate a personal development meeting, which you could invite them to in order to find out more about their goals (just be sure to let them know that wanting to just be good in their current position is fine too if they’re not wanting to take on more responsibility).
You can then ask them questions (which you could supply in advance) about what their goals are, what they like and dislike about their role and any changes they would make if they were running the team etc.
This is where I would start. Once you’ve got more of an understanding of what might be driving the “difficult to manage” behaviour – you will be able to work on planning a suitable approach to tackle it.
Often this conversation in itself can be enough to start turning things around, especially if you use it as an opportunity to lightly highlight the perceived behaviour to see if it’s something, they’re even aware of.
For example, I’ve noticed that sometimes you accidentally forget to XXX, is there anything I can do to help make it easier for you to achieve this?
If you would like to learn more tactics on how to manage the difficult to manage types, then join our community where we will have workshops available to help you depending on the stage that you’re at.
