The Cost of Difficult People


Let’s face it. Most of us try very hard to avoid managing difficult people. Somehow we believe that, left to their own devices, they will “smarten up” or “grow up,” or if we’re really lucky, simply quit or go away. It rarely works that way. Still, if you are to be more willing and able to manage the difficult folks, you need to know why you must do so. And that means understanding the toll difficult people exact from everyone around them. Let’s start with the most important person here, you. After all, if you don’t see a personal benefit to being proactive in dealing with that difficult person, why would you put the time and energy into trying to turn around a difficult situation?

The Cost To You

Since you are reading this book, you are the most important person with respect to the difficult people around you. So, how does a difficult person affect you?

First, let’s talk about your mental and physical health. Ok, you aren’t likely to go loony on us because of a difficult person (it has been known to happen). Unfortunately, it only takes one very difficult person to affect your enjoyment of your job, your stress levels, and your ability to do your job.

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Insider Secrets

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for the year 1997, about two-thirds of stress related work absences occurred in white collar occupations (management, technical, sales positions). Of course other employees also can suffer stress reactions, too. No doubt, dealing with difficult people contributes to the numbers.

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That’s serious. If you have an extremely difficult employee, co-worker, or boss, each time you deal with his or her difficult actions, your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure escalates and all manner of other unpleasant things happen inside your body. That’s not healthy. Difficult people can help you feel like crap.

Do you leave work muttering to yourself about what John the Difficult, or Mary, the Naysayer, did today? How about Bob the Backroom Politicker? That’s not good either. Difficult people not only intrude upon your workday but can follow you to your car, get in the passenger side, and drive home with you. If they are really bad, they can even climb into bed with you, snoring their difficult snores, keeping you up all night.

Are you happy with that situation? Of course not. Not only do difficult people have a nasty effect on your physical and mental health but they also cost you in terms of being able to do your own job properly. If you spend time every day fixing the damage done by a difficult person, you are not doing the other things you need to do as part of your job. That can make you look bad to your boss. At minimum, losing time to difficult people is frustrating.

Convinced yet that you need to reduce the costs of difficult people? Here’s a list of costs you pay personally to the difficult person. Difficult people often:

• adversely affect your mental health
• adversely affect your physical health
• reduce the enjoyment of your job
• make you look bad as a manager or employee
• suck time out of your busy day
• interfere with promotions or pay increases
• As someone once said, “It ain’t pretty.”

The Cost To Others—It’s Not Just All About You

Some people are extraordinarily tolerant of the pain and suffering difficult people can inflict on them personally. These amazing folks are able to “blow off” the stress of difficult people without experiencing physical or mental damage. If you are one of these, I congratulate you, but that doesn’t absolve you from managing difficult people.

That’s because it isn’t just about you. Imagine what happens when you throw a rock into a quiet lake. When the rock hits it creates a set of circles or ripples in the water. They move farther and farther out. Now, as a manager or supervisor you are at the center of the disruption. But the ripples go beyond you. They affect more and more water. That’s how difficult people affect not just you as a manager, but many others in the organization. In severe cases, those ripples hit other employees with whom the difficult person comes in contact. Not only does a difficult person affect those in immediate contact, but the more difficult a person, the more those ripples affect others—customers, people in the human resources department, and even other departments who don’t have immediate contact with the difficult person.

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This Won’t Work!

A common mistake made by managers is to ignore how a difficult person affects others. A difficult person might get along fine with the boss, but not fine with co-workers or customers.

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What’s the worst part? Those little ripples aren’t really little. They can hit people like huge tsunami (really really huge waves) … even people who don’t have to deal with the difficult person directly.

Let’s make this more concrete. Noah, the Prophet of Doom, works for you. At meetings, whenever an idea is suggested, Noah is the first to tell everyone why it won’t work, and why he knows best. If left unchecked what do you think will happen? Well, people aren’t stupid. Eventually, they tire of having their ideas and their heads bashed with a two-by-four and stop suggesting ideas. The source of new ideas dries up. No new products. No new services. No new improvements. No business?!?

Apart from the business side, Noah and his dire predictions depress co-workers and those around him.

Regardless of the difficult person’s particular style of being difficult he or she can have a profound effect on others. For example:

Difficult people tend to affect others by:

• Reducing enjoyment of their own work
• Wasting large amounts of their time
• Reducing their productivity and job satisfaction
• Causing them to consider resigning and moving on
• Eating up huge amounts of time in meetings
• Damaging relationships with customers
• Turning other people into difficult people

The last point deserves a bit more discussion. If you have a single difficult employee, don’t believe that only that person’s behavior is at stake here. A difficult person is contagious. Yes, being difficult is catchy.

I once worked with a person who was extremely difficult. Let’s call her Donna to protect the guilty. While very smart, she had little ability to work with people, and wherever she went she was followed by a little black cloud. Her blunt rudeness, interrupting and general “Queen of the Empire” attitude, made people mad or just drove them nuts. Her manager probably spent literally hundreds of hours fixing up things as a result of Donna.