Question: “As a manager, I am constantly amazed at the difficult personalities that I deal with on a daily basis. Can you help me understand and deal with them?”
Often people are hired because they bring a unique perspective to the organization. However, in addition to their skills, they also have distinctive personalities, and some of these are difficult to get along with. We all may recognize the following:
Question on negative people: “I have an employee who seems to delight in being a naysayer. Although he is an excellent worker, and I would hate to lose him, his negative personality has an adverse effect on the team. What should I do?
Labeling the individual or their personality as the problem limits our options to firing them because we cannot fundamentally change the lifetime of conditioning that created their personality. Therefore, the first step in dealing with negativity is shifting our thinking to focus on the problem behavior, not the person.
A workplace where people work together for a common interest, the good of the organization, is a healthy and productive environment. However, most people have stories about those difficult co-workers who wreak havoc on that collaborative atmosphere. Clarifying perceptions of why people demonstrate these behaviors is the first step to dealing with them.
As the executive director of A Campaign for Forgiveness Research at Virginia Commonwealth University, Everett Worthington devoted his life to studying and promoting the benefits of forgiveness. In 1995, when his mother was brutally murdered, his philosophy of forgiveness was put to the test. While pacing the room during a sleepless night, he debated with himself the pros and cons of forgiving. On one hand, he was so angry and hurt that he did not want to extend the gift of forgiveness to the young man who senselessly and viciously changed the face of his family forever. Conversely, his research determined that carrying resentment around was like hauling around a “red-hot coal with the intention of one day throwing it back at the one who hurt you” (Worthington, 2001, p. 8). The burden of blame and anger creates pain, heartache, and possible health problems for the person who carries it around (Worthington).
Question – “What is workplace bullying, and what can I do if I am subjected to it?”
Workplace bullying is interpersonal mistreatment, psychological harassment, or abusive antisocial behavior directed at another person. It is not a personality clash, misunderstanding, or miscommunication. Rather, it is a deliberate pattern of hurtful and menacing activities that occurs repeatedly and over a period of time.