Dee Davis (00:34)
Good morning and welcome to the Management Under Construction podcast. I'm your host, Dee Davis. Today we are going to talk about difficult people. Have you ever had to deal with someone that's difficult? Come on, you know that feeling in your gut that you get when that person's name is said out loud or when something comes up and you know you're going to have to deal with them? It could be your boss, your coworker, an employee, a client, even a family member.
So what do you do? Today, I'm going to share with you a few stories from my own experience. And we can talk about what I did right and what I could have done better in some of these situations. It seems only right to start with the situation that drove me to buy the book, Working with Difficult People by Muriel Solomon in the first place.
This particular story is about a difficult coworker. I was working for a trade contractor as a project manager, managing several of my own projects. One of the other PMs had some HR issues, lost his staff, and was struggling to keep up with his workload without any help. My manager asked if I could spare some time to go help him get a project off the ground. And like a good little soldier, I said, sure, I can spare a few hours a week to help him.
I set aside a couple of half days per week to go to the office and meet with him and do the work from there. Let me back up a little to those HR issues. This person had numerous HR issues, including many disagreements with his staff, conflicts with clients, and crossing the boundary between business and personal with certain people on more than one occasion. I knew about this going in, but I wasn't really concerned.
because as we were going to be in the office and around a lot of other people, and I'm a very head down, get to work kind of person, especially when I'm under time pressure. And I certainly was trying to cram this into my weekly busy schedule. So I got up to speed on the project, got my to-do list, which included contacting vendors for pricing and pulling together submittals. Every time I turned around, he was standing behind me watching what I was doing.
If we'd been working in the same space, that would have been one thing. But I was squatting in a spare cubicle and his spot was way on the other side of the office. What? I asked. I was just checking to see what you were doing. Well, I'm calling this vendor to get a quote like you asked. I already called him. They're going to send it in a couple of days. Then why did you ask me to call them? Well, you know, I had to talk to them about some other things, so...
Things went on like this for a couple of weeks. Hanging over my shoulder, asked me to do things only to turn around and do it himself. My patience was growing thin. I ordered the book and started reading it. For those of you that know me, I doubt anyone would use the word patient to describe me short of being in a doctor's office. Here I was adding to my workload to have someone second guess everything I did and then micromanage me.
I don't remember if it was in week two or three that I finally snapped, but I didn't make it very far into Muriel's book. Sorry, Muriel. I asked him if we could go talk outside. In the parking lot, I'll let him have it. Not in the physical outsiders kind of way.
but it was a verbal assault. I had enough and told him that if he had time to micromanage me, then he had time to do it himself. And he had two choices, delegate and let me do the work or I was leaving and he could do it himself. The verbal onslaught was received with, can't believe you're talking to me this way. Why are you yelling at me? I thought we were friends.
trying to turn things back on me. In our society, women are told from infancy that they're supposed to be kind, gentle, agreeable, nurturing, and most of all, stroke the male ego. His turnabout was meant to remind me of that, and I was having none of it that day. Okay, so was he out of line? Absolutely. Should I have snapped on him? Probably not. I think what he should have done,
differently is clear, but just in case it's not, let's say it out loud. Don't ask for help unless you actually need it. It's okay to need help, but when you get it, respect the person helping you by using it properly. I wasn't getting paid any extra for doing his work on top of mine, work he actually had time to do because he had time to watch me do it.
If you're going to ask for help, then delegate and trust the process. I'm known for getting things done. Not only was bird dogging me insulting and infuriating, but it was also a clear waste of everyone's time. Those of you that know me well, know that I hate wasting time. What could I have done better? This was a landmark event in my personal leadership journey. I learned what I didn't want to be, both by his example and my own.
I waited way too long to buy the book. I should have sped through it and come up with a better solution to my situation, better than losing my cool and ending up in a confrontation. A better solution would have been to have a private and direct conversation after the first or second instance, as soon as I was sure that this was going to be a problem. Making it clear that I was here to help his request and that if my help was not valued, I was going to go back to my own projects.
Pointing out the behavior that is not acceptable in specific detail is important in these instances, as the person that is doing it is often not self-aware enough to understand how their behavior is being perceived by others. In the end, we were OK. And I completed the task and moved on. But I could have and should have handled that better.
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The next story that I want to share with you is about a difficult client that screamed at me almost every day. You heard that right. It wasn't fun. Before I dive in, I want to acknowledge that this is unacceptable behavior and it's not acceptable for any employer to expect an employee to deal with. But alas, it happened. And though I told my employer about it and they even witnessed it once, they did nothing.
I survived and I'm not traumatized, but I did learn some valuable lessons.
I was a trade contractor PM and the screamer in question was the general contractors PM. In this person's defense, I think they had some kind of an imbalance. And I'm not saying that in a ha ha kind of way. I genuinely think they needed to be on some kind of medication. The inciting incidents were varied, but they were often around change orders and billings on the project. I would assemble my change order and submit it.
The next thing I'd get called into his office and get raked over the coals about every single line item. He would accuse me of stealing, lying, cheating, and outright robbing him and the owner. He even resorted to the age old insult of dragging my mother's reputation into it. You know how it is in construction. The airs blue around the trailers and I can swear with the best of them. But even in my eight years in the Navy, my mother's morals were never pulled into question.
Sometimes the screamings were on the phone, sometimes in person. In the beginning, I tried to respond to his accusations, but I learned over time just to let him go. He rarely took a breath from one accusation to the next. So I just let him go until he ran out of gas. Five minutes, maybe 10, depending on the day. When he seemed to run out of steam, I would ask, are you done?
And he'd often respond with, yeah, let's go get some breakfast like nothing ever happened. Some old school construction people are like this. I remember fist fights on the job being a somewhat regular event back in the day. And most of the time, everyone was cool with each other afterwards. Some people vent their frustration in inappropriate ways. And anger is the go-to emotion for venting frustration. Sometimes the person just needs to get it out of their system. I call it verbal throw up.
and then they're good. I've been there myself on more than one occasion, but I try very hard to keep it professional at work. I think I've gotten better at this as I've aged and gained more experience. I seem to remember a lot of swearing and phone slamming back in the day. You remember those old desk phones? It kind of felt good to slam those down when you were mad.
Was the client wrong to have this verbal throw up regularly on the site? Yeah, of course. And by the way, it wasn't just me. When I realized he did this to everybody, it helped me not take it personally. And it was clear that the issue was not mine. Was there anything that I could have done better? In this particular case, I think I handled it the best way I could. I never had any of my staff interact with them because I didn't want them to have to deal with that mess. We kept things amicable.
We got the job done and because I realized early that the problem was his and his emotions were not really directed at me.
I didn't need therapy when it was over. I did tell my company that I would never work with that person again, and I never did. Fortunately, it wasn't a GC that we worked with often.
The third and final story for this episode is about a difficult boss. This boss always thought he was the smartest person in the room and he never made mistakes, at least in his mind. But if you made a mistake, it was discussed very publicly. We used to call the meetings that he would run the beatings. Right now I can hear about a thousand of you out there vigorously nodding your heads.
If you've ever had a difficult boss, hit the like button now, share this episode with someone that can sympathize with what you've been through. In our industry, this is the toughest one, I think. A difficult coworker might be on another project, leave the company, or move to another group. A difficult client is done when the job is done. But a boss? Unless one of you quits,
or there's a way to report to someone else in the chain of command, you're kind of stuck. I was told that I should be thankful. I even had a job. I was told I would fail when I got promoted to PM. I was told to lie to a client so that we could make more profit. I didn't do it. I saw this person override every person in every position in the company and they just let it happen. I remember one time.
in a PM meeting getting yelled at about something or another. As the verbal lashing continued, I raised my lowered head a little to look around the room and every person in the room had their head down and their eyes lowered like children being scolded. No one was making eye contact with anyone else. At the end of the meeting, I was embarrassed to meet the other PM's gaze after being publicly humiliated. But then I realized something.
It wasn't me that was being humiliated. He was doing it to himself. He looked like a complete jackass screaming at me in front of everyone about some routine topic. This was nothing new. It was just my turn. So how did I handle it? I should have had more guts. I should have spoken up in defense of myself and others. This was another situation where I was not necessarily targeted specifically. This person bullied everyone.
There's lots of words for people like this and lots of words for people that put up with it. I was young, I wasn't experienced enough, and I was afraid of losing my job if I spoke up. I saw this person rise from PM to ops to VP and beyond. All of this behavior went completely unchecked. At a certain point, they were high enough that they were making the rules. So the company culture was permanently changed.
As this person rose through the ranks, it continued to get worse and I eventually realized there was no way out for me but to quit. Anybody who knows me knows that quit is a four-letter word and I don't take it lightly. I keep pushing until I find a path through, but in this case, I wasn't going to win. It was never going to get better with someone like that in charge. I couldn't fix it and I couldn't spend the rest of my career working with someone like
that. What could they have done better? Everything. Good leadership is the opposite of this example. Again, I had a stellar example of what I did not want to be. Should I have called HR? Probably, but I'm still not convinced that would have changed anything. Should I have sued the company when I left? Extreme. I thought of it many times over the years, but sometimes winning on paper just isn't worth it.
I have important things to do and dwelling on the past just doesn't figure into it. I'd love to hear your stories about dealing with difficult people. What happened, how you dealt with it and what you learned. Tell us your stories in the comments or send them to me at [email protected] and yours might get read on the podcast. Thanks for joining us. Please like and share this episode with a friend and leave us a comment or question. Have a great day.
