Steven Farmer asked, "about effective methods for dealing with problem people
within organizations."
Ultimately personalities can make or break any initiative. Even an average plan
can be very successful with good people, but a great plan will fail if the right
team is not involved. Steven is therefore asking a crucial question.
Unfortunately, one without a lot of answers. The problem can be particularly
acute if the person has power.
In less acute cases, there are ways of helping people see how they are behaving
in counter-productive ways. Many people here can probably tell you about
performance management processes that work effectively.
The problem surfaces in its most intractable form with cases where the person is
totally unaware, or perhaps even relishes playing the role of spoiler.
Personally, I like to believe there are ways to help these people help
themselves as well. However, the realities of today's world may allow
insufficient time or resources to find the correct path.
Some tactics I have used when I recognized the existence of a problem. Avoid
consensus decision-making. You may never get it. Point out, if necessary,
several times, that person x is the only one who disagrees, and in the name of
making progress, you will have to accept the group's decision even with his or
her disagreement.
Avoid having a problem person on the team. Ask for a replacement, expecially if
there is broader agreement that he/she is problematic in a team environment.
Jointly agreeing on facts, and identifying the opinions as such also clarifies
and puts into context the efforts of a spoiler. Thanking people for their
opinions makes it clear they are opinions, not facts.
I personally believe in the power of public discussion. A lot of problems tend
to grow in the 'dark', and the best way to make them shrink is to bring them
publicly, visibly, vocally into the light. This is an excellent way to limit
the power of hidden agendas. Thus, if someone is making group work difficult,
there may be a tendency to discuss this behind closed doors. That may be
exactly the wrong direction to take. Get it out in the open in a constructive,
professional fashion, get full disclosure, get public scrutiny.
There are a number of manipulative ways to manage the work of the team to
minimize the impact of the problem person. For example, break off smaller teams
to develop straw man proposals for the larger group to consider. This will
allow the smaller team to make considerable progress to bring back to the larger
team for approval. Ultimately, these methods are manipulative, and I don't like
them. However, at times the reality may not leave many options.
--Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>