Dealing with difficult people and situations at work

How to leverage negative moments of truth

Most of us have to go to work.  And at work we get put into situations and interactions that can be difficult.  With the apocalypse waning, at least in the US, we may even be going into the office or going to the client.

It’s interesting to me that there is this current popular idea that work is somehow supposed to be fun, interesting and fulfilling.  At the risk of sounding like your parents, work is work.

That being said, somewhere around 85% pf people are ‘satisfied’ with their jobs.  But, 40% or more expect to move to a new job in the next year.  It seems there’s a weird dynamic of people being relatively comfortable staying in a job they don’t necessarily love because it checks some other boxes.

It would be too simple to say that we trade our time and energy for pay.  We’re humans.  We also need those intrinsic factors, like recognition, outcomes, safety and the illusion of self-determination.

This is a long way around saying that a job is a big part of your overall life package.  You’re not always going to be happy.  Much of the bad parts come from difficult people and difficult situations.

One might say that these difficult people and difficult situations are the ‘negative moments of truth’ in your career journey.  We’ve talked before about how to seize the positive moments of truth.  These are those moments in your career that have an outsized impact.  Things like the big presentation, the meeting with the bog boss or the critical deal.

Moments of truth is an extension of the 80-20 rule.  There are a small number of critical events that you have to do well at.  The rest of it is just noise.  Ever notice that person who is on-time for every meeting, fills out all the reports, updates all the statuses but messes up the big deals?

That person gets fired.

On the other hand, maybe you know a different person who is slow to keep up in the reporting but nails the big events.  Everyone may bemoan his or her sloppiness in keeping up with admin, but that worker gets promoted and given the big moments of truth because they have a valuable skill, showing up when it matters.

Could this be an approach that works with the negative moments of truth as well?

What’s a negative moment of truth?

That co-worker or customer relationship that is just awful.  You hate coming to work because of it. You dread interacting with them.  You lose sleep over it, running those conversations around in your head at night, trying to find a solution.

Here’s the shocking news: it’s probably more than half your fault.  The first step is to look inward.  This will give you the information you need to win the moment of truth.

First, why does this person or relationship make you feel the way you do?  Do they threaten you?  Do they make you feel inadequate or make you feel bad about yourself?  Dig into that because that is an opportunity or your side to find that your own emotions and assumptions are getting in your way.  Once you can let that stuff go you can typically find a path forward.

This is difficult.  Because the nature of these interactions is that we feel wronged or violated and our fight or flight response turns on.  We automatically think that this person must be a bad person because, hey, we know we’re a good person.

Look deeper.  It takes courage.  You are at least 50% to blame.  You can control how you respond.  And that is the moment of truth.  How you respond.  Once you understand what’s going on, what’s triggering you, and move that up into your big brain you have the leverage.

Are they one of the classic dysfunctional personality types that you find at work?  The bully, the manipulator, the career climber?  Chance are that their ‘rules of engagement’ are different than yours.  It pays to understand personality types.  It may just be that you two are wired to not think the same way.  Again, a little introspection will give you leverage.  There are concrete and standard ways to deal with other personality types.  It’s like judo you can use their weight to your advantage.

Once you come up with a strategy it may require you to step outside your comfort zone.  In these relationship dynamics the pop-psychology trope is to have a heart-to-heart difficult conversation where you explain to the other person how you feel and Whah, Whah, Whah…

This is perfect world stuff.  It’s not a perfect world.

That conversation may be one of the answers but it depends on the personality type and situation.  If you try that weepy crap with a bully they are just going to use it against you.  A better response might be to pick an opportunity to draw a hard line with that bully and earn their respect.

My point is to do the work to understand your ‘opponent’ and use the appropriate response with them.  In some cases, it might be praise, in others a heart to heart in others a stern drawing of a line, in others it might involve coalition building or flanking.  And this is going to involve difficult conversations – a negative moment of truth.

These conversations are not to be taken lightly.  You can’t wing it.  Once you have your strategy you practice it.  You know your talking points.  You come up with a plan.  You execute.  These are specific interactions, hard interactions, fierce interactions.  They have a methodology that you can learn.

To summarize: most of us will just try to avoid the crappy relationship dynamics.  What I’m telling you is that this is an opportunity, an ‘80%er’, for you to make progress.  First look inward.  Then know your opponent.  Then create a plan, practice it and execute it.

The same methodology is true for other negative moments of truth.  Let’s say your company let’s a virus into your customer’s data or some other awful event that you have no defense for.

You want to curl up and hide and not talk to the customer.  You spent so much time building the relationship and now you have to go grovel.

It’s a negative moment of truth.  This is a built-in opportunity to lead in a bad situation.  Anyone can lead in a good situation.

Think about it.  You have the intense focus of your company AND the customer.  You’ve got the spotlight.  If you had to get the same attention of all these people without a crisis you probably couldn’t.  That’s leverage! Use it.

Own the resolution.  Make it positive.  You build more credibility in how you execute in a crisis.

Think about the stories people remember.  No one talks about all the FedEx shipments that got there on time without problem.  They tell the story about the guy who rented a helicopter to deliver a package in a raging snowstorm.

That’s the power of using negative moments of truth to your advantage.