Q.How do you assess different personality types?
A. I use a personality profile to help people find out whether they are being difficult to others. Each type of personality can be difficult to others, often unwittingly.
Q. What does an organisation need to understand while dealing with difficult employees? How can they best navigate them towards organisational growth?
A. When I offer my ‘Dealing with Difficult People’ seminars, I learn that their most difficult people are not clients or co-workers, but their supervisors and managers. This appears to stem from the fact that most of those supervisors have not received proper supervisory training and are just trying to clone another bad supervisor. Many of them even have an MBA degree, but have not learned the basics for bringing out the best in their employees.
Q. What could be the biggest threat to an organisation?
A. The biggest threat to an organisation occurs when top management does not stop or control bullying behaviour. The bullies cause havoc. Unless they are disciplined for their behaviour, it will simply continue.
Q. What are the challenges before HR in managing difficult people in an organisation?
A. Every company requires anti-harassment and anti-bullying policies that are strictly enforced at the workplace and cover employees across levels.
Q. Please share with us your most interesting experience while dealing with such people as an HR. How did you handle them?
A. My most interesting instance was when I was hired by a financial institute in Melbourne to set up the HR policies and procedures manual for the company. This included an anti-harassment and anti-bullying policy that was approved by the senior management. I left the organisation because the biggest bully was the CEO of the company himself.
Unfortunately, Australia has no bullying laws at all – just ‘guidance notes’ and ‘codes of conduct’ that are not laws and not really enforceable. It can take an employee several years and huge money to hire a lawyer to take a case to court. Most people simply leave the company and hope for the best at the next organisation. The only protection in Australia against bullying is if there is violence and the person can lodge an assault claim with their local police.
Q. What should a company see in a candidate?
A. HR managers should never hire anyone without checking at least two references. They must ask the right questions to the companies contacted.
Q. Tell us one such personality trait that could be difficult to manage at the workplace?
A. The passive/aggressive person can wreck a company by his or her terrible behaviour. Many resort to tantrums. They sabotage others to make themselves look better. They are tattletales and exaggerate everything they do and play the innocent when accused of wrongdoing.
