How Managers and Supervisors ACTUALLY Create Problem Employees

Ok, it’s truth time. Who’s that person who looks out at you from the mirror in the morning? Is it someone who never makes mistakes and never creates anger, frustration, and difficult behavior in others? Because you aren’t perfect (are you?), that’s probably not so accurate. The person who looks back at you isn’t perfect, sometimes makes mistakes, and, yes, sometimes influences or creates difficult situations.

OK, so if that sounds right, then, once again, welcome to the human race. Some of the difficult situations that occur are in fact directly related to handling things in less than- perfect ways. Sometimes you screw up, and you’d better face that head on. If you don’t, you are going to accumulate difficult people until you are ready for the funny farm.

It’s important that you take on the responsibilities of handling difficult situations. That doesn’t mean beating yourself up or blaming yourself. It does mean recognizing when you have handled things badly, or recognizing that you have contributed to the building of difficulty. In an earlier chapter, we mentioned it takes two to tango and two to make a difficult situation into an all-out war. Remember this. If you contribute to difficult situations, you will be unable to fix them unless you recognize your involvement and seek to avoid making similar mistakes in future.

All right, let’s get back to the bathroom mirror. Do you see someone who is surrounded by difficult situations? How many difficult people do you encounter? If you find that a number of your employees seem difficult, then maybe it is you. If you find a number of your peers are difficult, maybe you’re a contributing factor.

This is always a touchy area. It’s hard to take a good, honest look in the mirror and see yourself as others see you. But with respect to difficult people, it’s a necessity.

Here’s why: Difficult people often create other difficult people. There are some people who are difficult enough that people react to them in contrary ways. You probably know a few. It’s easy to recognize a difficult behavior when it’s someone else’s behavior. It’s often very hard to identify or realize that you yourself might be difficult. What if you don’t realize it?

If you are, in fact, a major cause of the difficult behavior around you and don’t realize it, your future is dim. It may interfere with your career, but perhaps worse, you will be ignorantly miserable for the rest of your working life.

Learn How To Identify Whether You Are Part Of The Process Of Creating Difficult Employees (Diagnosing - Read More)