How to beat troublemakers

Got staff whose poisonous attitude is infecting those around them? They may need some corporate tough love, says JULIE MIDLETON.


They're jealous, domineering, sarcastic. They bristle with hostility, or give colleagues the silent treatment.

Nagging or throwing spectacular tantrums, they blatantly undermine others and create endless drama.

They manipulate by sulking, being hurt, being overly sensitive or being abusive. When it suits them, they don't understand, won't cooperate, thought you meant something else.

They are, says Auckland freelance human resources consultant Suzanne Couper, the estimated 5 per cent of staff who not only damage working relationships and company performance but take their poisonous moods home to their families and the wider community.

Demand for help in dealing with the disruptive has led Couper to develop a course called Corporate Tough Love, which helps managers to find ways to deal with emotional blackmail in the office before it becomes a sacking issue.

Its high-profile precedent is the Toughlove self-help movement started in the 1970s by American family therapists Phyllis and David York, which aims to help parents to deal with bad teenage behaviour.

"Recognise, control and outsmart" has become Couper's motto over the year she has been teaching managers the art of tough love. Disruptive people, she says, are very clever. They know what they're doing.

So far, managers from Inland Revenue in Wellington, electronics giant Canon, local councils, Government departments and schools have taken part, admitting - unlike so many companies - that they might have a problem.

After all, one likes to think that professionally employed adults won't behave like catty teenagers. But managers, says Couper, are often in denial about this. They don't want to admit that their corporate culture allows this behaviour, and that it has got to this point because they have not handled it.

"They fear acting because of repercussions, and because they don't have good processes in place. And they don't want to let on to anyone else."

And they often find probing of their communication style quite threatening.

Confession time: that problem people total 5 per cent is poetic licence, says Couper. "There's no research that I know of [to say so].

"But I have had people say, 'I think we've got 50 per cent of the 5 percenters.' It's a way of recognising how bad they are."

Bad behaviour at work flows out of four common attitudes, says Couper.

The defensive, the naggers, the prejudiced and the sarcastic tend to lack empathy with others, are unable to see things from others' point of view and cling to the conviction they are always right.

Domineering, stubborn, patronising and hostile people are often frightened of losing control, and often alienate others in clinging to their position.

"The anger comes out from their fear of not being good enough," says Couper.

Pleasers, know-alls and those who intimidate resist authority by being either boot-lickers or rebels.

Those who are jealous and the indecisive worrying types tend to have low self-esteem, with the defeatist thinking that implies.

"They think of themselves as victims - life happens to them," says Couper.

Men tend to be more overtly hostile. The women are more underhand.

And the impact? Colossal. The problem person gets a sense of power he or she may not have elsewhere in their life, says Couper.

Morale slumps - and nowhere more quickly than in the manager who knows he or she should be seeking a solution, but is paralysed by fear.

"They lose confidence in their ability to manage and motivate," says Couper. "They start on the back foot."

But silence condones negative behaviour.

Couper says: "A lot of managers want to be nice, and feel that to motivate people they have to be liked. It isn't true."

This attitude isn't helped by corporate New Zealand's tendency to promote people to leadership positions without supporting them with appropriate training, she says.

"Leaders are not born. They have to learn leadership skills."

Her workshop asks participants to profile problem people and their behaviour, and to outline what damage is being done to the company.

"There's a range of factors that can add fuel to the fire," says Couper. "Is that person's work monotonous? Do they have a sense of fulfilment?"

She outlines a range of informal ways that managers can use to tackle the problem person before matters get to disciplinary stage. They're all about gentle confrontation and agreement on behaviour, monitoring and then meeting again.

Couper recommends managers keep copious notes: audit trails are imperative if things turn to custard.

One Hamilton manager who did the course last year and is sending two team leaders to Couper's August seminar says at one point she suffered negative behaviour from 95 per cent of staff following a merger.

"We have a lot of staff who have been here a long time and who don't like change and they can be very difficult to handle."

Some of them would undermine her authority, refuse to cooperate and grumble non-stop - behaviour, she says, which definitely does spread.

Armed with tough-love tools, she is still working on some staff members - one was performance-managed out - but says that many who were causing trouble pulled back once they saw action against ringleaders.

The most important lesson Corporate Tough Love taught her was realising "that you've got to deal with the problems when they occur - the longer you leave it, the less likely you are to tackle it."

Agreed, says a manager in a multinational who sought Couper's help to deal with two "nit-picky" staffers who were squashing office morale.

His top tip: "You don't always have to resort to legal methods. There are other methods, like tools for opening dialogue.

"You start communicating if there is a problem and [describe] how it is impacting."

Both managers say that despite everyone's initial reluctance to contribute at Couper's course, it was with an eventual sense of relief, and much identification, that they heard others' horror stories of good suits gone bad.

Couper believes that the judicious use of tough-love tactics benefits more than just the corporate world.

"The way people experience employment has a lot to do with the world we live in," she says, "and with family, values, attitudes and self-esteem."

* Corporate Tough Love, Barrycourt Hotel and Conference Centre, Parnell, Auckland, Thursday, August 2. Contact Suzanne Couper, of Snakes and Ladders Group on 376-0916.

10 RULES FOR TACKLING TOUGH NUTS

* Recognise it is your problem - but remember that cooperation, not conflict, is the key to resolution.

* Create an upbeat and positive culture that doesn't tolerate 5 percenters - and that starts from recruitment stage.

* Learn how to use tools which will help to create that culture.

* Develop personal confidence and leadership qualities.

* Name or question negative body language and behaviour immediately they happen. "If you expose, you disempower," says Suzanne Couper.

* Model the behaviour you expect.

* Don't allow emotional blackmail to silence you - you set the standards. "Remember," says Couper, "you get what you settle for."

* Focus on the problem, not the person - don't let things get personal.

* Remember that a 5 percenter has a right to be heard.

* And remember that, at all times, you have a legal obligation to be fair.