Defining difficult behavior

Difficult behavior is present in every workplace. During your career, you may encounter instances of bullying, controlling, backstabbing, gossiping, complaining, rudeness, lack of motivation, passive aggressiveness, and uncooperative behavior. It's your job as a manager to deal with difficult behavior and maintain a productive environment. But how do you know when employee behavior is truly difficult and outside the range of normal behavior? When do you need to take action?

Difficult behavior becomes problematic when it hinders the work of other people and thereby affects the productivity of a team or group.

To help you identify difficult behaviors, it's useful to have some evaluation criteria. Behavior can be considered difficult and problematic when it interferes with a team's ability to perform its work, damages team unity, or has an adverse effect on one or more team members.

The effects of difficult behavior

There are many effects that can ripple out from difficult employee behavior:

• stress – Stress is one result of having to deal with difficult behavior. In fact, stress-related illnesses cost organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in lost productivity.
• strained working relationships – Effective teamwork relies on team members being able to work together easily and freely. Teamwork suffers if team members have to worry about enduring a teammate's anger, sarcasm, or unreliability, for example.
• negative emotions – Difficult behavior produces negative emotions in the team members who must endure the behavior.
• reduced creativity and productivity – To be creative and productive, team members must be able to focus intensively on a problem or process. Difficult behavior draws attention to itself and dissipates focus. Ultimately, the organization's goals may even be in jeopardy if teams aren't as creative and productive as they should be.
• loss of credibility – Team members deserve a safe, harmonious, and calm environment in which to do their work. When the environment is threatened by difficult behavior, they look to their manager to deal with it. Failure to address the behavior could cause team members to lose respect for, or belief in, you.

Since the potential effects of difficult behavior are so severe, it's crucial for you as a manager to deal with the behavior firmly and in a timely manner. If you don't, the behavior won't disappear – it'll get worse.

Aggressiveness, negativity, indecisiveness, and disrespect are examples of difficult behaviors you'll need to identify and address in order to keep your organization running smoothly.

Difficult behavior becomes problematic when it affects other people. To help you identify when difficult behavior crosses the line and must be addressed, consider three criteria. First, difficult behavior interferes with a team's ability to perform its work. Second, difficult behavior damages team unity. And third, it has an adverse effect on team members. Difficult behavior has some serious effects on teams and team members – stress, negative emotions, strained working relationships, and reduced creativity and productivity. As a manager, it's your job to address difficult behavior firmly and in a timely manner. If you don't, the behavior will only get worse. And your own credibility will be negatively affected.