‘Excess’ Stress Strategy: When Dealing with Pressure Goes Wrong – Difficult People Types 4, 5, and 6

“It feels like you’ve got hit by a truck when you work with them.”
“It’s like you’ve got this awful tiger by the tail and you can’t let go.”
“They just shoot the messenger every time they want to control their image.”

These are real things people have said to me about three types of difficult people I describe in the middle row of my Matrix of Difficult People.

What These Types Have in Common

The thing these three types share is what I call an Excess reaction when they are under stress. Put them under pressure and they will simply try harder and harder.

  • They push their to-do list with even more intensity.
  • They try to change everything as fast as possible.
  • They make sure nobody sees that anything might be going wrong.
  • They sweep up control to keep their empire and their image intact.

Isn’t Trying Harder a Good Thing?

If you are anything like me, you might think: Nick, what’s so bad about trying harder under pressure? Surely that’s a good thing.
And I agree. It is a good thing—until trying harder becomes the only strategy available and no longer fits the circumstances.

  • Ticking off tasks might not actually create meaningful change and instead makes colleagues feel like they’ve been hit by a truck.
  • Speeding up change might lock out key stakeholders or burn one bridge too many.

When that happens, the impact is no longer positive. What once worked now creates difficulty for everyone involved.

When One Strategy No Longer Fits

This is what happens when an Excess strategy takes over. The people on the middle row of my matrix – such as the Driving Force, the Revolutionary, and the Empire Builder – rely on a single way of working that no longer suits the situation. To those around them, it suddenly feels like they have become difficult.

Find Out More

If you want to know more about how these patterns play out and how to deal with them, have a look at my book
The 9 Types of Difficult People
or search for the hashtag #9typesofdifficultpeople. You will find more videos and resources on this subject.

I’m Nick Robinson, an executive coach with over 25 years’ professional experience helping people and teams transform challenging dynamics into great working relationships.
If you are dealing with a difficult relationship at work or a team that is not pulling together, check out the book or get in touch for more personal support.

The Worrier – Difficult Person Type 7

Ever worked with someone who’s brilliant but constantly on edge about getting things wrong?

So today I want to talk about the Worrier.

The Worrier is quite easy to spot at work. They tend to be a bit snappy (or even aggressive), and the reason they’re a bit aggressive or snappy about things is because they’re often terrified of making mistakes.

And this is the great paradox of the Worrier at work. Because they’re so focused on not getting things wrong, they often become unreliable. They drop the ball at key times and actually make mistakes.

They take the same approach with their teams. Of all the nine types of difficult people, Worriers are the most likely to become really awful micromanagers. They’ll stand over their team making sure nothing goes wrong, and of course they don’t give their team the time and space to learn and grow and do a good job. So their team ends up making mistakes too.

❤️ Why I like the Worrier

I like the Worrier. I mean, I like all nine types of difficult people, that’s why I work with them.

Worriers are kind of easy to help, because once you show them the patterns — that the mistakes are actually being caused by their attention on not making mistakes, and that they become unreliable and drop the ball because of that — once you can show them those patterns, the door is open for you to help them.

🧭 How to help a Worrier

If you’re leading or coaching a Worrier and you want to help develop them, the most important thing you can do is help them understand that it’s okay to make mistakes.

Normalise that sense of getting something wrong, recovering from it, and learning from the experience. That whole idea of falling forward.

The more you can do that, the more you can role-model:

“Here’s a mistake I made. Here’s how I recovered from it. Here’s what I learned, and here’s what that mistake actually made possible.”

The more you role-model that for them, the less their focus stays on getting things wrong, and the more it shifts to what is actually important about what they’re trying to do.

🎯 Keep their eyes on the prize

The second thing you’ll want to do, if you’re leading or coaching a Worrier, is help them soften their focus.

Instead of keeping their eyes on the thing that might go wrong, help them keep their eyes on the prize.

You’ll know this if you’ve ever taught a child how to ride a bicycle. You say to that child, “Oh, there’s a concrete post over there, don’t hit that post.”

And the first thing they do is ride their bike straight at that post.

What you actually want to do is say, “Hey, this is a really cool place to learn how to ride a bike. Tell you what, there’s a line of trees over there — let’s head roughly over towards those trees, then stop and see whether we want to ride back again.”

Just soften and widen the focus. Move their eyes away from what might go wrong, and keep them on what’s possible.

✅ In summary

Worriers want to do well. Their drive comes from fear of failure, but with the right support they can transform that fear into focus and reliability.

For more tips and coaching on how to deal with all kinds of challenging dynamics and build great working relationships, look out for The 9 Types of Difficult People, follow me here, or get in touch if you want more coaching and support.

 

The Empire Builder – Difficult Person Type 6

Empire Builders are the big personalities in the workplace: full of charisma, brimming with confidence, and often looking like natural leaders. They can inspire people to follow them almost anywhere. But when the pressure is on, that confidence is often revealed as bravado, and things can get very difficult. Dissent isn’t tolerated, complex issues are ignored, and anyone who challenges them may find themselves out in the cold.

In this video I explain how to recognise an Empire Builder and why their style can cause so much trouble when problems get complicated. More importantly, I share what you can do to handle them effectively: how to gain their trust, build open consensus with colleagues, and help them steer through the challenges they’d rather avoid.

This is type six in my series on the Nine Types of Difficult People, based on my book The 9 Types of Difficult People: How to spot them and quickly improve working relationships. If you want practical ways to turn tough dynamics into great working relationships, you’ll find them here.

The Revolutionary – Difficult Person Type 5

If you’re working with someone and it feels like you’ve grabbed a tiger by the tail, you might have a Revolutionary on your hands.

The Revolutionary is Type 5 of my 9 Types of Difficult People.

Revolutionaries bring passion and audacity in big doses. They know that to change one thing you often need to change three others first, and that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.

Revolutionaries bring passion and audacity in big doses. They know that to change one thing, you often have to change three others first, and that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

But that drive to change everything, and to do it fast, can cause problems at work:

  • They often go too far and end up treading on people’s toes.
  • They can move so quickly that they risk burning themselves—and their allies—out.
  • They grasp new systems and connections at speed, but don’t always see that others need time to build consensus.

If you are leading a Revolutionary, be sure you really want that tiger by the tail, and be ready to clear the path for them and repair relationships along the way. With the right leadership they can become truly transformational – watch this video to find out how.