Workplace Relationships Archives

Why People Become Difficult at Work

Adapted from my conversation with FM Magazine (AICPA & CIMA) for their leadership podcast series. Scroll down to listen to the podcast itself.

Most of us have found ourselves in tricky workplace situations — where relationships become strained, communication breaks down, or someone just seems difficult to deal with. It’s easy to label that behaviour as personality-driven, but the reality is more complex.

In my book The 9 Types of Difficult People, I talk about what I call the “perfect storm” of organisational factors that can make someone appear difficult to work with. These are pressures and patterns that, when combined, can turn even capable and well-intentioned people into challenging colleagues.

The Four Factors Behind Difficult Behaviour

When you look closely at what’s going on, there are usually four forces at play.

1. Everyday Stress and Pressure

The first is simply the everyday stresses and strains of working life — deadlines, uncertainty, change, and the constant demands to perform. Everyone has a natural way of responding when under pressure. I call this their Stress Strategy. It’s how they behave when they’re pushed outside their comfort zone, doing something unfamiliar, or when their confidence dips.

2. Positive Intention

Here’s the surprising truth: most “difficult” people don’t think they’re being difficult.
Ask them why they act the way they do, and you’ll often hear that they’re trying to do the right thing in a tough situation. In my language, that’s Positive Intention — the belief that one’s behaviour is justified and necessary. It’s a vital reminder that behind every difficult behaviour is someone doing their best to cope.

3. Self-Doubt and Imposter Feelings

Many people also carry a heavy load of self-doubt — the classic imposter syndrome. They fear being “found out” for not knowing enough, or that things will go wrong. These internal voices can amplify stress and lock people into defensive, unproductive habits.

4. Inflexible Approaches

Finally, there’s inflexibility — the tendency to keep doing things the way they’ve always been done, even when circumstances change. In today’s fast-moving organisations, that rigidity can quickly create friction with others.

When These Four Combine

When stress, self-doubt, rigid habits, and good intentions all collide, you often get someone who’s perceived as difficult— not because they want to be, but because they’re trapped in behaviours that no longer serve them or the team.

A More Useful Question

Rather than asking “Why are they being so difficult?” try asking:

“What might be happening for this person that makes them behave this way?”

That shift in perspective opens the door to compassion, curiosity, and better working relationships — the essence of great leadership.

🎧 This article is adapted from my interview on the FM Magazine Podcast: “Why People Are Difficult at Work.”
📘 It draws on insights from my book, The 9 Types of Difficult People: How to Spot Them and Quickly Improve Working Relationships (Pearson).

‘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.

Disconnection at Work: A Common Stress Strategy in Difficult People

Ever worked with someone who goes quiet under pressure?

Who disappears, avoids contact, or cuts you off?

That might not be rudeness – it could be their ‘Stress Strategy’.

In this short video, I explain why some people Disconnect at work, and how to deal with it.

It features three types from the top row of my matrix of difficult people, as featured in my best-selling book, The 9 Types of Difficult People:

The Scary Specialist
The Dark Strategist, and
The Martyr.

The Martyr at Work- How to lead and develop a difficult but principled colleague

1: Who is the Martyr?

Judgemental, disdainful, highly-principled and self-sacrificing.

At work, the Martyr might despise you, burn you out – or both. But one thing they won’t do is compromise.

If you get the relationships right though, Martyrs can be transformative leaders and deeply loyal colleagues.

They’ll seek out far-reaching improvements.
They’ll act selflessly in service of customers and clients.
At their best, a Martyr will be the kind of person who makes you sigh with relief when they arrive, because they’re prepared to tackle issues that everybody else thought were impossible.

I’m Nick Robinson. I’ve been an Executive Coach for over 25 years and I wrote the best-selling book The 9 Types of Difficult People, published by Pearson.

My book is all about turning challenging dynamics into great working relationships – so everyone can be at their best at work. It’s about helping people to do well and to feel good about it.

This article accompanies my video series on The Martyr – a highly principled person who can become difficult if they don’t feel that others are as committed as they are.

In the rest of this article, I’ll show you how to spot a Martyr, how to lead them well, and how to develop them into a powerful and influential leader.

Follow me for more on The Martyr – and for practical ways to handle challenging dynamics at work.

2: How to Spot a Martyr

The Martyr at work is highly-principled – and can become difficult if they feel their bosses and colleagues aren’t as committed as they are.

If you miss the signs, their refusal to compromise and habit of burning themselves out can cause real problems:

Deliverables you thought were certain can vanish.
Key stakeholders get cut out – no longer trusted to contribute.
The Martyr sacrifices their own wellbeing and ends up unable to support an overstretched team.
This article accompanies my short video series on The Martyr – one of the nine types from my book.

I’m Nick Robinson, Executive Coach and author of The 9 Types of Difficult People, published by Pearson.

Here’s what to look for if you think you’ve got a Martyr on your hands.

1️⃣ Martyrs often turn their back on colleagues they see as less principled:

They might ignore them – or be openly disdainful: “They don’t care about what really matters!”

2️⃣ You and others might be denied access to their teams:

Inside that defensive cordon, weaker team members may be carried – not developed or moved on.

3️⃣ Projects may stall – not through lack of effort, but because there’s no influencing:

No horse-trading. No compromise. And that’s what gets things done in the real world.

In the next part, I’ll show you how to lead a Martyr.

Follow me for more ways to turn challenging dynamics into great working relationships.

3: How to Lead a Martyr

They won’t compromise. But they will judge you – especially if you don’t match their level of commitment or principles.

That’s the Martyr at work. To lead them well, it’s crucial to re-engage with their principles.

Get this right, and a Martyr can become an influential leader – fearlessly ready to tackle anything.

Get it wrong, and you’ll be locked out. Projects stalled. The Martyr and their team burnt out.

This article accompanies my short video series on The Martyr

I’m Nick Robinson, Executive Coach and author of the best-selling 9 Types of Difficult People, published by Pearson.

Here’s how to re-engage with a Martyr and lead them well.

First: their courage is often external. They act for a cause, not personal ambition:

To connect, show them you’ve got principles too – and that you’ll also stand up for them.

Second: Martyrs often overlook real-world constraints:

Bring them into planning – so they see the limits, the stakeholders to be influenced, and why compromise matters if progress is to happen.

Finally: don’t play into their self-sacrifice:

Did you set them up to fail by handing over the impossible?
Is your culture so averse to failure that they feel forced to work in secret?

In the next part, I’ll show you how to develop a Martyr into a powerful, effective leader.

Follow me for practical tips on handling challenging dynamics at work.

4: How to Develop a Martyr

Judgemental. Disdainful. Highly-principled. Self-sacrificing. At work, the Martyr might despise you, burn you out – or both. But they won’t compromise.

Developing a Martyr takes trust – but it’s worth it.

When they get it, a Martyr becomes a powerhouse – able to influence past roadblocks, supported by loyal followers, and sustained by healthy balance.

This is the final part accompanying my short video series on The Martyr.

I’m Nick Robinson – Executive Coach and author of the best-selling 9 Types of Difficult People, published by Pearson.

If you’re a leader or HR professional looking to develop a Martyr’s potential – here are four things to cover.

1️⃣ Martyrs often see others as weak – not living up to their principles and integrity.

Help them explore how those judgements can block progress on things they care about.

2️⃣ Explore how their refusal to compromise can often hide a fear of being blamed for an imperfect outcome.

3️⃣ Help them see that influencing isn’t bad.

It’s not manipulation. It’s about finding common ground so everyone benefits.

4️⃣ Get them thinking about the true cost of their self-sacrifice.

How could they work with those who aren’t fully on-side – rather than always pushing against them?

So that’s the Martyr: Driven. Highly-principled. Capable of being an inspiring leader, with great influencing skills and a healthy balance.

Follow me for more practical tips on turning challenging dynamics into great working relationships. You can find The 9 Types of Difficult People on Amazon [here] and in any good bookstore.

How Leaders can Spot, Deal With and Transform a Dark Strategist

Have you got a colleague or a team member who thinks you’re a bit stupid and somehow always lets you know it?

Who tries to manage people like chess pieces; to be moved around as they see fit, until it’s time to go back in the box?

If this makes things difficult at work, then you might have a Dark Strategist on your team.

In this video I explain who a Dark Strategist is and why it’s crucial to do something about them. I’ll talk about how to spot them, the problems they cause and how to start changing things for the better.

I’m Nick Robinson and I’m an Executive Coach and the author of The 9 Types of Difficult People, published by Pearson. I’ve been coaching for over 25 years and I specialise in helping difficult individuals and teams to be effective and feel good about their work.

How Leaders Can Spot, Deal With, and Transform a Scary Specialist

The Scary Specialist is the expert who isn’t afraid to let you know it.

They’ll weaponise their expertise to avoid being controlled. In the wrong circumstances they can cause significant damage to your organisation. Forcing people to leave or quiet-quit, paradoxically lowering performance. Making you and colleagues tiptoe around them, blocking your attempts to improve things and blaming everybody else for not being up to the job.

But at their best, they can be great. Raising standards, setting the pace for delivery and being the powerhouse of your business.

In this video for leaders and HR professionals, I’ve set out:

how to spot a Scary Specialist; the signs to look out for, the impacts to be aware of;
my three leadership strategies for dealing with a Scary Specialist and making sure you hang-on to what makes them useful;
four must-try development tips for transforming them into someone who, instead of being scary, will uplift the whole team.

If you found this helpful, share it with a colleague who’s facing a Scary Specialist. And follow for more on turning difficult dynamics into great working relationships.

How Leaders Can Spot and Deal with Scary Specialists

Picture this: a subject matter expert whose deep knowledge should be a great asset to your team—but instead, it feels like a dangerous double-edged sword. Their expertise has become weaponised, leaving you and the rest of the team walking on eggshells around them because they’re being much too difficult to get along with.

If that seems familiar, you might have a Scary Specialist on your hands.

When this happens, the costs can be significant. Talented people are likely to be leaving or quiet-quitting in significant numbers because of them. Everybody has got used to tiptoeing around them, finding any attempts to innovate or improve things blocked or disputed.

But the good news is that addressing the issue can unlock better working relationships and the full potential of your team—as well as the Scary Specialist themselves.

What you might have first noticed

They’ve practically weaponised their expertise, using it to make sure that no-one (their boss included) can disagree with them or control them
They’re highly critical of their own staff and colleagues, trying to bully people into functioning at incredibly high standards of competence
They frequently blame you, the admin team, the IT team, the marketing team, everybody really, complaining that they can’t function properly if you won’t do your job better
If they feel they can’t control something the organisation is doing, they’ll likely be finding ways to block it or sabotage it.

Unlocking the Potential of the Scary Specialist

Leading a Scary Specialist can feel like an impossible task—daunting, frustrating, and at times, exhausting. Dealing with them successfully—without also losing the good things that got them there in the first place—requires a unique strategy and a lot of holding your nerve.

But here’s the thing: while their behaviours can push leaders and teams to breaking point, they also have the potential for incredible contributions. Turning this situation around isn’t just possible; it’s a chance to transform both their impact and your team’s overall dynamic. Let’s explore how.

I’m Nick Robinson and I’m an Executive Coach, helping leaders and teams to transform challenging dynamics into great working relationships for 25 years.

I’m the author of The 9 Types of Difficult People, published by Pearson. My book went straight into the WHS business book charts, was longlisted for the business book of the year, and is consistently in Amazon’s top rankings.

This article is part of a series for leaders dealing with all kinds of difficult people and teams at work. And there’ll be videos and shorts to go with them.

Please like this article and follow me if you found it interesting or useful, and for other updates about dealing with difficult people and teams and how to turn them into great working relationships.

In the rest of this article

Know what to look out for, to be sure you have got a Scary Specialist on your hands
The main strategies for leaders who want to deal with the Scary Specialist on their team
How I work with Scary Specialists, using the coaching approach I’ve developed to help them find much more effective ways of behaving at work, so that everybody benefits.

Key Behaviours Leaders Should Watch For

When a Scary Specialist’s behaviour begins to negatively impact the team, it’s really helpful to recognise the patterns. Here are the telltale behaviours that leaders should watch out for.

Weaponised Expertise

You can’t argue, reason or disagree with them, because they always know something you don’t—and aren’t afraid to use it. This is their way of avoiding being controlled.

Covert Bullying

The highly-competent, driven people on their team are fine. But everybody else is likely to be suffering: bullied out or criticised into submission

Criticism and Blame

When they feel safe, they’ll be vocally critical of you and colleagues, for example in Senior Leadership or Partnership meetings. Blaming you for not raising the standards in the rest of the organisation that would enable their own department to triumph. At other times, they’ll be more subtle about this, briefing against people and/or getting others to voice their complaints for them

Blocking Change and Innovation

What a Scary Specialist really wants, is for you to make everything around them as perfect as possible, without disturbing anything they are doing. There’s some logic to this. You probably hired them because they’re so good at what they do. “Why can’t you just leave me alone to get on with it?” they ask. How you deal with this depends very much on your situation, which I consider below.

Other Impacts Leaders Might See and Feel

Then there’s the impacts you might see and feel, both on yourself and on the rest of the organisation, when a Scary Specialist has become much too difficult to get along with. These include:

Collateral Damage

People might complain how they’ve feeling belittled or bullied. You’ll probably get a little of this yourself. New recruits might be leaving almost as soon as they arrive. Despite their drive for results, performance might drop, as key people leave or quiet-quit from burnout.

Tiptoeing Around

You and senior colleagues are careful around the Scary Specialist. You’re postponing tricky discussions, worrying that one wrong move might set them off. You’re avoiding making cross-functional changes, because it just isn’t worth dealing with all the resistance you’ll experience.

The Drawbridge is Up

Under pressure, Scary Specialists are highly likely to disconnect from you, their colleagues and the rest of the business. It’s a pulling-up of the drawbridge or a circling of the wagons. You might notice that disconnection itself first. Or you might notice it by the absence of their participation in anything other than their own domain. All accompanied by a very clear ‘Keep Out’ attitude towards anything or anybody that might trespass on that domain.

Dealing with a Scary Specialist

When faced with a Scary Specialist, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed or even cornered. Their behaviour can be frustrating and draining, but with the right strategies, it’s possible to transform their impact from destructive to constructive. By holding your nerve, staying focused, and applying smart leadership techniques, you can unlock significant upsides—not only for your team but for the Specialist themselves.

What to Consider First

Before getting into action, it’s worth taking a moment to assess the situation. Ask yourself these key questions to understand the stakes and your capacity to address the challenge effectively:

How valuable are they, compared to the damage they might be causing?
Is your own leadership style also highly-task-focused, so that you might be overlooking their negative impacts on people and systems?
What’s your scope for taking action—in particular—how much power do they wield in your organisation?

Leadership Strategies to Deploy

Once you’ve considered your position, it’s time to act. The strategies below will help you manage your Scary Specialist in a way that balances maintaining their strengths and dealing with their negative impact.

1. Rearrange things around them

In your business, the Scary Specialist might be so crucial to your success, or have so much power, that you decide it’s worth putting up with any problems they might be causing. You wouldn’t be the first leader to come to this conclusion. But first make sure you’re not just putting things off or storing up big trouble for the future.

Here’s some steps you might want to take anyway:

Surround your Scary Specialist with highly-competent people at all times. And make sure your human resources support, especially recruitment and employee-relations policies, are effective and water-tight—you’re going to need them
Check that any supporting processes and staff who contribute to the Scary Specialist’s department are equally highly-functioning and understand what’s needed of them
Make sure that you or someone else is doing the big-picture thinking for your organisation. Your Scary Specialist will be so focused on doing things well, that they may not stop to think about whether they’re doing the right things well.

2. Become more scary yourself

If your natural leadership style is reasonable and measured, that’s a good thing and people around you will benefit from it. But a Scary Specialist might be taking advantage of your unwillingness to be scary and unreasonable.

You need to understand that a lot of their unacceptable behaviour is driven by their own unconscious fears and habits, especially their lack of concern about people and their disregard for the strategic bigger picture.

If you can, raise the stakes so that a fear of your disapproval becomes greater than anything else that the Scary Specialist is worried about.

Before you do that, be aware that people don’t usually just become difficult in a vacuum. Consider what else in the organisation (for example, pressure to deliver) might also be driving their behaviour, and see if you need to deal with that too.

3. Demand that they raise their game

Above all else, a Scary Specialist values competence in others. So an often successful leadership strategy is to explain to them, in no uncertain terms, that the negative impacts they are having on other people in your business are a sign of incompetence on their own part.

Frame it as a series of skills that they need to develop, or else.

It’s not enough that they be highly-skilled in their area of expertise. Work these days is too interdependent for that, too reliant on whole teams of people collaborating together really well. Everybody needs skills in getting on well with others and supporting the systems that enable effective collaboration.

Coaching and Developing a Scary Specialist

Great coaching of a Scary Specialist requires a balance of empathy and firmness. By tapping into their strengths and addressing their blind spots, you can help them grow into a leader who uplifts the team rather than unsettles it.

At their best

At their very best, A Scary Specialist is a valuable member of your business, consistently delivering high-quality results again and again.

As a leader themselves, they will work hard to create the conditions where like-minded people can really shine.

When things are going well, they’re a great contributor to your team, helping to raise standards everywhere, setting the pace for success and often operating as the powerhouse for your business.

If you follow the leadership strategies above and support the coaching and development tips below, you can have a Scary Specialist who is no longer scary. Instead, they’ll use their skills to help everybody drive results and quality in a way that benefits your whole organisation.

Coaching and Development Tips

As a leader or another professional aiming to support the growth of a Scary Specialist, getting a good response when you’re coaching and developing them rests a lot on your own personal power, especially:

Matching their competence – they’ll be keenly scanning for any signs that you’re not up to the task, so be very good or go home
Expertise – they’ll want to know that you’re not delivering a ‘one-size-fits-all’ developmental process and are tailoring what you do to exactly suit them and their circumstances
Authority – don’t let a Scary Specialist put the responsibility for their development back onto you (which they will try to do). These are skills they need to develop because their ability to get things done well is being compromised by their lack of people and strategic skills. You’re there to support them—not do the work for them.

If you can exercise your own personal power with the ‘Fierce Compassion’ I describe in my book (empathy plus no-messing around), then here’s what else you’ll want to cover with them:

Hidden Shame about being unpopular – lots of Scary Specialists know that people don’t like them, but are afraid to confront it. Ask them: ‘If there was a way of still being really good at your work, without winding other people up, would you adopt it?”
Self-sabotage – assuming that nothing can change without getting worse
Blaming others – protecting themselves from overload by blaming others for what isn’t working, rather than working together to solve things
Visionary Leadership – developing skills in having a wider, longer-term focus and being able to inspire others with it
Coaching and Developing others themselves – this is often the missing link for Scary Specialists. Instead of demanding that other people be instantly competent, they learn how to share their expertise and drive in a way that enables lots more people to become top performers.

Next Steps

If you think you might be dealing with a Scary Specialist – the expert who really isn’t afraid to let you know they’re the expert – try the leadership strategies and coaching tips I’ve suggested in this article. It will demand a lot of you, but then that’s one of the huge benefits you want to unlock from your Scary Specialist—they do demand a lot of others. Use my approach to help them do that in a way that benefits everyone.

Dealing with a Scary Specialist requires courage, insight, and the right strategies. If you’re ready to turn challenging dynamics into great working relationships:

Start Today: Grab a copy of my book, The 9 Types of Difficult People, available on Amazon and at all major booksellers. It’s packed with practical advice to help you lead effectively.
Follow me: For additional resources, including videos and shorts, that expand on the insights shared here.
Work With Me: If you’re looking to turn the challenging dynamics of a difficult person or a tricky team into great working relationships, I’d love to explore how we might work together. Get in touch today.