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Worst Enemy at Work – or Best Ally? How to thrive alongside a Scary Specialist 🤨

Ever found yourself working with or for a Scary Specialist?

You know the type – brilliant, indispensable, but SO challenging to deal with! They’re the ones who know everything about a particular topic, and they’re not afraid to let you know it.

So, how do you turn this potential ‘worst enemy’ into your ‘best ally’?

Here’s the four steps you need to follow:

1️⃣ Raise Your Own Game

  • Step up your skills and knowledge. The Scary Specialist respects competence. Demonstrate your own commitment to excellence, and they’re more likely to see and respect you as a peer.

2️⃣ Speak Up, Don’t Suffer in Silence

  • If there’s an issue, voice it. Scary Specialists can be intense, but they also respect honesty and directness. Approach them with clear, constructive requests for what you want.

3️⃣ Boundaries Are Your Best Friend

  • It’s crucial to establish what you will and won’t tolerate. Be clear about your limits and communicate them confidently. Scary Specialists appreciate those who stand their ground.

4️⃣ Stay Connected

  • Keep building relationships within your team and the broader organisation. It not only prevents isolation but also offers you a wider perspective and support network.

Remember, a Scary Specialist doesn’t have to be your nightmare at work.

With the right approach, they can become an invaluable ally, helping you to new heights in your career.

📘If you want to go deeper into navigating workplace dynamics with various challenging personalities, please check out my new book, ‘The 9 Types of Difficult People’, recently published by Pearson and now in the WHS top 10 business books list. Look for the links below or in the sidebar.

And in my next article I’ll be looking at the type of difficult person closest to my own approach – the Dark Strategist 🤯

Mastering the Challenge of the Scary Specialist

The scariest person I ever worked for was a former UK table-tennis champion, then my regional GM.

She had a habit of giving you the hair-drier treatment at the same time as eating a crusty cheese roll. And I was struggling with a new appointment to an under-performing division.

We both knew what needed to be done. But the problem for me was how far and how fast that could happen. Not far or fast enough I realised, in between dodging the crumbs!

Nowadays I really like working with scary specialists like her.
🚀 Why NOT focus on being competent and driven and delivering the best that you can.

🛑 But what I also know now that I didn’t know back then, is that the hair-dryer approach isn’t always the best way of GETTING to that high-delivery place.

And there can also be a lot of collateral damage around a scary specialist. Good people won’t tolerate feeling threatened, belittled or locked-out for long – and will leave. Leading to a spiral of declining performance.

❓Who is or was the scariest person that you ever worked with?

❓And what should you do if you’ve got a scary specialist in your organisation?

Collateral damage is happening and performance isn’t improving. You might be tiptoeing around their threats while being told, “Go away; I’ll sort it!”

Focus on these three points:

  1. Sometimes, leaders of a scary specialist might find that their skills and competences are so essential that you need to ensure they only ever have the best people and the slickest of support functions around them.
  2. But more often, leaders will need to also become a little scarier themselves in this situation. To demand that this person develop new ways of managing – or else.
  3. Use their desire for competence to help. Demand that they develop skills which can also take their people from zero to 100. Not just manage well with an already high-functioning team.

If you’re working alongside or below a scary specialist, it can be an interesting experience! In my next article, I’ll look at issues around defending boundaries, raising your own game, and not becoming isolated in the process.

📚 For more insights into dealing with a scary specialist, please check out my book, The 9 Types of Difficult People. See the links below or in the sidebar.

And in the meantime – keep dodging those crumbs!

Maximising the Impact: How to Use ‘The Nine Types of Difficult People’ Effectively 📘

Improving workplace relationships can be tricky, especially when dealing with challenging personalities!

My book, ‘The Nine Types of Difficult People‘, is designed to be your guide through this maze. But how can you get the most out of it?

Here are some tips:

🔍 Understand the Layout

  • Chapter Two is Your Starting Point: It sets the foundation for the rest of the book. Start here to quickly understand my overall approach and how to apply it.
  • The Matrix of Difficult People: Took a look at this tool in the early chapters. It’s crucial for identifying and understanding the different types you might encounter.

🤔 Reflect on Your Situation

  • Identify Your Difficult Person: Use the matrix and descriptions to help pinpoint the type of difficult person you’re dealing with.
  • Context Matters: Consider your role in relation to the difficult person – are you their leader, colleague, or team member?

📝 Apply the Strategies

  • Tailored Approaches: Improving relationships works best with the right strategy. Find the chapter that corresponds to your identified type and explore that.
  • Practical Tips and Tactics: Implement the suggested strategies in your day-to-day interactions.

🔄 Iterate and Adapt

  • Not a One-Time Read: Your first pass through the book is great beginning and often leads to some useful quick-wins. Return to the relevant sections as your situation evolves.
  • Stay Flexible: Be prepared to adjust your approach as you learn more about the individual and the dynamics involved.

🔗 Connect the Dots

  • Beyond the Individual: Use the insights from the book to enhance the overall team dynamics and culture in your workplace.
  • Share Your Learnings: Discuss concepts from the book with colleagues to help build a more understanding, collaborative and effective working environment.

Dealing with difficult people is both a mindset and a skillset that can be easily developed. My book is here to guide you, and the real change happens through your application of these strategies in the real world.

Let’s make work a place where everyone can be at their best!

Beyond the Monster Myth: Unraveling the Mystery of Difficult Leaders

The more people I spoke to about this leader, the more worried I got:

🔴 “Extremely difficult, scary and obstructive!”

🔴 “The department is haemorrhaging staff and managers.”

🔴 “Every time we try to change something, he blocks it!”

🔴 “You are literally our last attempt before we look at dismissal.”

By the time our first coaching session came around I was expecting to meet something of a monster.

But what I found was very different.

It seemed to me that here was a baffled and bewildered person. Someone in a demanding role, in challenging and shifting circumstances, trying their best to get good outcomes for their department’s clients. In the only way that they knew how.

As well as a slight concern that I was being played by this person, I left with lots of questions. How could there possibly be such a massive gap between what I thought – and the hugely negative experiences that other people were having? In the end, we coached together for six months and created some very positive change.

I got so curious about what was going on to create this kind of situation to start with that I ended up writing my first full-length book about it – The Nine Types of Difficult People.

If you’ve ever wondered how it could easier to help a difficult person themselves, or how the people around them can deal with what’s going on as quickly and effectively as possible, please check out the links below to discover more about the book and look around this website for other resources.

Grab yourself a copy at any good bookshop or online using these links:

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1292726067

WH Smiths:
https://www.whsmith.co.uk/products/the-9-types-of-difficult-people-how-to-spot-them-and-quickly-improve-working-relationships/nick-robinson/paperback/9781292726069.html

Waterstones:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-9-types-of-difficult-people-how-to-spot-them-and-quickly-improve-working-relationships/nick-robinson/9781292726069

Crumbs! I’ve only gone and had a book published …

Even though it’s been a massive part of my work for years now, deciding to write a book about how to deal with *difficult people* wasn’t easy.

My take is that almost everybody we find difficult is someone trying to do their best, in a situation they find very challenging, in what is often the only way they know how. So if you want to make a difference in that situation it has to involve a lot of soft compassion 𝒂𝒏𝒅 hard constructive challenge.

And that’s why I was so grateful to win the support of my agent Kizzy Thomson, editor Eloise Cook and the rest of the fantastic team at Pearson, who all really got what the book was about and the approach it needed to take.

Thank you to supporters, pre-publication reviewers and everybody who helped me over the last three years of putting this together. Individual thanks and copies are heading out as soon as.

The presses are rolling and my hope now is that a copy of my book drops into the hands of someone who needs it just at the right time.

Grab yourself a copy at any good bookshop or online using these links:

Bookshops:

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1292726067

WH Smiths:
https://www.whsmith.co.uk/products/the-9-types-of-difficult-people-how-to-spot-them-and-quickly-improve-working-relationships/nick-robinson/paperback/9781292726069.html

Waterstones:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-9-types-of-difficult-people-how-to-spot-them-and-quickly-improve-working-relationships/nick-robinson/9781292726069

The Golden Rule for Great Working Relationships

This week, I was due to write a smart article about how to avoid workplace conflict.

But the more I thought about, the more I realised that the first and most important step to having great working relationships is actually very straightforward.

So I drew this instead.

It’s what I often find myself saying (or wishing I had said) to clients who have got themselves into a hole at work and are still digging.

It’s what I often need to tell myself when I’m about to get defensive or annoyed by someone, or to do something thoughtless.

We all know this. it’s isn’t complicated and sometimes it really is this simple!

Better Team Communications

This is one of my favourite models to use if your team isn’t communicating that well

[Click the image above and then right-click to save or download a full-size copy]

You’ll know when you have poor team communication, because there are:

  • Disagreements and conflicts all over the place
  • Misunderstandings repeating time and again
  • Rising stress levels
  • Missed deadlines
  • Lower quality than usual.

Barnlund’s model, which dates back to the ’70s, is a great way to break down a team communication problem and start practising some better ways of understanding each other.

As you can see from the diagram, there are four stages:

  1. Active Listening
  2. Continuous Feedback
  3. Shared Meaning; and
  4. (checking for) Noise and Context.

Research shows that the benefits are:

  • A more interactive understanding, rather then a passive reliance on the communicator
  • An intention to share the meaning rather than impose it.

As always, the meaning of your message is in what is understood by someone, rather than in what you actually meant to say!

Please add your own tips for great team communications on Twitter (X!). Or say something about your own experience - e.g. when does team communication really shine, and when does it go wrong? Share on X

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