 Managing difficult employees is hard work as a manager. I explained five steps you should take to make managing difficult employees a lot easier and fairer for all concerned. I've tried and tested this approach in over 25 years of team management and it works. My name is Jess Coles and I've led and managed teams for over 25 years in corporates and household names through to SMEs. I've won best team prizes in national magazines and at company level. If you're new to this channel Enhance.Training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their performance. And if you like this video please give it a thumbs up, subscribe and share it with friends. Dealing with poor attitudes, disruptive behaviour or poor quality work is emotionally an energy draining. Even worse is when you have an employee that performs the work very well yet is a nightmare to manage or is disruptive to other team members. The worst thing that you can do as a manager is do nothing. As hard as it might be to manage a difficult employee you must deal with them in such a way that the problematic issues stop. I've dramatically turned around the performance of multiple teams and I've dealt with many high pressure situations. I learnt the hard way early on that procrastination is the worst option. So you know you have to take action, the next question is what will you do? I set out five steps that will make the action you do take effective and fair. Before taking you through the steps let me quickly explain why being fair is important. A person's been making your life difficult, why be fair to them when they're not being fair to you? Every team member will know that person is being difficult. They have to work with them too of course. The other team members are looking to you to make everyone's life easier and they're watching how you do this because if you're heavy handed, a bully or unfair to that person they'll be wondering am I next? That won't help your relationships with them nor the team morale or culture nor will it help the team's output. To keep the rest of the team engaged and motivated you must deal with a difficult person fairly. This is important and being fair will take extra effort on your part but what you get back makes this a very worthwhile investment so be fair. Let's look at the first step which is to find out why the employee is being difficult. If you know what the problem is then reaching a solution is a lot easier. There are loads of reasons why employees are difficult. Do your best to find out why they are behaving as they do. This will make how you manage the difficult employee that much easier. Ask the individual, ask other team members and listen to what you're being told. Some reasons might include they might be struggling and need help but they're too afraid to ask or they don't know how to ask. They might not like you or other team members on a personal level. They are not clear on what is expected of them. They don't feel valued or appreciated. They may be out of their depth. The demands of the job are above what they can deliver against and they don't have the will or the capability to learn to bridge the gap. Or they might have a poor attitude and need attention or have other personal challenges. Each of the above problems has to be dealt with. Some are easy and some are hard. In my experience of dealing with many difficult employees the performance or difficultness can be turned around fairly quickly in most but not all cases. It is often in your interests and the business interests to improve the performance of the employee rather than replace that employee where this is possible and sustainable. Recruiting and training a new person is disruptive, time-consuming and expensive. Of course it can be a lot more expensive to keep an employee that is disruptive or performing poorly and will not or cannot improve. We will discuss what actions to take in step 5. Once you understand or have some idea of why the employee is being difficult then setting expectations is the next key step. Setting expectations is so important yet many managers don't do this effectively or clearly. The British style or culture is traditionally not one of straight talking or telling it how it is. We are usually very nice and polite talking around the subject rather than getting to the heart of the matter. If an employee does not know what is expected of them then how can they meet those expectations? So the first step in managing a difficult employee is being really clear as to what you expect of them. Write your expectations down. This will get them clear in your own mind first. Then set milestones and goals against each of these expectations. How will you know and how the individual know when the goal or behaviour has been met? If this is not really clear then keep going back to the drawing board until it is. A good exercise is to formulate and agree the milestones and the goals with the person. This makes the goals joint goals rather than your goals imposed upon them. They are much more likely to own them and it is fine to discuss the goals until both parties are happy. Set and agree the goals before doing anything else. Put them in writing and share this document with the employee. The next step is to support the individual to help them meet the goals that you have set with regular or weekly one-to-one meetings. Use these meetings to mentor or coach the individual on how they can and are going to improve the difficult aspects of their performance. Tasks and technical knowledge are easier to improve than the behavioural aspects in most cases. Share your experiences and approaches with the individual and if you are not the expert on the particular area in question then find somebody who is to help them. By mentoring or coaching the individual you are going to find out quickly what their capability and willingness is to improve and you are going to do this while genuinely trying to help them. And if they are willing you have a lot that you can work with. If they are not willing then you may not get past go. Take a look at yourself too and ask yourself are you genuinely trying to help them or are you just going through the motions? The employee will work out which it is very quickly. And if you are not willing how can you expect them to be willing? When you manage a difficult employee it is vital that you give honest feedback. Feedback is incredibly important to improve performance. I mean serious athletes get coaches and the main reason they do that is to get feedback. In the business world we are not as lucky. Useful feedback is harder to get yet remains just as valuable. Give feedback to the individual so they know what they are doing well and what they should still improve. Giving praise is powerful and is not done enough in the business world. Just make sure you take the time to praise what they are doing well and be specific. And of course don't give praise without a reason. Find the reason though. When giving feedback four areas that need improvement help the individual understand what good looks like and the steps that they can take to get them there. At least once per month you should review the milestones and goals set out in your written document with the employee. Agree which areas are meeting standards and which are not. This ensures no surprises for the employee and makes the process fair to the employee as well. Each of the above four steps finding out what the problems are setting expectations, mentoring or coaching and providing feedback are each actions in themselves. So what happens next? Well we are going to consider three scenarios covering a range of possibilities. There are of course many scenarios in between these so adapt according to the situation and the individual. In this scenario the individual improves the areas that you have targeted you need to ensure that this improved level of performance or behaviour continues consistently going forward. Continued one to one meetings focused on your coaching or mentoring of the individual may be a really good way to achieve this. Remember as a team you will get better results by developing and mentoring and coaching the star performers rather than the weaker members i.e. playing to your strengths. The overall team performance is likely to benefit from a sustained mentoring or coaching approach to all members. Just apportion your time for the best results for the team. The individual is winning and has put in lots of effort to improve their skills or approach yet their overall performance is not improving or not improving very fast. You are concerned about the capability of the person to do the job. You need to decide if you are happy with this person in the role or if the person would better off in another role. If you decide or together you decide that another role is the better option for both parties then help the individual with the internal move if possible. If an external move is the only option then help them make that external move. I mean don't burn bridges you never know when that person may be helpful to you in the future. In this scenario for whatever reason you have worked hard to help the individual but they have chosen not to rise to the occasion. Then it is likely that both parties will be better off parting ways. Whenever you decide the most appropriate route is make sure the individual is moved on from your team and the company. Unwilling staff members will not help the team overall. Achieve its goals and that person is likely to be happier elsewhere too. Do not procrastinate on taking fair and sensible action. You will be in the best place to judge what action should be taken. Looking after all the team members particularly those delivering and contributing to the team overall is important. You owe it to them to deal with difficult employees. Dealing with and managing difficult employees is hard and fairly unpleasant. Yet it is vitally important for the teams and your happiness and overall performance. The worst thing to do is to do nothing. Doing nothing does not help anyone. So take action in a fair and supportive way to give the difficult employee the best chance to meet your expectations. In many cases this is likely to happen if you do your job well. When the difficult employee does not or is not able to change then you need to take action for the sake of the team and the company and the individual to consent. Don't put this off even though it's hard. Use these steps to make managing difficult employees a lot easier. And do visit us at enhance.training and take a look at the courses and resources to help you manage your team. If you like this video please hit the thumbs up button below and subscribe and hit the bell to get notified of our weekly video releases. This really helps us to produce more videos to help you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon.