48: How to Lead When Someone is Driving You Nuts

All of us would like to believe that we can lead in such a way where people would never drive us nuts. Of course, that’s not reality – and we’ve all had to deal with people many times that push our buttons in all the wrong ways. In this episode, I share a recent experience I had where someone was driving me nuts and what mistakes I made (and advise I have) for leading when this happens. Here are nine things you can do to lead when someone is driving you nuts: 1) Ask yourself, it is personality or performance? Rarely do we get to decide what personalities we get to work with and lead. If it’s personality, challenge yourself to be flexible. 2) Give people the benefit of the doubt. Almost nobody wakes up in the morning with the goal to make other people miserable. 3) Address non-performance early. If there is a clear performance issue, address it early. Trust your instincts and those of the people around you. What should it be? For me, 2 incidents. People know you are watching, that you care, and what the expectations are. 4) Tell people you are giving them a second chance. Error on the side of over-communicating here. 5) Use email wisely (and Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Stay off posting or sending things in writing when you are mad. Follow-up expectations with an email summary. 6) Find out if it can be fixed before losing your cool. Most everything can be fixed. 7) Sleep on it. We don’t make good decisions when we’re tired. We anger faster. We take twice and long to handle stuff. We don’t have perspective. We have the tendency to fire off emails. 8) Let other people do their jobs once you’ve raised a concern. Sometimes you’ll get punished for being proactive. 9) Decide how much of your time and energy this is worth. Dale Carnegie says, “Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth and refuse to give it more.” This too shall pass. Often I find that I am angry at myself when I feel like I am angry at others. Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.