Difficult Personalities In The Workplace

Personality is the characteristics and traits that define a person's thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.

Difficult workplace personalities negatively affect the well-being of team-members, the business, and its customers. Personality irritations result in lower productivity and increased absenteeism among other negative consequences. Examples include belittling comments, gossip, double standards, yelling at others, with-holding important information, and taking credit for other’s work

There are so many personalities in a workplace and managing them so they stay effective becomes the major focus for many in leadership roles. Today’s workspace requires adapting to those personalities you have in your team to enhance their work strengths in a way which suits the business and creates a sense of achievement for each individual. When this is achieved, the business and its people thrive.

Personality types can range from – dramatic, controlling, needy, bully, pessimist, gossip, passive-aggressive, narcissist.

Identifying the behaviours of those above helps us manage the behaviours in order to create positive outcomes. Each personality has some strength you may be able to leverage.

Consider, the pessimist can be a great asset in an auditing role, the needy loves to be micro-managed, the controlling can be a greater project manager, the gossip could make a fantastic social club coordinator. Potentially negative personalities exist in all workspaces but by harnessing the positive strengths of each you can turn a potentially harmful personality into a workplace asset.

But also ask yourself, could you be one of these personalities? Is being a difficult person who I am or what I sometimes do? And how could you manage your more negative behaviours to create a better workplace culture. Stop, think, and pause. Learn to respond rather than react. It’s worth the effort.

From Judy Porter at SHIIFT

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