Companies have evolved in the last decade. People are now more open, ready to share, and not embarrassed to talk about themselves. Humbleness is replaced by the need to show ourselves. While this environment is great for extroverts, many others in the office suffer from it. There are even worse cases when a leader starts talking, and their talk disturbs people at the leadership level and in operational units. Those who speak so much see that they can freely express themselves, but others may see something that is not so positive. For example, imagine you have a person in a leadership role who has joined your company recently and is not stopping to compare their previous workplace to the company. They always talk about their achievements but don’t do much to show their expertise. At the same time, this is annoying and disturbing and creates discomfort for others. And this same person tries to be friendly with everyone and changes their position according to the person they speak to. These people are not rare in the organization and come on different levels. At the same time, not dealing with them may cause discrepancies and discomfort for the current team.
Here is where someone may say: “But hey, I don’t know how to deal with those above me. I can easily give feedback to someone on my level, but those who are standing in higher level roles are different.” And this person will be only fifty percent right. HBR-published research from 2021 has found that people in different leadership layers show similar behaviors no matter the form. However, these behaviors may look slightly different from an outside image depending on where they stand in the organization. At the same time, from the inside, they have similar, if not the same, roots.
I work with all four types of people, and because my role is to balance the team’s emotional and intelligence agenda, I have had to deal with all of them on a daily basis. To make it easier here, I will consider people in the organization’s middle levels. However, the same approach can be forwarded to all other company layers.
The “know-it-all” person
These people often come and throw a bomb as they know everything about what is happening. They are thirsty for attention. Want to be seen as experts? Unfortunately, these “experts” really show what they know to others. They are easy to spot because the need for attention makes them run in different directions every time. Suppose there is a problem in the finance department – they say they know the solution; if people in the administration struggle – they get there to say that their experience has taught them how to deal with the battle effectively. You can meet them in the logistics, sales, marketing, IT, and all the other departments. Unfortunately, this type of behavior is not limited to specialist and/or expert level. The stronger the person’s ego, the brighter “the knowledge baser” looks. These same people are often easily spotted in leadership roles. Remember last time when a new leader joined your company and started judging what you do and how you do it? The higher the role in the organizational chart, the greater the need to show themselves. Confronting such a person directly is useless. While they have joined because their “expertise” was recognized by someone above the hierarchy, they often create more toxicity, tension, and pressure than do good. But these people need to be heard, noticed, and positioned in the center of the environment.
What can you do with them? – It is not easy to answer here, because you have to be aware of the level of egocentrism, but when you recognize such a person, play it safely by following several steps:
- Listen to them when they explain
- Ask if what they propose is in line with already existing processes or procedures
- Direct them to the existing procedures and processes description without judging their behavior or words
- Offer to listen again when they have aligned what they “know” with what is a standard in your company
- Play it calm and do not show emotions
The “do-it-all” person
Now, this is the guy, right? Always there, always helping, always taking everything on their shoulders. And unfortunately one of the most negative persons in the team. They want to shine by showing that you can trust them about everything, but at the same time, they don’t have the capacity, time, and resources to fulfill everything they have promised. This person often starts things to delay them or even to reach the finish with a more significant part of them in time or with the desired results. They are “the person for the job” who rarely deliver what is expected within agreed parameters. These are mediocre performers on average, but they don’t see themselves as such. More often, they go straight forward to ask for tasks that they see as an opportunity to shine on but don’t realize how their insufficient behavior and performance actually harms those tasks and the agenda. It is not easy to turn that willingness to shine into some productivity because if done directly, it crushes the energy splits and moves this group of people into the negative, not doing anything mode. To better manage a “do-it-all” person it will be helpful to:
- Draw a map of their responsibilities and scope of tasks together with them
- Set border lines on where they should not look for and reach to
- Make them understand the importance of not crossing the lines
- Praise them often for what they do in their scope of responsibilities
- Allocate time to discuss the borders you set and the importance of not crossing them
- Keep communication clear and plan what the next topic will be that you communicate with them
- Distribute tasks toward others in the team, explaining transparently why you do that and why that person is chosen for the task
- Do a periodical audit of the borderline set
The “be-always-there” person
Now, that is a hard one to work with. They want to know it all – what happens in the office, what happens in your personal life, what will be going on in the next quarter, etc. They are always nearby “to help you.” But they don’t realize that in some situations, what those people see as help may be easily transferred to an annoying disturbance in the others’ everyday work and life agenda. They are there without being asked, and they offer some “service and help” that may not be needed. With the intention to help these people often create opposition and generate strategies to stay away from them. They might be more dangerous than the previous two groups taken together. Because they want to know it all and won’t stop until they receive the information they think is valuable to them. Instead of helping, the behavior here is hurting relationships. It could even be seen and formulated as a threatening factor to everyone. No matter the good intentions declared, this type of behavior screams for actions that can hinder it from happening. The “be-always-there” behavior needs special attention and careful actions to be managed and even put into a healthy framework for both -the one who demonstrates it and the one who “receives support” based on it. To deal with such behavior, people may need to focus on several steps:
- Set boundaries for work and personal life sharing
- Explicitly formulate rules and barriers that may hinder that behavior
- Communicate clearly with the person/the people involved the secrecy of the barriers set
- Formulate and execute repeating and direct communication pointing to the limits and barriers that you have set
- Adapt the communication style based on the “helper” personality and personal level of maturity
- Make ongoing changes to communication style, but stay consistent with the original message for setting boundaries
- Periodically check the level of adaption of the “helper” to your communication and re0arrange it to be effective
The “don’t-care” person
And here is the star of the show. Rarely this person doesn’t care. They often play it distant to win attention. In many cases with such people, what comes in the end is that they are not actually after such behavior but just play it unreachable to make others feel obliged to give them their attention. The “don’t care” attitude is a defense mechanism that may cause much stress, to find in the end that the person actually not only cares but may be seen as a trusted partner and committed ally when working with the other people around and toward different challenges crossing the path of success. With negativity and distance on the surface, these people seem distant and opposing everyone. Most other people ignore them and do not pay enough attention to their thoughts and feelings. But in many situations, the “don’t-care” person is the organization’s ally to succeed. To get closer and involve this group of people for the greater good in the future, leaders and other people should focus on a set of actions that allow them to build trust. Here are some of them:
- Identify the behavior and confirm that it is a “don’t-care” behavior
- Get to the roots of the behavior to understand what caused it
- Form several stages with a variety of steps in each level plan to work with that behavior
- Set milestones in the work to ensure that the progress is real
- Have a plan B and even plan C if the original plan doesn’t work as expected
- Give enough time for each stage to prove if it works or not
- Set the milestones for each win on the path to success and check them regularly to ensure that they are still relevant
IN CONCLUSION:
The office space and team environment is a colorful palette of different personalities. There are many nuances in people’s behavior and actions. The more one focuses on only bringing their unique ME into the environment without understanding what is happening around them, the higher the tension becomes. Learning to work with different people and styles balances the environment and boosts the morale, productivity, and authenticity of the workplace and culture. Now sit back and think about whether you have seen the four types in your team or workplace and what your reaction was to them. Did you do your best to win them for the bigger game or make them show their full potential to disturb teams?
The Human place - a path from you to yourself 