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Stop Tiptoeing Around That One Person: A Brutally Honest Guide to Dealing With Workplace Nightmares
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You know exactly who I'm talking about.
That one person in your office who makes everyone's life just a little bit harder. The one who interrupts meetings, dismisses ideas, or sends passive-aggressive emails with way too many exclamation marks. The colleague who somehow manages to suck the oxygen out of every room they enter.
I've been consulting in Australian workplaces for nearly two decades, and if there's one thing I've learnt, it's this: difficult people aren't going anywhere. You can't avoid them, you can't wish them away, and pretending they don't exist only makes things worse.
But here's what most management books won't tell you - sometimes the "difficult person" is actually right about something important, and everyone's too scared to listen.
The Three Types of Workplace Difficult People (And Why Labels Are Rubbish)
Look, I used to categorise difficult people like they were insects in a collection. The Micromanager. The Gossip. The Know-It-All. Absolute waste of time.
Because here's the thing - people are complicated. That micromanager might be terrified of failure because their last boss threw them under the bus. The gossip could be genuinely trying to keep people informed in a company that communicates poorly. And the know-it-all? They might actually know it all, which is bloody inconvenient for the rest of us.
The real difficult people fall into three camps:
Those who don't know they're being difficult. Those who know but don't care. And those who are being difficult because the system is broken and they're the only ones brave enough to say so.
Guess which group most managers completely ignore?
Why Australian Workplace Culture Makes Everything Worse
We Aussies love our "she'll be right" mentality, but it's killing our ability to have proper conversations about behaviour. We'll complain about Dave from Accounts for months over coffee, but nobody actually talks to Dave about his tendency to dominate every team meeting.
I worked with a mining company in Western Australia where they had this bloke - let's call him Gary - who questioned every single decision in meetings. Drove everyone mental. The team was ready to mutiny.
Turns out Gary had spotted three major safety issues that could have cost lives, but nobody was listening because his delivery was... well, Gary-like. When we finally addressed his communication style AND started valuing his input, productivity jumped 23% in six months.
Sometimes difficult people are your best early warning system.
The challenge isn't making them disappear - it's learning how to extract value from the discomfort they create.
The Mirror Test (That Nobody Wants to Take)
Before you label someone as difficult, try this exercise: list three specific behaviours that bother you about this person. Now ask yourself honestly - have you ever done any of these things?
I've conducted this exercise with hundreds of managers across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. The results are always the same. Always. We hate in others what we recognise in ourselves.
That colleague who never stops talking in meetings? You did the same thing last Tuesday when you were nervous about the quarterly review. The person who sends unnecessarily long emails? Check your sent folder, mate.
This isn't about excusing bad behaviour. It's about understanding that most "difficult" people aren't trying to be difficult - they're trying to be heard, valued, or safe. They're just doing it badly.
The Four-Step Approach That Actually Works
Forget the corporate speak and team-building exercises. Here's what works:
Step 1: Get Curious, Not Furious Instead of thinking "Sarah's being impossible again," try "I wonder what Sarah needs right now that she's not getting." This shift in thinking changes everything about how you respond.
Step 2: Address Behaviour, Not Character "When you interrupt people in meetings, it makes it hard for others to contribute" versus "You're always so rude." The first one gives people something specific to work with.
Step 3: Find Their Currency Everyone's motivated by something different. Recognition, autonomy, security, challenge, connection. Figure out what drives your difficult person and speak their language.
Step 4: Set Boundaries Like You Mean It This is where most people fail. They set wishy-washy boundaries with no consequences. "If you continue to interrupt meetings, I'll need to speak with you privately afterwards" and then actually follow through.
When Difficult People Are Actually Right (The Plot Twist)
I learnt this the hard way during my burnout phase about eight years ago. I was working with a team in Adelaide, and there was this woman - brilliant analyst but absolutely exhausting to work with. She questioned everything, trusted nobody, and seemed to find fault with every process we had.
Management wanted her gone.
I spent three weeks really listening to her concerns instead of trying to manage them away. She'd identified seventeen separate inefficiencies that were costing the company roughly $340,000 annually. Seventeen.
The problem wasn't that she was difficult. The problem was that pointing out systemic issues made everyone else uncomfortable, so they focused on her tone instead of her content.
Companies like Atlassian have built entire cultures around productive disagreement. They understand that comfort is the enemy of innovation, and sometimes the most valuable team member is the one making everyone else slightly uncomfortable.
The Stuff Nobody Teaches You in Management Training
Here's what 15+ years in Australian workplaces has taught me about dealing with difficult people:
Most personality clashes are actually systems problems. When someone becomes "difficult," look at what changed in their environment first. New boss? Increased workload? Unclear expectations? Fix the system before you fix the person.
Difficult people often have the highest standards. They're frustrated because they care more than everyone else, not less. Channel that energy instead of crushing it.
Your response creates the pattern. If you treat someone like they're difficult, they'll become more difficult. If you treat them like a valuable team member who needs better communication tools, that's usually what you get.
I've seen this play out hundreds of times. The "difficult" person who transforms when they finally feel heard. The team dynamic that shifts completely when someone addresses the elephant in the room.
The Conversation Framework (For When Things Get Real)
When you finally decide to have that conversation - and you absolutely should - here's the framework that's worked for me across industries from finance to construction:
Open with curiosity: "I've noticed some tension in our interactions. Help me understand your perspective on how things have been going."
Listen without defending: This is harder than it sounds. They might have valid points that sting.
Find common ground: "We both want this project to succeed" or "We're both dealing with unrealistic deadlines."
Collaborate on solutions: "What would need to change for you to feel more supported in meetings?"
Agree on next steps: Specific actions, specific timeframes, specific consequences.
The conversation doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be honest.
When to Cut Your Losses
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, nothing changes. The person continues to drain energy, damage relationships, and resist feedback. At that point, you're not helping anyone by continuing to enable the behaviour.
I've learnt that you can't save everyone, and trying to do so often makes things worse for the rest of the team. There's a difference between someone who's struggling with communication and someone who's fundamentally unwilling to consider other perspectives.
The key indicator? Whether they take any responsibility for their part in conflicts. If everything is always someone else's fault, you're probably looking at a deeper issue that's beyond workplace coaching.
But before you get to that point, make sure you've actually tried the curious approach instead of just managing around the problem.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
In an era where talent is increasingly hard to find and retain, learning to work with different personality types isn't just nice to have - it's essential for survival. The most successful teams I've worked with aren't the ones with no conflict. They're the ones who know how to navigate conflict productively.
Your difficult person might just be your most honest team member. The question is whether you're brave enough to find out.
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Because at the end of the day, most difficult people are just people who've run out of better ways to communicate what they need. Help them find those better ways, and you might discover your biggest problem was actually your biggest opportunity.