“The most expensive person in your team isn’t the one with the highest salary. It’s the one who drains the most emotional energy from the room.”
At least I used to believe that being a good manager meant being able to handle difficult people. Boy, was I wrong.
Let me explain first what I mean by difficult employee.
Have you ever encountered someone who pushes back on every directive, makes simple things unnecessarily difficult, or always seems to have a reason why something can’t be done? They just drain energy from every meeting or conversation.
If not good for you. But If you have, welcome to the club.
In a sense, I can consider myself lucky because over the course of my management career, I have encountered only a few of that type of team members. But I remember them very well. Too well.
The first time, I saw it as a personal challenge. I thought that if I coached them a little more, listened more carefully, or gave them one more chance, I could somehow solve the problem.
Obviously, it didn’t work.
I think it’s because what we often call "managing a difficult employee" is actually just a struggle with our own boundaries. We focus on the friction they create because we are afraid to confront the standard they are breaking.
So, why do we let one person’s attitude dictate the temperature of the entire office? Why do we spend 80% of our mental bandwidth on the 5% of our staff that refuses to move?
Well... it’s because we’ve convinced ourselves that a high performing team is built on patience.
When you allow a difficult person to remain difficult without consequence, you are actively betraying your best performers. The stars on your team see you tolerating mediocrity or toxicity, and they start to wonder why they are working so hard to maintain a standard that you refuse to defend.
The weight of a difficult employee doesn't just sit on your shoulders, but it sits on the collective morale of the group.
The hardest part comes when you realize that another conversation probably isn't going to fix it. Because then you have to make a decision. And decisions like that are uncomfortable. You worry about the fallout, the awkwardness, the handover, and whether you're being too harsh.
So you postpone it. You tell yourself that one more conversation might change things.
But like it or not, leadership isn’t about making everyone happy. A part of it is protecting the mission and the environment.
A difficult employee is often just someone who has realized that your boundaries are negotiable. They have learned that your desire for peace is stronger than your commitment to the goal.
They aren't necessarily the problem. The problem is that you have taught them that the boundaries are negotiable.
So here is what I would advise the first version of myself as a manager.
Don't spend your career trying to change people who don't want to change. You cannot coach character, and you cannot manage someone into caring.
The moment you stop trying to fix the person and start enforcing the standard, the difficulty disappears. Either they rise to meet the expectation, or they realize they no longer belong in the environment you’ve built.
It feels cold, but it is actually the highest form of respect you can show your team. You owe it to the people who are doing the work to remove the anchors that are holding them back.
Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for an employee is to be honest with them about the fact that what they are doing isn't good enough. (see what I did there!)
And sometimes the most respectful thing you can do for everyone else is to stop making them wait for you to admit it.
See you next week.
- - Good Enough