Managing Annoying People

Ilene Marcus: In my day-to-day work with CEOs and business leaders I find that everyone has business savvy, it's the relationship dynamics that stop the work, and I'd like to say I managed a lot of annoying superstars. In Denmark, they're known as "prima donnas" – people that perform very well, but get on your last nerve and take away from you driving the business agenda, and that makes it a business concern.

Rachel Salaman: At this point we should probably talk a little bit about what we mean by annoying. What makes a team member annoying?

Ilene Marcus: What we actually mean by annoying, the workplace definition I use is persisting irritating behaviors in day-to-day situations that suck your energy. Now remember, these employees are moral, ethical, and competent, and once you decide that they are moral, ethical and competent it's something in them, a trait, a quirk that annoys you.

It could be their attitude, the way they approach the work, it could be a "rainmaker" who the culture bends for, but they don't always adhere to team norms, but because they're the superstar everyone has to deal with the way they do their work, like always answering emails late at night or not answering emails. A big one is people who interrupt at meetings and constantly say the same things, it really takes the team off track and they all roll their eyes at this person and yet no one deals with it, and it changes the entire team dynamic.

Rachel Salaman: How common is it for managers to have an annoying person or two or three in their team?

Ilene Marcus: As you said Rachel, who hasn't had to deal with an annoying situation at work? I think especially as the boss, we're loath to say this person is annoying me, we look at is it their competence, is it the way that they do their job. But often it is just a fact that they are annoying you and getting under your skin and that takes away from what you need to really be spending your time on.

I tell a story about one of the CEOs I coached because he was in growth mode and he had a CFO that he just loved, they had been together, they started together, they solved all these problems early on. It was a very lean crew and they worked side by side very well.

As the organization grew and he brought in a new chief operating officer and a chief product development person and a chief marketing officer, the dynamic changed and he was having trouble understanding why he wasn't working well with the CFO. It took us a while to get to the point where he realized, the CFO, the way that they were working together was the way they worked together in the early days.

What were all the problems, what was happening in the trenches and the CFO was bringing him back to a place that he was now on a much higher strategic level, and he had downloaded a lot of the different responsibilities to this new C-team as the structure grew, and these meetings with the CFO were just draining him because they weren't the way he was focusing now.

And that became annoying because he liked this person; they were competent, they were good, but it just zapped their energy and he hated meeting with him. So that's a good example of how it plays out.

Rachel Salaman: What's the impact of all of this on productivity?

Ilene Marcus: In my experience, it's first short-term. If the person feels that you're always sniping at them, how you're reacting to them, they might stop coming to you for advice, they might stop asking for assistance, and communication starts to fail. The immediate result of those things are that right away you're losing time on projects. You as the boss have less energy. Why isn't my team talking to me? What's going on? You're feeling deflated and you have a loss of focus on driving the work.

In the long-term the work gets off track, as a boss your sphere of influence shrinks and basically your value in the organization decreases. So, if you let these annoying people take you off track it really can change the entire dynamic of not only your relationship with that one person, but with the team and the organization.

Rachel Salaman: So, it's something we really need to take seriously. In your book, you talk a little bit about generations and how their norms play into this discussion. Could you tell us now who are the 'Pluralists' which you mention, and how are they different from 'Millennials'?

Ilene Marcus: Pluralists are the newest generation. Magid Generational Strategies published a report in 2014 about the new generation, the first generation of the 21st Century, and these Pluralists are really defined by three basic characteristics. They, compared to any other generation before them (Millennials, Gen Xers, everyone) have the most diverse social circles economically, culturally. They've always known a world only with smartphones and computers and web, so it's just the way they keep in touch with people and know people.

This generation is affected by blended gender roles. They're not so clear cut any more: we have stay at home dads, we have people sharing the responsibility, we have women making more money. So there's a very different bias on gender roles. But most importantly these pluralists have been raised by Gen X parents – they have a different focus on what it means to be successful.

Prior generations instilled in their children: be dependable, be respectful. The value of these pluralists is about "I want to be independent" and "I want to be creative," so there's a very different way that they look at the world.

Rachel Salaman: It sounds very different from some of the older generations, so are they also very different from Millennials then?

Ilene Marcus: They're a little different from Millennials in that some Millennials did have Baby Boomer parents, so they were instilled with some of the older values. This population had more Gen X parents and so they're really transitioning into more of a global citizenry, looking at the world through a… I want to say a bigger lens if you will, and yet really focused on very local action and their responsibility in it.

Rachel Salaman: So how is that information useful to a manager who is probably going to be a Baby Boomer or a Generation X-er?

Ilene Marcus: It's like any other worker. What motivates these workers? How do you talk to them? How do you speak in their language? How do you understand, when they make a choice, about why they're making that choice? But, more importantly, how do you take what their values are and use that to your advantage to get the projects and move the work forward?

Rachel Salaman: What's the usual or instinctive way for managers to deal with annoying people?

Ilene Marcus: First, let's look at what happens when you get annoyed. What happens is that your amygdala in your brain, which controls emotion, gets triggered. When that gets triggered then the blood rushes to the frontal lobe and that impacts your decision making, so then the adrenal glands also get involved.

So, what happens? Your blood pressure raises, your temperature raises, your breathing gets quicker, your heart rate raises and your pupils get dilated. You're already looking crazy. So, when you're in that mode you go into a fight or flight response. So you either come out swinging at this person, "Why are you doing this? This is not what the meeting is for." You start yelling, or you freeze and say "I'm done, we're leaving, I'm packing up my toys and going home."

I also find that some people freeze. Even when they're the boss they're not really sure how to manage someone who is annoying them. So someone is doing something that's stopping the progress of the meeting and the boss just doesn't take control and lets the whole meeting fall apart. I call these the four Fs, it's the Fight, the Flight, the Freezing and what I say is the right response, which is you really need to Focus on managing them at that point.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned earlier that the solution does lie with managers changing their response to annoying team members rather than the team members changing their behavior. That lies at the heart of your book. Could you talk a bit more about that approach and why it's a helpful way to address a situation?

Ilene Marcus: Yes, I firmly believe that it is the manager or the leader's job to bring out the best in each worker regardless of the circumstances, the situation, the timing, and so as the boss, whether I'm leading or managing tasks, it's my job to make sure that my team gets to the place they need to get and I need to change my behavior to do that to enable them to be able to be successful.

Rachel Salaman: Your book offers seven tactics for transforming negative relationship patterns. Are they designed for all types of annoyance or do they work best with particular types?

Ilene Marcus: There are many types of annoying people. Each boss or leader should know their team and should know what the annoying is. So it's really arranged more by situation than by type because, as I said, anybody could be triggered by anything, whether they're a rainmaker, or they have an attitude, or they're boring, or they're an interrupter, or they're a work martyr.

But this is really arranged by what is it: Are they sucking your time? Are they sucking your energy? Do they put you in a place where you constantly have to set a boundary? So workers show up as annoying in many different ways. These tactics work together, they work alone, they also work with people who aren't in the workplace that I don't like to talk about.

But when you're the boss and you have an economic contract, meaning "I pay you to get a job done and the focus is on the work," these tactics will work when you figure out which situation you want to address – that's what works best.

Rachel Salaman: Let's talk a little bit more about them now. The first one is preventing energy suck. So could you just talk us through what that involves, maybe by giving us an example?

Ilene Marcus: The mention I gave before about the CFO and the CEO is a good example of energy suck. But I'm actually managing someone now who, even though we have the team meetings, after the team meeting (whatever her issue is, and she's an important player) needs extra time with me. She needs to meet with me and rehash what went on in the meeting and give me her opinions.

To me this is an energy suck. I had the meeting, we're on the same page, we're moving forward, I have a limited time in my day with a lot of competing priorities. But she needs that. So I have to find a way to manage my relationship with her, so I can meet her need of feeling engaged and having more time to explore the issues. But I can meet my need of not having my energy drained by these meetings after the meeting.

So, the most important thing to do in this situation is not to avoid. I need to say to her "I love meeting with you but I have a time constraint, so we have 15 minutes to have this meeting today." I need to limit my exposure to her. Sometimes I ask other people to join me after the meeting because, honestly, when someone else is in the room you tend to watch your behavior and be a little more sophisticated about how you handle your annoyance when someone else is watching.

And that's what I call the peer meeting format. I try not to meet with her alone. It's much less annoying when I can spread out the work and include someone else, because then we can get some other stuff done too, it's not just her agenda.

Rachel Salaman: The next tactic is change the relationship dynamic. Could you talk us through an example of how you did this when you were dealing with an annoying direct report?

Ilene Marcus: I use this change the relationship dynamic because that's really the outcome we want in any of these annoying situations. Now I use something called the Fierce Conversation Steps by Susan Scott, and it's really a very direct conversation about the behavior and about the impact on the organization.

An example is that I have several people that fit this bill, but I can think of one and what I would say is you continuously interrupt not only me, but everyone at meetings. In a very short sentence, this is the issue. Then I give them a specific example: "at yesterday's weekly team meeting you would not let the human resources person finish her report."

I still don't let the person talk and then I say, "These behaviors frustrate me so it's hard to listen to you even though you're making important points." This is very important that you're focusing on the behavior and you're telling them that "I can't hear you when you act that way, you're less valuable to me and the organization."

I drive that point home with what's at stake: "This is affecting the productivity of the team," the direct link to when you interrupt it affects the whole team.

Then, I take some responsibility for it as the manager. "It makes me react to you in a less thoughtful way and I don't want to react to you in a less thoughtful way, I want to use your knowledge and your work product." So, I tell them, starting with this conversation: "I will address this issue directly. When you interrupt at meetings I will now say can you please save that for later, we're not interrupting. And if you can't hold your tongue I'm going to ask you to leave this meeting." I'm going to take a direct action to change this dynamic.

And then I invite the person to respond, "Do you understand the behaviors I'm addressing?" Now obviously some people get defensive, some people start to squabble with you, but the important thing, as the manager, is to really set the playing field. This not only impacts me, it impacts the whole team which impacts the work. Very often people are surprised, "I didn't really understand that that's what happened, I just thought you liked to yell at me or I just thought people didn't like my ideas." Having that conversation starts the path to getting them to behave better at the meetings.

Rachel Salaman: The third tactic is set "no fear" boundaries. What do you mean by that?

Ilene Marcus: I think that especially when we work with people in startups and entrepreneurial places we do a lot of work together on projects, and we all know when we're the boss and we have to make the decision. So setting "no fear" boundaries means that you always need to have clear lines of intent and expectations.

We always say in the driving: "Know your lane and stay in your lane. This is my lane, this is your lane."

Now a lot of C-suite executives turn that into "I can't be myself." That's not the point at all. You can joke, you can laugh, you should be yourself. But there is a very clear boundary around decision making, around work product and around driving the work and roles and responsibilities, and those need to be maintained at all times.

Rachel Salaman: You offer lots of useful practical tips in your fourth tactic, which is guard your time. We've touched on this issue a little bit, what are your favorite tips out of all of these?

Ilene Marcus: My favorite tip is having a time device. We sometimes forget, we don't want to be looking at our phone in meetings. So you must be looking at your time, that's still a very important concept. But my favorite tip is set the timetable.

As I said before, with this player I have who is now annoying, right away I say: "We have 15 minutes today to discuss this, how do you want to use that time?" So, from the beginning you set the expectation: this is limited, there's a beginning, middle and end and we're going to end on time.

The other one I love is the sandwich technique because I love food, but sandwich this person between two other meetings. So we have the team meeting, I meet with them for 15 minutes, and then I have my management meeting or a call or something, and there's a little special tip in that, it really works well if you sandwich between when you know they have something important to them.

It could be something personal like Wednesday night they always have to go home for family supper or they take their yoga class or they have their religious meeting, or it could be they have their team meeting at 12 o'clock. So, we have our team meeting at 10 o'clock, we finish at 11.30, I meet with them for 15 minutes and then they go off to their team meeting. So that sandwich technique really works in book-ending and setting the timetable.

Rachel Salaman: You have one section in your book about body language. The fifth tactic, monitor your non-verbal body language, has one of the tips to smile like you have a secret. Why is that better than a regular smile?

Ilene Marcus: When you smile like you have a secret you're not just smiling, you're looking like you know something that the other person doesn't know and that puts them on guard, that makes them think about why does she have that little devious smile. It's not just a smile, it's a big smile, it's a knowing smile.

I always find when I do that, first of all people look down at their shirt, they think they have a stain on their shirt or their dress. But even so everyone listening smiles now, it changes your whole physiological response.

I am also a little lazy, and it actually takes less muscles to smile than it does to frown. So instead of getting all worked up like we talked about before with your blood pressure and your adrenalin going, when you smile, it calms your body. And when you smile like you have a secret really big, you do it, it's hard not to feel uplifted and less annoyed.

So that, like the secret, is the edge of being a boss. Like "I know something you don't." It's having a little fun with it, which I think is very important when you're stuck in a tough dynamic.

Rachel Salaman: Another tip in this section is blend with others' non-annoying habits, so that they can hear you better. That's a little complex, could you explain that?

Ilene Marcus: The key there is non-annoying habits. So, if you have a person that always sits cross-legged or talks slowly, or likes to use visual charts, you do the same behaviors to get them to listen to you.

So, if you're meeting with a subordinate who is annoying and one of the things they do is talk slow, you don't want to talk as slow as them, but you want to mirror it so that they can hear you better. It's a way of getting them to react to you better. If they sit cross-legged and you sit cross-legged then they feel a reflection and they feel more comfortable, and that helps you get your points across.

Rachel Salaman: Talking about listening, you say that we should make a point of listening rather than talking. But that must be more difficult if you're communicating with someone you find annoying. So, what tips can you offer people who want to do more listening to annoying people?

Ilene Marcus: I have two mantras that I keep in my head that make me laugh when I think about this because even though I'm an active listener, I'm a very active talker. So, one vision I keep is I have two ears and one mouth for a reason – that's the equation. The other that most people know at this point is that the words "listen" and "silent" are spelled with the same letters, which is really mind-bending – listen and silent are spelled with the same letters.

The key here, and we're going to get to it in a minute, is my seventh tactic. When you're listening as the boss, as the manager, if you're planning in your head a tactic – and I'd like this to be called my seventh tactic, the greater good – you will start to have a plan. You'll be thinking of: "What can I do with this person that's getting under my skin? What can I do with this annoying superstar?" So, as you're planning, that will give you a little more ease to sit back and listen.

Rachel Salaman: Let's talk about your seventh tactic, known as busy-is-better, and here you suggest ways of keeping annoying team members busy. You've touched on the rationale for this. Could you talk a little bit more about it?

Ilene Marcus: Yes, this is my favorite tactic because this really gets to the heart of those prima donnas or those annoying superstars. They're good at what they do, but they're always throwing reports and data and information at you, and as the boss or the manager I have to have that 10,000-foot view. I can't always go into everything they're doing. They're looking at just their department, their little silo of the world, whereas I'm looking at the whole organization.

And I tell the same story because I think it is just perfect, but I had one of these annoying superstars that used to take the metrics – our dashboard of the performance – and do a drill down on it on her department and show me how much better her department was doing than the others. And she was doing this because they wanted more compensation, they wanted bigger offices, they wanted the best sales leads – all of the right reasons.

The first time I got the report I loved it. The second time I got the report I was like, "Hmm, she has a little too much time on her hands to be doing this extra report." The third or the fourth time I got the report I was like, "Well I can't even tell how this works against the other departments." And that's when I got the idea.

Now, I must interject here that it took an annoying situation and me being embarrassed as the boss. She would say to me, "Why aren't you reading my reports? Why aren't you responding to me?" And that had to make me look at my behavior: "Why was it annoying me? Why was I burying it?" And that's when I hatched my plan of the greater good.

If these reports do what I think they do and what she says they do, well then why wouldn't I put her in charge as she seems to have extra time on her hands, on making these reports a standard for every division. So, I gave her a busy-is-better job. This had two impacts: one, it changed her perception among her peers and team members that they were actually seeing her working with them and figuring out what their metrics were, what their role in each dashboard item was, and how to drill it down into their department.

And it also helped me get really better information on our entire sales pipeline. So, it was really good information that worked for all of us. So that's what I mean by "busy is better" and "for the greater good,." Take what these annoying superstars are giving to you and think how can I make that work for everyone, not just their department or their team.

Rachel Salaman: You include a useful chapter on dealing with annoying customers and vendors. What are your main points here?

Ilene Marcus: The main point is that you really need to stay mission-focused. A lot of us ;– especially when we're in business-to-business relationships with customers, not a retail but a business-to-business office product relationship – we often want to please our customers so much that we twist ourselves into a pretzel and over-promise.

I think the point here is to stay mission-focused on your product and be honest when you can and you cannot do something. Customers really appreciate the "yes" or "no." It's the "maybe" and the waiting that gets under everyone's skin, and it also saves a lot of time.

I think that we all have customers that suck our time. Customers, we don't exist without them. So it's very important that we give them that time. But two ways to help defray that impact of the time suck is to keep in regular contact. The more that you talk to them, and I'm not just talking about an email or a general newsletter, but a personalized little note or a "hello" makes them feel engaged and makes them know you're thinking about them.

The other side to that is make sure that there are several people on your team involved with your customers. I can't tell you how many times I have situations with CEOs when they're transitioning and they think about a salesperson who owns one relationship. So that causes a business problem, but it also causes a time suck problem on that team.

So, the more people hype your team, have several people involved with the customer so that it's not a big draw on one person's time, it's shared among others – and that really helps the customer relationship and the value of the organization to the customer, where they feel many people are interacting with them. Even though they still have one go to person, when that person is not there, someone else can pick up the slack and that really helps in managing customers that really demand your time and energy.

Rachel Salaman: What about vendors?

Ilene Marcus: Vendors are tricky because we obviously need them just like customers. We're paying them, but we need something from them. So it's really the same. I find with vendors it's really about setting boundaries: what I need, when I need it, how I need it, and having that direct dialog with them. And keeping in contact, "What's in the pipeline? What's happening? What can you do for me? Or do I need to go somewhere else?" I think that's very important.

Rachel Salaman: We've covered a lot of ground in this discussion. What do you think are the top takeaways for managers who want to manage their annoying team members better?

Ilene Marcus: I think the first thing to recognize is that your reactions speak louder than your actions. So how you react to each person really tells who you are. And you want to be that fearless leader that they respect. So, when you get annoyed, even though you think you're hiding it, you're probably not. So your reactions are telling your team something that you don't want to be telling them.

The second thing is don't avoid. You started the interview with this Rachel – you must deal with them in the workplace, otherwise it will have a long-term impact on results, productivity and absolutely profit.

And, finally, be consistent. It's very important, once you start to deal with problems, that you keep a consistent approach and continue to manage it. It will not get better if you don't stay on top of it. So how you react consistently shows your team who you are and helps them to understand how to work with you.

So, we went through a direct conversation to change the relationship dynamic. In that conversation it's on the boss to say, "I will address this directly with you." You need to address this directly then, you cannot say it and not do it. The art of productive relationships and leadership are tied to the manager's ability to size up a situation and apply the right tactic. When you're consistent this builds trust, reliability, and responsiveness, and that is the real thing that will change the relationship dynamic.

Rachel Salaman: Ilene Marcus, thanks very much for joining us today.

Ilene Marcus: Thank you so much Rachel and everybody: go forth and don't be annoyed.

The name of Ilene's book again is "Managing Annoying People: Seven Proven Tactics to Maximize Team Performance." I'll be back next month with another Expert Interview, until then goodbye.