How to manage difficult people

Being a project manager can be a daunting task, especially if you have difficult people in the company. You know those “slackers”, “talkaholics” and “quiet perfectionists”. Really? To sort out this problem, we first have to decipher what or who constitutes a difficult person.

We are not talking about people with serious psychological problems here; we are referring to your every day worker, staff member, secretary and manager who occupies all the office blocks in town. Are any of them really difficult to get along with, or do they just say, do and react to things differently than you do?

No two persons are exactly the same. Each one is uniquely created with a certain temperament . There are mainly four temperaments , but any person is a unique combination of all four, not taking into account their individual characters, history and emotional baggage. We divide the temperaments into yellow, red, green and blue. First things first, you have to remember that you are born with your temperament intact; you have inherited it from your grandparents or even great grandparents. As such one temperament colour is not better to have than the others. Each one is unique and
important in our world.

You might think at first it would have been better if everybody just were the same... Oh, but that would have been a great disaster. Imagine for one moment everyone in your team, were Yellow, forever chatting, forgetting about deadlines and storming from one project and great idea to the next without finishing anything or properly thinking anything
through. Business down the drain!

What if all your team members were Blue, always stuck in a corner, meticulously working out the details before doing the project with time-consuming perfection, but unable to communicate effectively with the customer? Or all your staff members were born leaders, each one of them with their own ideas, not taking direction from anyone, forever arguing?

For a team to function optimally, you have to have representatives of all four temperaments working together. You need to have the Red and Yellow extroverts, the relationship-driven, introverted Greens and the analytical, perfectionist Blues too look after finances, schedules and logistics.

Each temperament has strong and weak points and yes, if these temperaments collide your office could resemble a battlefield, but if they learn how to work together, well not even the sky is the limit for your success. Imagine having a productive team, working effectively with proper time-management towards the same goals and objectives. Project management made easy!

How do you get them all to work together? First of all, make sure everybody knows who they are. To figure that out you can either have them do an o nline test to learn more about each team member's temperament or you could buy one of our excellent bookson the subject. “ Know who you are ” and “ Watter kleur is jou persoonlikheid ” are both available in our online shop .

Ultimately book a workshop or team building session and one of our team members will be your hands on guide to help your members through the minefield of different personalities in one office!