Chapter 20

Dealing with difficult people

To lead is to discover the full range of human nature. Some people make leadership a pleasure, others make it a challenge. Either way, leaders have to deal with it. As leaders, we should ensure we have the right team working for us. But while we cannot guarantee that our peers will be a pleasure to work with, we still have to work with them, knowing that we cannot change them. Ineffective leaders complain about awkward peer groups; effective leaders find ways of working with even the most awkward peer group.

Peer group dysfunction comes in a cornucopia of different flavours. Everyone has their own horror stories of colleagues from hell. To simplify things, most of the awkward types typically have ...

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