How do you deal with difficult characters?

Full transcript

Intro

In these videos, I answer tough questions that I've been rumbling with over my career as a facilitator and a design thinker, topics that you've probably been struggling with yourself. 

In this week's video, we're getting into a good one, we're gonna ask the question, how do you deal with difficult characters? You know, those lovely individuals that come to our meetings and workshops only to cause so many interesting dynamics to take shape. See you in the video.

Today’s question

Alright, so the question in front of us today is, how do we deal with difficult characters? Well, first let's define what we mean by difficult character, because there's a whole bunch of people that can frustrate us or get under our skin when it comes to facilitation and workshops and stuff that we're doing in general at work. But I think the ones that I've bumped into time and time again, there's about three personas that I've come in contact with.

First, you have the distracted individual, let's just call them. This is the person that's coming in and out of your session, they're on their phones, they're in their inbox. They're just not really giving you their undivided attention. And that's a problem of course, because you've invited this person to be there so that you can get their ideas and opinions. And then you have the over thinker, the person that every time you ask them to do something, there's a question, there's a problem.

Questions are fine, but time and over and over again, that starts to really wear on you as a facilitator. It definitely starts to wear on the room overall. Sometimes you just need people to try it and do some of the work. And then, of course, we have the know-it-all, the person that has all the answers before you even start the session to begin with.

For today, we're gonna focus in  on this last character for now, in a future video, we're gonna do the other two. For now, for today, I wanna talk about the person that's in our workshops that has all the answers, the know-it-all. Now, I personally believe that there's no bad people and that everyone is doing the best that they can. It's just that they're not doing a great job at dealing with the circumstances, their environment, and things that are happening in their world.

If you think about the know-at-all, what's really driving at them showing up and having all the answers and sorta like standing arms crossed and saying like I knew that was the answer and I told you so, right? Really what probably is the cause is that this person is busy and they're afraid that they're in another meeting, another workshop that they don't belong, that you're going to waste their time.

That is one of the biggest concerns that everybody has that frustrates you in your meetings that you're holding and leading. The other thing is that you have to really take a look at the culture. So you have to understand is this person's ideas being heard because if not, they don't feel heard. If they don't feel heard, they're gonna be pretty pissed off. If they're invited to a meeting to talk about an idea that they put out in front of the group a year or two years ago.

So what does this do for you as a facilitator? Why is this a problem for us as facilitators? Well, number one, because we're human beings and we enjoy connection and feeling like we're helping other people. And when these people show up, we feel like we're not doing our job, otherwise, you know, it kills the vibe of the room and when it kills the vibe, or if people know that this person's gonna be there, then those people either disengage or they show up half engaged or disengaged to begin with.

And if that becomes the case, if you don't have people fully into the conversation and willing to share their big, bold ideas, then you're not gonna get what you need out of the conversation and ultimately, as the facilitator, you're responsible for the conversation and getting the results. So we need to work with these people.

We need to find a way to engage them, to keep them engaged with the rest of the team. So there's a few things that you can try. Number one, please don't wait until your meeting or your workshop. You should be talking with these people ahead of time, you should always try to talk with everyone that you're gonna have at the workshop with anything that's going to last a half day, a day long, a week long, please spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes with each person to understand who they are, why they're joining, what they're excited about and what they also want to try to avoid, what hasn't worked in the past. And what's going to be really important for them to honor and get out of this session that you're leading with them.

That's going to give you a good foundation. It's gonna open up the relationship between the two of you. They'll start to trust you that you have their best interest, spend that time upfront. Then, you know, depending on who they are and what their difficulties may be, sometimes folks just need a job.

They need to know that they have a little bit of ownership. That could be anything from as simple as handing out supplies or designing the room or the MURALS and Miros ahead of time, or it could be leading or co-leading one of the activities because sometimes these folks, folks that are a little bit of a know-it-all, and aren't feeling heard and acknowledged, sometimes they just need to be put into a job where the rest of the room looks at them and acknowledges them.

If things continue, you know, as you get into your workshop, check in with them, "How's it going? "I know that you had these concerns, what are you seeing? "What are you noticing? What could we do differently? "Is there anything that you suggest?" Right, now they're fully engaged, now you're treating them as a co-expert along there with you.

You know that they're gonna be into it because now they've taken and signed up for partial responsibility of the success of the workshop. And finally get the team involved. You know, if this person just, you can't break them out of it, or for whatever reason, you couldn't do the other steps in advance. Just lay it on the table.

Avoid blame at all costs, please, as soon as you start to point fingers and blame this person, everything's gonna fall apart. So just notice it, you know, if you have to take them aside, but if you can get the team involved and get them to support this person. "You know, I'm noticing that this isn't just something, "that I'm just not getting the ideas out of you. 

"Did you have other ideas "that you want to share with the group? "What are you all seeing as part of this? "What could we do differently?" If you just sweep it under the rug, I promise you it's gonna blow up at some point, you have to address it.

But if you do all of these steps leading up to it, hopefully you don't even have to cross that bridge. Difficult characters, they are hard to deal with. I hope that this gave you some ideas for the know-it-alls that you deal with on a daily, weekly basis.

Stick around in a future video, we'll get into some of the other difficult characters that you and I bump into on a regular basis, right? Until then, see you.

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