Dealing with Difficult and Different Personalities

About

Dealing with Difficult People and Different Personalities has specifically been designed to assist senior and middle level managers to develop insights into and practical strategies for dealing with those difficult, negative, troublesome and hard to please people.

Gain the skills and confidence to positively coach your employees and turn around people with negative and destructive behaviours, attitudes and performance, so that you are in control.

Key learning objectives
•    Deliver insight into some difficult types and examine what might be driving that behaviour
•    Develop your ability to spot different personality types and ensure that you know the best ways to deal with them
•    Demonstrate how you can obtain cooperation from hard to please and difficult people
•    Ensure you get better results when dealing with other people both within your organisation and externally
•    Assist you in identifying problem performers and personalities in your workplace
•    Ensure that you understand the common types of poor performers, and how each type should be handled
•    Help you to stay in control of even the most aggressive of employees
•    Show you how to effectively coach and counsel staff back onto the high-performing track
•    Guarantee a more productive and positive team, where high performance is the standard

Outline

DAY ONE
Difficult behaviour versus difficult people
This session is an in-depth examination of the differences between difficult behaviour and difficult people.  You will learn how to identify one from the other and how to combat the behaviour.
•    What makes a person difficult?
•    Identifying a person’s basic personality style in order to understand difficult behaviour
•    Preparing yourself for effectively dealing with difficult behaviour
•    Handling behaviour, which seems like difficult when it is not
•    How to effectively and efficiently put a stop to difficult behaviour

Insights into some difficult types
We will look at some types of difficult behaviour and provide insights into what might be driving that behaviour.  In the interests of keeping this from being too heavy, we have given the behaviour a name. 
•    The Control Freak
•    The Bruiser
•    The Loudmouth
•    The Driver – obsessive
•    The Bully
•    The Stirrer – well poisoner

How to recognise, understand and work with different personalities
In this session you will be introduced to some basic personality traits.  You will learn how these traits influence how people will react in certain situations.
•    The anatomy of a personality
•    Understanding different communication styles – and probable strengths and weaknesses of each style
•    Defining ‘Controller’, ‘Driver’, ‘Coach’ and ‘Cheerleader’ types
•    Understanding ‘Landscapers’, ‘Lawnmowers’ and ‘Well Poisoners’
•    A seven step plan for defusing difficult people in the workplace

How to pair the right communications strategy with the particular type of difficult behaviour
Learn to set the boundaries when communicating with others and ensure that your communications strategy is suited to the particular type of behaviour that you are attempting to counter.
•    How to avoid ambushes set by difficult people
•    Which communication tactic works best for particular personality styles?
•    Gaining insight into a person’s ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ buttons
•    Effectively predicting difficult behaviour prior to it happening
•    Developing a communication style which will decrease the potential for conflict

How to tamper-proof your communication system
Be proactive and improve your methods of communicating, in order to remove other people’s difficult behaviour from the equation.
•    Getting your view across and avoiding the potential for confrontation
•    How to save face when an employee sets you up or publicly tries to embarrass you
•    Developing better active listening skills to help you better understand others
•    Using communication techniques which can prevent difficult behaviour
•    Developing the ability to sort personalities from the issues

Performance management: How it benefits individuals and your organisation
•    Assessing the cost of poor people management
•    The importance of having people management systems in place to clearly differentiate star performers from poor performers
•    Common barriers to effective peformance management

DAY TWO
Setting objectives and clear expectations
•    Creating and communicating performance standards – ensuring common understanding
•    Setting organisational, team and individual objectives
•    Assessing the benefits of a competency framework
•    Reviewing performance against objectives

A stitch in time saves nine: Recognising and dealing with unacceptable employee behaviour
While it is crucial to deal with discipline issues effectively, it is even more important to look at ways of preventing problems arising in the first place.  Carefully considered, clearly communicated and fairly applied employment practices can help develop healthy employment relations and minimise the number of problems.  By taking action to deal with problem issues as early as possible, the organisation can ‘nip in the bud’ the likelihood of disciplinary action becoming necessary.
•    How to recognise the early warning signs when an employee is performing poorly and what you can do
•    The importance of taking corrective rather than disciplinary action at the start of the problem
•    Analysis of the relationship between the line manager, human resources and the employee
•    Identifying when a “personality clash” is igniting the behaviour

Three tools for getting results: Coaching, criticising and repremanding
Management and coaching go hand-in-hand. Discover how to get to the bottom of poor performance and destructive behaviour by using coaching as a strategic tool for improving the effectiveness of employees.
•    Discovering when a “problem employee” has personal problems through effective interviewing and counselling techniques
•    Strategies to identify and deal with employees involved in drug, substance or self-abuse
•    In what situations should an employer get external help for a problem employee?
•    Effective strategies for coaching underachieving employees to get them back on track
•    Designing an effective performance improvement plan that works

Taking Action: Turning around a problem performer
It is important that you take action with an employee who is exhibiting problems with productivity and behaviour as soon as you detect there is a problem. Here are some of the most effective methods for approaching this tricky issue.
•    Describing the employee’s specific performance issues
•    Communicating the expected standards of employee performance
•    Asking the employee for solutions to the problem
•    Agreeing on specific actions to be done and a time frame to implement them

Final reminders
How to keep it simple, stay focussed, be fair, not quit and retain your sense of humour!

Facilitator

Keith McGregor, Personnel Psychology NZ Ltd

After completing his psychology degree in 1974 Keith joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force as an industrial psychologist. During 12 years in the RNZAF, Keith was involved in a wide range of organisational and personnel psychology including such areas as selection test development, interviewing, training development, selection validation, personal counselling, large scale survey work and statistical analysis. Also during this time Keith represented the New Zealand Defence Forces in behavioural sciences projects with psychologists and researchers from the British, Canadian, Australian and American armed forces.

In 1986 Keith became a director of Gilmour McGregor & Associates, a psychological consultancy employing registered psychologists of various disciplines: clinical, forensic and industrial. Among the numerous organisations he has worked with, both national and international, Keith is recognised for his executive assessment work and in particular for his extensive knowledge of interview techniques, testing and test development. Large scale survey research work also remains a focus, as does staff training, organisational development, career related counselling. He is also the developer of Selector-PA, E-Profiler and Career-Step computer programs for employee selection and management.

While remaining a director of Gilmour McGregor and Associates, in 2003 Keith established Personnel Psychology NZ Ltd to enable him to focus on providing personnel assessment, training and support to managers and staff. Keith is a registered psychologist and coordinator of the industrial/organisational special interest group for the Occupational Division for the New Zealand Psychological Society and Human Resource Institute of New Zealand.

Keith McGregor is also facilitating:

• Developing Assertiveness & Self Confidence at Work
• Investigative Interviewing Techniques
• People Management Skills for Technical Professionals
• Planning, Problem Solving and Decision Making
• Planning, Problem Solving and Decision Making
• Strategically Influencing Across Your Organisation

In-house Training

Prices and Registration

* Early bird price available when you register and pay before the dates listed.