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Dealing With Difficult Employees - Episode 27 · Profit and Principle

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know exactly who I'm talking about.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: The person who's been on your team for two years and is still somehow a problem.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: The one whose talent you can't ignore, but whose behavior you can't afford.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: The one you've had partial conversations with, enough to feel like you've addressed it, not enough to actually change anything.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: The one whose name comes up in one on ones with other team members, always framed as a concern, always the same concern, and always followed by a look that says, Why is this person still here?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Difficult employees are the leadership problem that almost never resolves itself.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: They don't get better through proximity to a good culture.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: They don't usually self-correct because the environment is healthy.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: They require a specific kind of attention.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Direct, honest, and conducted with genuine care for the person.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And most leaders find this deeply uncomfortable and spend enormous energy avoiding it.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Daryl, and this is Profit and Principle.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: In the last episode, we talked about who you let in the door.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we're going to talk about what you do when someone who's already inside is making things harder than they should be.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to be clear about what we're covering today.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not the conversation about whether to fire someone, that's a different episode.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Today is about the intentional, redemptive process of addressing a difficult person before you get to that decision.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is, most leaders jump from avoidance to determination without ever trying the thing in between.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing in between is where scripture has the most to say.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: You walk away with a clear framework for approaching a difficult employee, a posture check before you enter the conversation, and a delivery principle that determines whether the process goes anywhere useful.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let me describe what the unaddressed difficult employee is actually costing you.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think leaders consistently underestimate the full price.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: The most obvious cost is productivity, the output that is being produced because the person's behavior is either directly impacting their own performance or consuming management bandwidth that should be going elsewhere.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the measurable part.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: The less measurable costs are larger.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: The first is team morale.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Every person on your team is watching how you handle this.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: They know who the difficult employee is.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: They've been dealing with the fallout longer than you have, and they're running a calculation.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Does the leader see what I see?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if they see it, will they do anything about it?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: The leader who allows a pattern of difficult behavior to continue unaddressed sends a clear message to every high performer on the team.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is what the standards actually are.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not what's in the values document.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: This.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And some of those high performers will quietly update their own commitment to the organization in response.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: The second cost is the difficult employee themselves.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say this carefully because I think it matters.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you avoid addressing a person's behavior directly, you're not being kind to them.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're allowing them to continue in a pattern that's harming their relationships, their reputation, and their career without giving them the honest information that they need to change.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: The leader who finally has the direct conversation often discovers that the person had no accurate picture of how their behavior was landing.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: They had been operating on the feedback they were receiving, which was incomplete or absent.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's on the leader, not the employee.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: The most genuinely caring thing you can do for a difficult person on your team is to tell them the truth.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the third cost is your own leadership credibility.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Teams lose confidence in leaders who don't address what everyone can see.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not because they expect perfection, they don't.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because they expect that someone in authority will eventually act on reality.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: When that expectation is consistently unmet, trust in the leader erodes, quietly and steadily.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: In the way that doesn't show up in any survey, but shows up in every conversation the leader isn't in.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take a look at what Scripture has to say about this, and we're going to start out in Matthew chapter 18, looking at verses 15 through 17.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is speaking to his disciples about interpersonal conflict in the community of faith.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: The context is the church, but the framework he gives is one of the most practically applicable conflict resolution processes in any literature, and it maps directly onto the organizational setting.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the structure.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Step one, go directly to the person privately.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The Greek word here is to have gone, right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You have come to them.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: The motion is toward the person, not away.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not to others first, not to a supervisor, but to the person.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is the step most leaders skip entirely.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: They discuss the problem with peers, with HR, with anyone except the person who needs to hear it.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus says the first move is always direct and private.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose of that first step is stated explicitly.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: If he listens, you have gained your brother.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now the Greek here means that you have won them.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: You've gained them back.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is framing this not as a disciplinary procedure, but as a restoration process.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: The goal of the first conversation is not documentation, it's not accountability, it's not the creation of a paper trail.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is the person to gain them, to keep them in community.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Step two involves witnesses, not as a punitive escalation, but as a structural support when the direct conversation hasn't produced resolution.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And step three is the community itself as the final arbiter.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: What's important to note is that this process has genuine off-ramps.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: At every stage, resolution is possible.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The escalation is structured and proportionate.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And even in the final step, treating the person as an outsider, this is not vengeance.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' own ministry, Gentiles and tax collectors were precisely the people he was most intentional about pursuing.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: The framework doesn't abandon the person.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It changes the relationship in a way that is honest about what has actually happened.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: For the business leader, go first, go directly.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Go with the goal of restoration, not the goal of documentation.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: The process Jesus describes begins with the hardest and most important step, the private, direct, and honest conversation.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it escalates only if that step fails.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take a look at Galatians chapter 6, verse 1.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul writes this Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: We looked at this passage back in Episode 22 from the angle of giving feedback.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Here it speaks of something different.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: The posture you bring into the room before the Matthew 18 process begins.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says the person addressing a transgression should be spiritual, not a title, but a description of someone who is walking in step with the Spirit.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Someone whose own life is in order enough that they can approach the other person's failure without hypocrisy.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the mandate here is to restore.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's to bring the person back to full function.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same word used for mending fishing nets.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: It implies skilled, careful, and patient work.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: You don't fix a net by yanking at it.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: You find the break, you work it carefully, you repair the structure so it can hold weight again.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the image Paul wants you to carry into the difficult employee conversation.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the final instruction is the most honest.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Before you address someone else's behavior, look at your own posture.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Are you going to restore or to vent?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Are you going to mend or to punish?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are you carrying frustration, resentment, or vindication into the conversation?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: If so, the conversation will not produce what you want.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is not saying don't go.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying go clean.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do the self-check first.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: The conversation is hard enough without bringing contaminated motives into it.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now finally, let's look at Proverbs chapter 15, verse one.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: We looked at this verse in episode 21 from the angle of a leader's own words.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: In this context, it functions as the delivery principle for the difficult employee conversation.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon is describing cause and effect in human communication.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The register of your response is itself a force.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: The soft answer.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that is tender, it's pliant, it actively de-escalates.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a temperature down.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: It creates the conditions in which the other person can hear what you're saying rather than reacting to how you're saying it.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: The harsh word here means a painful or cutting word.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: It does the opposite.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just fail to resolve, it generates new anger on top of what is already there.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: The leader who goes into a difficult employee conversation with frustration audible in their voice, with a posture of someone whose patience has run out, with language that signals judgment ready to concern, that leader will almost always produce defensiveness rather than reflection.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And a defensive person cannot hear feedback.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: The soft answer is not weakness, it's precision.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is choosing the register that gives the conversation the best chance of producing the outcome you actually want.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can be completely direct, honest, clear, specific about what you observed and what needs to change, and still be soft in the sense that Solomon means.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: The softness is in the tone, not the content.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you two versions of the same conversation.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: A team leader, I'll call him Jerome, has been hearing complaints about a senior team member named Diane for about three months.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Diane is technically excellent.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: She's also consistently dismissive of junior team members' ideas in meetings, and two people have told Jerome they stop contributing in sessions where she's present.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: In version one, Jerome lets it build.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: He tells himself Diane probably doesn't realize how she's coming across.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: He makes a few general comments in team meetings about the importance of drawing on everyone's perspective, hoping that she'll self-identify and adjust.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: But she doesn't.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Another three months pass.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Jerome now has four people who have mentioned it, two of them who are visibly disengaged.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: He finally sits down with Diane, but by now his patience is spent, and the conversation opens with a laundry list of accumulated grievances delivered in a tone that signals this is a formal warning rather than a direct conversation.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Diane becomes defensive immediately.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: She disputes specifics.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: The conversation ends without resolution.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: The relationship between Jerome and Diane, which was professional if not warm, is now damaged.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: The pattern continues.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: In version two, Jerome goes to Diane two weeks after the first complaint.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: He goes to her directly, privately, with specific language.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I've noticed something in our team meetings that I want to talk to you about because I think you're probably not aware of how it's landing.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: When you respond quickly to ideas before they're fully developed, some of the junior members are reading it as dismissal.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's not your intent, but I'd like for us to figure out together how to change that dynamic.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Diane is initially surprised, then she's thoughtful.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: She asks two questions, the conversation lasts 15 minutes, and the behavior changes within a month.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Same person, same pattern, same leader.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: The difference is timing, directness, and the tone that softness describes, which created enough safety for Diane to actually hear what Jerome was saying.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Two points of application for you today.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: One, identify the difficult employee conversation you've been avoiding and commit to having it within the next seven days.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not eventually, not after the quarter ends, but this week.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: The Matthew 18 framework begins with a single step.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Go.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: The longer you defer, the more accumulated grievance you bring into the room, and the harder the conversation becomes.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: You also give the team more time to watch you not act, which has its own cost.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Before you go, do the Galatians 6 posture check.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Write down honestly what you were hoping to produce from this conversation.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is I want this person to understand how frustrated I am, or I need to document this in case I have to let them go, those are not sufficient reasons.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: The goal of the first conversation, per Jesus, own framework, is to gain the person, to restore them.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you can get to that goal genuinely, then go.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't yet, give yourself another day to get there, but set the date.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the other action item.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Prepare three specific observations, not general characterizations.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: The conversation fails or succeeds at the level of specificity.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have a negative impact on team's morale, that's a characterization.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: The person will dispute it, defend against it, and walk away having heard that you have a low opinion of them.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: But something like in the last 14 meetings, I noticed that when junior members raise ideas, you respond before they finished.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Twice last Tuesday.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now that is an observation.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: The person can either firm or dispute a specific.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: They cannot dispute a pattern that they haven't seen described specifically before.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Prepare three observations.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Write them down before you go in.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then this is the soft step.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Practice the opening line in a tone that is direct but not hot.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going in to confront.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're going in to restore.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Start the conversation that way and give it the best chance of ending that way.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say something before I close.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Matthew 18 process does not always produce restoration.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the direct conversation works and the relationship is repaired, and the person becomes one of the strongest contributors on your team.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: That happens more often than leaders expect.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes the conversation produces nothing.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the escalation produces nothing.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes after you've followed the process faithfully and the person has had every opportunity to respond, the right outcome is separation.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a failure of the process.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's the process working.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: You will know if you follow these steps that you gave the person every genuine opportunity, and that matters.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: It matters for the person, and it matters for the team that watches how you lead, and it matters for you.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't design this process to guarantee a happy ending.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: He designed it to guarantee that the path taken was honest, direct, redemptive, and fair.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: That is what you can control.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Follow the process and trust that the outcome, whatever it is, will be the one you can stand behind.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray for every leader listening right now who is managing someone who is making their organization harder than it should be.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Give them the courage to go, directly, privately, and soon.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Give them the posture of someone going to restore rather than to punish.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Give them the specific language that creates enough safety for the other person to actually hear them.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if the conversation doesn't produce what they hope, give them wisdom for the next step and the step after that.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Protect the teams around them from the cost of a problem that never gets addressed.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And may the difficult conversation they have this week produce more restoration than they expect.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, amen.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I thank you for joining me for another episode of Profit and Principal.
• 19:50
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• 19:55
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• 19:58
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• 20:01
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• 20:09
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• 20:12
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• 20:18
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• 20:21
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• 20:28
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• 20:30
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• 20:32
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• 20:39
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