How do you handle difficult team members?

Hi Prashant ,

Knowing how many defects are open and the amount of time "left" is not going to help finishing the work faster. Also reminding the developer that he is behind schedule will not make him get back on track.

Project management is completely useless in this kind of situation. Actually in bug fixing it is impossible to estimate the time needed to fix a defect because you don't know what's broken and you need to investigate. So it is practically impossible to set dead-lines for fixing defects. I know that many times such dead-lines are being set but you should be prepared that they are not going to be met.

Thanks Adrian,

You are views are really practical but this could happen in case you have professionals who knows their responsibility very well though they are not on track.

PM has to act by multiple ways based on the situations,
1. Showing the faults, problems politely to those who are over-smart or wanted you to be in trouble. or either saying "What would you do in that situation?" - getting the reply which we want from them.

2. Maintaining a Friendly behavior or using emotional intelligence could also work to certain level of team members.

3. Responsibility is the biggest factor for every individual to perform at their best and this could be the biggest key factor to overcome on this problem.

Hi Adrian,
Thank you for your thoughts on my comments, as a mid-level manager, it is not hard to do my job but it becomes next to impossible when the folks who bring me on-board decides to start playing games. I choose to be a contractor so that when I see situations like this, i bid everyone adieu and move on to a new project.

To my knowledge, there isn't a profession where someone is being paid to be difficult, why do we tolerate it?

My understanding is that in a projectized environment, the PM is at the top of the food chain subject to senior or executive management. Why should anyone on the project proof difficult? It shouldn't be allowed and the reason this exists is that most people think PMs are oafs that should be grateful for their positions.

We need to start redefining what Project Management stands for. I choose to not work with senior /executive management team who will not back me up if my team is proving difficult especially when I remain professional, personable and polite. I have a job to do, it is to get a project off the ground and close it. I have to work with different people but they are part of the structure to get the project complete.

To quote you Adrian, "This is a delicate situation and the PMs skills must come to play. You have to be able to get the information you need without irritating the team members. The best way to do this is to establish very good (friendly) relationships with them"

The fact you assume a PM isn't establishing good relationship with the team is not the right way to approach dealing with difficult team members.

There is nothing delicate about Project Management, this isn't brain surgery. From construction to IT, projects are not new, the scope may be different and the end product. I don't see why anyone shouldn't do their part. If they have issues doing it, inform the PM so they can find a solution. It may mean escalating issues to get approval from the management team but under no circumstance is it ok for anyone to be difficult. It is unacceptable behavior and very unprofessional in the workplace.

Errant children shouldn't be rewarded. Anyone who is less than professional, polite and personal on the project team including the PM shouldn't be rewarded. They need to be removed for promoting bad work environment. PMs are not victims.

I choose to work only with ardent professionals who take what they do seriously and are always working to a positive end.

Hi Edward,

I think I didn't express myself properly, I didn't assume the PM is not establishing good relationship (although this can be true too) what I wanted to say is that the PM must be able to work with difficult people and try to adapt to their ways of working rather then trying to change them. This is true especially for project managers that are contractors. As a matter of fact this is true for all contractors either project managers or not.

From a technical point of view project management may not be too complicated but dealing with difficult people may be complicated and hard.

I've worked a lot as a contractor in IT (not project management) and I have seen that people in organizations establish relationships between them and some of these relations can be complicated and the workers working for these organizations can be difficult to work with. It is extremely important to adapt to the organization's work behavior and people relationships otherwise you are not going to go far no matter how good you are at what you are doing. If you can't take it any longer then the only thing you can do is to leave.

Regarding projectized organizations I don't think they exist in reality since companies in order to deliver projects also require strong functional departments and the experts in a certain function need to stay together and cooperate even when they are working on different projects. A projectized organization could exist only when all the employees are contractors but this means that they also belong to a functional department on their home company.

Thank you Betsy.

The reason I asked was because I also worked as a developer on bug fixing and estimating the time needed to fix the defect in most cases was not possible. Apparently you already know this. :P

Because of the above you can't really tell a developer that he is behind schedule on his defect fixing since you can't accurately estimate the time needed to fix the defects and more importantly you can't predict how many defects are going to be reported by the testers/users.

When a developer is struggling to find the problem for a defect and someone else keeps asking him why he hasn't finished yet then such a developer may turn into a so called difficult team member. The developer may think that there is no point to keep reporting the progress since he hasn't managed to fix the bug yet. When he fixes the defect(s) he will report this. Also you don't feel to well when you have to report that there was no progress.

If there are too many defects and they can't be handled by the project or maintenance/support team then you should adjust the dead-lines or add more people to help. Aggressively asking for status report doesn't help too much.

I love your response about the tool and there are many out there. Reluctance by organization leaders to implement them is one of the main reasons, we continue to deal with these types of issues. I have been in situations where the executive team just won't have a tool that can reduce team friction by automating accountability.

CYA (Cover Your Assets) mentality and fostering an environment where fear of losing one's job is entrenched continues to limit individual progress and growth. As a professional, I don't think I am getting paid to show up to do the bare minimum, I will love to show some growth and not be an impediment to progress. Most working people feel exactly the same way I do, so how come we continue to have obstructionist, difficult people and some unprofessional behaviors?