Think about the person on your team who pushes back on you the most. Not the one who complains. The one who argues with you. Questions the decision in the meeting. Tells you the new form is a waste of everybody's time.
What if I suggested there's a chance that's your best person? And that you might already be halfway to managing him out the door?
Today I want to talk about the difficult people on your team, because I think we get this one wrong a lot.
Let me describe somebody, and I'd bet a name comes to mind before I'm done.
He doesn't have to be your top producer for this to apply. He's good. Maybe he's a crew leader, maybe he's your operations manager, maybe he's the account manager who takes care of some of your biggest customers. It doesn't matter where he sits. What matters is the work gets done right when he's on it. His jobs come in the way they're supposed to. You don't get calls about them. Put a new hire under him, or even around him, and one of two things happens. They get good fast, or they're gone in two weeks.
And he's a pain in the ass.
He told you the new checklist was stupid. Out loud, in the yard, in front of people. He asked you in the Monday meeting why the company still does something it's been doing since before he got there, and you didn't have a great answer. He doesn't fill out the paperwork the way you want it filled out, because he's watched half of it go in a drawer and never get looked at again. Every time you roll out a new rule, he's the first one to ask what problem it's solving.
And sometimes he's right. That's the annoying part.
Every conversation with him costs you something. You know before you walk over there that you're going to have to defend whatever you came to say.
Here's what I've watched happen with people like that.
We start managing the friction instead of the work.
It's small at first. You stop asking his opinion in meetings, because you already know he's going to have one. His review says something about attitude or communication, and the numbers on the same page say he's one of your better producers, and nobody reads those two things next to each other. The next big job goes to somebody who's easier to talk to. Not because they'll do it better. Because the conversation is shorter.
He notices. Guys like this notice. The company's telling him, without ever saying it, that the pushback costs more than the results are worth.
And then one day he's gone. Maybe you let him go. Maybe you let him walk, which is the same thing done slower. And the line that gets said in the office is some version of, "He was good at his job, but he was such a pain!"
The guy who replaces him is easier. Quieter. Agrees with you in meetings. And about a season later, the callbacks are up, the crew's a little slower, and the customer who used to ask for the old guy by name is asking what happened. And most of us don't connect the two. Why would we? Things got quieter, and quieter feels like an improvement.
I don't think it was. I think we removed the person who kept pointing at problems and called it fixing one.
Now I know how this sounds. It sounds like I'm telling you to keep every jerk on the payroll as long as his numbers are good.
I'm not, and I want to be careful here, because some difficult people really are toxic, and I've worked around a few. The problem is that most of us are using the wrong test to tell the two apart. The test we tend to use is how much grief the person gives us. That's not it.
The question I'd ask instead is: what is he pushing on?
If he's pushing on the work, he's difficult. The decision, the rule, the process, the way the job gets done. He argues with the checklist because he thinks the checklist makes the job worse. He questions the rule because nobody explained it. He wants to know why. That's somebody who cares how the work turns out and is willing to be unpopular over it.
If he's pushing on people, that's different. He makes the guy next to him look bad so he looks better. He talks about the new hire behind his back. He makes the office staff dread the phone ringing. He pushes on your authority not because he thinks you're wrong but because he likes pushing. That's toxic. That guy is fighting for himself. The difficult guy is fighting for the job, or even the team.
The people around him already know which one they've got. The crew, the office, whoever works next to him. They could tell you. Usually before we figure it out ourselves.
And I want to say something about the toxic one, because this is where culture gets made or lost. If he's pushing on people, his numbers don't save him. I don't care how good he is. The minute a brilliant jerk gets a pass because he produces, everybody else on your team learns exactly what you'll tolerate in exchange for results. That lesson spreads faster than anything you'll ever put in a handbook, and you can't afford it. So the question is the same either way. What is he pushing on? The answer keeps your difficult guy, and it gets rid of your toxic one, no matter how much he produces.
I don't think owners get this wrong because they're bad at reading people. I think we get it wrong because from our chair, difficult and toxic can feel exactly the same.
Both of them make your day harder. Both of them mean a conversation you'd rather not have. Both of them end up on the same mental list of things you have to deal with, and when you're running a company in the middle of the season, that list is the only one that gets looked at.
So the friction becomes the evidence. He's a problem because he feels like a problem.
How it feels to you is not the test. It's not the test for you, and it's not the test for your managers either. Because the feeling can actually point you the wrong way. Your difficult guy makes your day worse and your company better. Your toxic guy is often pretty pleasant to the boss. Nice to your face, easy in the meeting, and busy making everybody under him or around him miserable. If you're going by feel, you keep the wrong one.
The difficult guy is uncomfortable to have around. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But that discomfort is the job he's doing for you that nobody else on the team is willing to do.
I'll tell you where this shows up for us at BR1.
When one of these people finally takes our call, money is not the story. Not at first. What we hear sounds like, "They don't listen." "I've been telling them for two years." "I'm tired of being the only one who says anything."
That guy isn't leaving for a dollar an hour. He's leaving because he got tired of being treated like the friction was the problem. And he's exactly the guy the company down the road wants.
The same thing shows up in interviews, by the way. The candidate who asks the uncomfortable question, the one who wants to know why the last person left and what authority he'll actually have, that's not a red flag. That's a preview. He's going to do that on the job too. That's what you're paying for.
So here's your challenge this week.
Think about your biggest pain in the ass. You've got one. You probably knew who it was before I finished the sentence.
Now be honest about the answer. Is the friction he brings hurting the company, or helping it? Look at what he's pushing on, and what happens to the work when he wins the argument. Then ask yourself what happens to the work if he leaves.
Results, impact, and output are worth more than somebody who just goes with the flow. It doesn't always feel that way in the moment, and the moment is where a lot of these decisions get made.
If the answer is that he's helping, do one more thing. Tell him. Right now the only feedback he's getting from you might be the friction. He may have no idea you know what he's worth. Somebody else might tell him first.
And if the answer is that he's pushing on people, you know what to do about that too. His numbers don't change it.
Either way, make the decision on what he's pushing on, not on how it feels.
If you need help finding good people, that's what we do at BR1. And if you've already got one of the people I've been describing, I hope you're a little slower to manage him out the door than you were before you started reading.
Until next time, keep building your stronger team!