The Real Truth About Difficult People: Why Your HR Manual is Lying to You

Right. Before we start, let me tell you something that might ruffle a few feathers.

Most of the advice you've heard about dealing with difficult people is absolute rubbish. You know those saccharine corporate training sessions where someone with a forced smile tells you to "just stay positive and empathise"? Yeah, those ones. Complete waste of your afternoon, and probably your employer's money too.

I've been dealing with challenging personalities in Australian workplaces for the better part of two decades now. Started as a junior analyst in Perth, worked my way up through middle management hell in Sydney, and now I spend my days helping businesses across the country figure out why their teams want to throttle each other. And let me tell you something - the traditional approach to difficult people is not only wrong, it's counterproductive.

Here's what I've learned: difficult people aren't actually the problem. Your response to them is.

The Melbourne Meltdown That Changed Everything

Back in 2018, I was working with a manufacturing company in Melbourne's outer suburbs. They had this bloke - let's call him Steve - who was driving everyone mental. Steve questioned everything, argued with management decisions, and had this delightful habit of pointing out flaws in every new initiative.

The HR team was ready to performance-manage him into oblivion. Classic difficult person, right?

Wrong.

Turns out Steve had been with the company for fifteen years. He'd seen three major restructures, two failed software implementations, and countless "game-changing" strategies that were quietly shelved within six months. Steve wasn't being difficult for the sake of it. He was protecting his team from yet another poorly thought-out corporate catastrophe.

Once we actually listened to what Steve was saying - really listened, not just waited for him to finish talking so we could deliver our prepared responses - everything changed. His "difficult" questions highlighted genuine issues that would have cost the company hundreds of thousands down the track.

Steve got promoted six months later.

This is the thing about difficult people that nobody wants to admit: they're often right.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Workplace Harmony

Here's where I'm going to lose some of you, and I'm okay with that. The modern obsession with workplace harmony is creating weak teams and terrible decision-making.

We've become so focused on everyone getting along that we've forgotten the value of productive conflict. Some of the best teams I've worked with have had members who couldn't stand each other personally but respected each other professionally. They argued, they challenged, they pushed back - and they delivered exceptional results.

A study I came across recently (and I'll be honest, I can't remember which university published it, but the numbers stuck with me) suggested that teams with moderate levels of task conflict performed 23% better than those with either no conflict or excessive conflict. The sweet spot isn't peace and love - it's controlled disagreement.

Why Most Advice Fails Spectacularly

The problem with most conflict resolution training is that it assumes everyone operates from the same emotional and logical framework. They don't.

I worked with a guy in Brisbane once who drove his colleagues mad because he never seemed to care about deadlines. Turns out he was dyslexic and had developed coping mechanisms that involved processing information much more slowly and thoroughly than others. What looked like laziness was actually meticulousness born from necessity.

Another case in Adelaide involved a woman who everyone thought was aggressive and confrontational. Reality? She'd grown up in a family where you had to fight to be heard, and she genuinely didn't realise that her communication style was overwhelming others. Once she understood the impact, she adjusted. Not because someone told her to "be more positive," but because someone explained how her behaviour was affecting outcomes.

This is why generic advice like "stay calm" or "find common ground" is useless. It's trying to apply the same solution to completely different problems.

The Three Types of Difficult (And How to Handle Each)

After years of observation, I've categorised difficult people into three main types. Before you roll your eyes and mutter something about oversimplification, hear me out. These categories aren't perfect, but they're practical.

Type One: The Protector

These are your Steves. They've been burned before, they've seen things go wrong, and they're trying to prevent disaster. They ask tough questions, they resist change, and they generally make life uncomfortable for anyone pushing new initiatives.

How to handle them: Give them information early. Make them part of the planning process. Their resistance usually stems from feeling out of control or uninformed. The moment they feel like insiders rather than victims, their behaviour changes dramatically.

I learned this lesson the hard way when I tried to implement a new performance management system without consulting the team leads first. The pushback was fierce and, frankly, justified. When I started again and brought the sceptics into the planning phase, the rollout was smooth as silk.

Type Two: The Overwhelmed

These people aren't actually difficult - they're drowning. They snap at colleagues, miss deadlines, and seem perpetually stressed. Often they're high performers who've been given too much responsibility without adequate support.

How to handle them: Look at their workload, not their attitude. I once had a client in Perth who was convinced they needed to fire their office manager for being "negative and uncooperative." Turned out she was doing the work of three people and hadn't had a proper holiday in two years. Six months later, with proper support and some systems changes, she was back to being the star performer she'd always been.

Type Three: The Fundamentally Incompatible

These are the genuinely problematic personalities. They thrive on drama, they don't respect boundaries, and they seem incapable of professional behaviour regardless of consequences. Fortunately, they're much rarer than most managers think.

How to handle them: Document everything, set clear consequences, and don't waste emotional energy trying to change them. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do - for them and everyone else - is to help them find a workplace where their personality is better suited.

The Mistake Everyone Makes

Here's what kills me about most workplace conflict: we focus on changing the difficult person instead of changing the system that's creating the difficulty.

I consulted for a tech startup in Sydney where the developers and the sales team were constantly at each other's throats. Management kept running team-building exercises and conflict resolution workshops. Complete waste of time and money.

The real problem? The commission structure was set up so that sales promised clients features that didn't exist, leaving developers scrambling to deliver impossibilities. Once we fixed the incentive structure, the "personality conflicts" disappeared overnight.

Most difficult behaviour isn't a character flaw - it's a rational response to an irrational situation.

What Actually Works (And Why Nobody Does It)

The most effective approach to difficult people is also the most uncomfortable: radical honesty combined with genuine curiosity.

Instead of thinking "how do I get this person to stop being difficult," try "what is this person trying to protect or achieve?"

Instead of "how do I make them comply," ask "what would need to change for their behaviour to make sense?"

This approach requires something most organisations claim to value but rarely practice: psychological safety. People can't be honest about their motivations if they're afraid of being punished for them.

The Bottom Line

Dealing with difficult people isn't about managing their emotions or changing their personality. It's about understanding the gap between what they need and what they're getting, then either closing that gap or helping them find a situation where it doesn't exist.

This might mean restructuring teams, changing processes, or having conversations that make everyone uncomfortable. It definitely means abandoning the fantasy that everyone should get along all the time.

The best workplaces I've seen aren't the ones where everyone agrees with each other. They're the ones where people can disagree professionally, where difficult questions are welcomed rather than shut down, and where the focus is on results rather than harmony.

If that makes me sound like a difficult person myself, well... maybe that's exactly what your workplace needs.

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Related Training Resources:

• Dealing with Difficult Behaviours Melbourne
• Managing Difficult Conversations

Further Reading:

• HubShop Posts - Practical workplace insights