Are You a Difficult Person to Work For?

by  Tutti Taygerly  and  Luis Velasquez

January 10, 2023

HBR Staff; Matthias Clamer/Getty Images

Summary.   

Your success as a manager depends on how effectively you lead. Here are five questions all
managers should continually ask themselves about how they establish standards, motivate their
teams, and iterate their behaviors to become better leaders.

 Are your standards high or are they unrealistic? Having high standards isn’t a bad thing. But if
your standards are too high, you’re setting your team (and yourself) up to fail. Consider
whether you have biases or perfectionist habits that are impacting how you think things
should be done. Start by lending an empathetic ear. Ask your team members: What do you
need to do your work effectively? Then listen.
 Are you focused on the outcome or micromanaging the process? Do you tell your employees
exactly how things should be done, leaving no room for creativity or initiative? Think of
yourself as a book’s editor, not the author. Focus on the outcome, providing feedback and
guidance, but leave the process and execution to your team members. Don’t do the work for
them.
 Are you using delegation as a tool for development or are you limiting people’s growth by
dumping work on them? Research has shown that relinquishing authority and giving
employees autonomy can boost organizational capacity and lead to innovation, even during
crises. More importantly, it’s another way to develop your team.
 Are you recognizing what’s good about your team or simply criticizing their mistakes? Aim for
a 6:1 ratio of positive to negative feedback. Acknowledge your direct report’s strengths as
feedback around what to focus on. Conveying appreciation leads to higher team engagement
and builds trust. But remember to be specific and timely about it.
 Are you focused solely on transactional outcomes, or do you care about long-term
relationships? When an employee gets along with their boss, their engagement goes up and
so does their motivation and productivity. To build trust over time, make sure to have a
weekly one-on-one meetings and a quarterly check-in with your direct reports. Don’t just
focus on their immediate goals, focus on their long-term career plans.close

You’re a new manager with fantastic technical skills, a passion for high-quality work,
and the desire to expand your impact at the company. You’ve always been good at
whatever you put your mind to. But now, for the first time, you’ve gotten some
devastating feedback from HR, from a direct report, or from your own manager:
You’re hard to please and difficult to work for.

It’s crushing.
Still, you need to dig deeper. You need understand what exactly people find difficult
about your leadership style. Your success as a manager, after all, depends on how
effectively you lead.

What can you do?

Every manager has a leadership style, or the way they behave when leading a group
— namely what they do, how often they do it, and when. Your personal leadership
style will develop over time, but one of the biggest inflection points will be during
your transition from an individual contributor to a manager.

When you’re used to doing the high-quality work yourself, it can be difficult to figure
out how to lead others. Despite how closely you watch and try to emulate your
superiors, if you’ve been told (especially more than once) that you’re a difficult boss,
you probably need to make a change.

Based on our experience as executive coaches, here are five questions we encourage
all managers to ask themselves about how they establish standards, motivate their
teams, and iterate their behaviors to become better leaders. As you go through your
own learning process, we recommend you do the same.

1) Are your standards high, or are they unrealistic?

Having high standards isn’t a bad thing. It shows that you expect a certain quality of
work from your team members and trust them to deliver. If your standards are
attainable and clear, you can use them to motivate people and evaluate their work.
But if your standards are too high, you’re setting your team (and yourself) up to fail.

When answering this question, consider whether you have biases or perfectionist
habits that are impacting how you think things should be done. Your excellent
performance and work habits likely got you to where you are today. But now your job
is to guide others. That means you need to observe them and understand their
learning styles, strengths, struggles, and aspirations. You need to understand that the
way they execute a project or task may be different from your way — and that both
ways can be right.

For example, perhaps you tend to get your best work done at the office and are
thrilled that many companies have asked their employees to return to work part-
time. If you expect your team to go into the office every day because you believe
that they’ll be more productive, like you, revisit your expectations. For someone with
a longer commute or family obligations, or for those who are consistently more
productive at home, your expectations may seem arbitrary or controlling.

The same applies to tasks. Ask yourself: Is the level of work I expect realistic for this
person, their skill level, and strengths? Have I coached them enough to set them up
for success? Or are my standards based on my own experience?

What you should do: Start by lending an empathetic ear. Ask your team members:
“What do you need to do your work effectively?” Then listen. Your goal is to set them
up for success by understanding how they like to communicate, removing barriers
that stop them from doing great work, and providing them with the resources they
need (when possible).

It can also help to share your own work habits with your direct reports. For instance,
maybe you prefer Slack over email or expect people to respond to messages marked
as “urgent” within 24 hours. You can even create a “user manual” that tells your
employees how to work with you, and ask them to do the same.

2) Are you focused on the outcome or micromanaging the process?

Do you tell your employees exactly how things should be done, leaving no room for
creativity or initiative?  Do you want to know what everyone is working on all the
time? When people ask for help because they are stretched thin, is your response,
“Show me your to-do list, and I’ll show you how to organize it?”

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you may have micromanagement
tendencies. Micromanaging is detrimental to the development of your employees.
When you aim to control every aspect of a project or actively solve every problem
your employees are struggling with, you miss out on the opportunity to teach and
take away their opportunity to learn. Worse, a team who can’t operate without your
heavy involvement will never grow. Your direct reports aren’t learning enough to
move on to the next level, and you aren’t developing as a coach or a leader. You’re
becoming the bottleneck that slows things down.

What you should do: Take the advice of Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter
and Square, who served as CEO of both companies at once. Dorsey says that leaders
should think of themselves like book editors — setting the parameters that others
work within. You, the leader, should focus on the outcome, providing feedback and
guidance, but leaving the process and execution to your team members. Be clear on
the goal you want them to reach, make sure they have what they need to get there,
and then let go. You can always step in to get them back on track if they fall astray.

For example, let’s say that your team member is pitching a big project to a group of
stakeholders. Their task is to get the project greenlit. To set your team member up for
success, explain what the stakeholders expect to learn from their presentation (How
does this project help the business?) and what information is needed to greenlight
the project (How much would all this cost?).

Allow them to draft a slide deck on their own, and then provide them with feedback
(without doing the work yourself). Maybe they need more hard data to back their
argument or an extra slide to clarify a confusing point. Or perhaps their presentation
is too wordy and needs more visuals. Whatever your feedback is, let them
troubleshoot the problems you point out. Through this process, you’ve just taught an
employee how to create a stronger presentation. Because you let them do it alone,
they’ll have that skill forever.

3) Are you using delegation as a tool for development or are you

limiting people’s growth by dumping work on them?
When you delegate, do you tell people what to do, or do you position the request as a
learning opportunity for your direct report? Delegation is one of the most effective
ways to prepare yourself and your team for a promotion. Unfortunately, it isn’t
always done right.

Research has shown that relinquishing authority and giving employees autonomy

can boost organizational capacity and lead to innovation, even during crises. More
importantly, it’s another way to develop your team. Everyone wants to grow, and if
you raise the bar and let go of a little control, you will be surprised by how people
respond.

Remember that raising the bar is different than raising your expectations. Telling
your team, “I expect this to be completed by this date,” is not the same as saying:
“This project is a great way to show your potential. I know you can handle it.”

What you should do: The next time you delegate tasks, inspire your team
member’s commitment by connecting them with projects that either speak to their
strengths or help them develop the skills they need to grow in their role. Ask, “When
do you feel like you’re doing your best work?” or say, “I know your strength is X, and
you want to achieve Y. Getting experience in Z will allow you to use your strength and
also prepare you for Y.  Are you open to giving it a try?” You’ll come across as a more
empathic, responsive leader, and your team members will respect you for it.

4) Are you recognizing what’s good about your team or simply

criticizing their mistakes?

Many high achievers have built successful careers by zeroing in on what’s not
working for them, addressing the problem, and iterating their approach. In other
words, they’re focused on continuously improving themselves and their work. These
skills may work well when pointed inwards, but they can lead to resentment and
shame when pointed outward toward direct reports. If all your team members hear is
constant criticism, they will eventually hit a wall. Hitting a wall can look like:

 Feeling too hopeless to put their best foot forward

 Drowning you out (recognizing you’re never satisfied anyway)
 Blaming you for being a critical and difficult leader
 Giving up entirely (quitting)

In short, ceaseless constructive feedback impairs learning and makes people feel like

they can’t do anything right.

What you should do: Aim for a 6:1 ratio of positive to negative feedback.
Acknowledge your direct report’s strengths as feedback around what to focus on.
Instead of saying, “Double-check the data for accuracy before the next presentation,”
say, “You opened the presentation with fantastic context of the market space. How
else might you better build context around the data?”

Conveying appreciation leads to higher team engagement and builds trust. But

remember to be specific and timely about it. For instance, rather than saying
something vague like, “Great job on that presentation,” try, “The way you structured
the narrative and highlighted customer stories in that presentation really resonated
with the business lead. Great job!”

5) Are you focused solely on transactional outcomes, or do you care

about long-term relationships?

The most successful leaders focus on generating results, but also realize that to do so,
they need to drive engagement, motivate, and empower their direct reports.  In short,
they need to focus on results and relationships.

A transaction-focused manager may get things done in the quickest, most efficient

manner, but a minimal level of interaction is often at play. What’s most important to
them is winning and achieving results at all costs. This single-minded focus comes at
the cost of building relationships, leads to employee burnout, and a reduction in
team engagement. The best leaders drive both results and relationships to amplify
their team’s effectiveness.

What you should do: To build trust over time, make sure to have a weekly one-on-
one meetings and a quarterly check-in with your direct reports. Don’t just focus on
their immediate goals, focus on their long term career plans. A quarterly career
check-in — separate from your regular weekly meeting — will show them that you
care about their growth at the company and are willing to provide them with the
support they need to achieve the best results for themselves and the team.

Research shows that when an employee gets along with their boss, their engagement
goes up and so does their motivation and productivity. You can also, at least once a
quarter, add a new team meeting to your calendar with the sole purpose of forging
deeper connections between your team members. Use this time to have a virtual
coffee break, do a team-bonding exercise, or share life updates.

...

As a new leader, be relentless about asking for feedback to improve your leadership
style. Every leader has flaws, but you have the choice not to let your behavior get in the way
of you own or your team’s success. Your job is to engage, empower, and develop the people
who follow you. As they grow and improve their impact, you will do the same.

 Tutti Taygerly is a leadership and executive coach with 20+ years of design
experience across large companies, design agencies and startups.
 Luis Velasquez, MBA, Ph.D. is an executive coach who works with senior leaders
and their teams to become more cohesive, effective, and resilient.  He is the founder
and managing partner of Velas Coaching LLC, a leadership facilitator at the Stanford
University Graduate School of Business, a former University professor, and research
scientist. Connect with him on LinkedIn.