All of us would like to believe that we can lead in such a way where people would never drive us nuts. Of course, that’s not reality – and we’ve all had to deal with people many times that push our buttons in all the wrong ways. In this episode, I share a recent experience I had where someone was driving me nuts and what mistakes I made (and advise I have) for leading when this happens.

Here are nine things you can do to lead when someone is driving you nuts:

1) Ask yourself, it is personality or performance?

• Rarely do we get to decide what personalities we get to work with and lead.
• If it’s personality, challenge yourself to be flexible.

2) Give people the benefit of the doubt.

• Almost nobody wakes up in the morning with the goal to make other people miserable.

3) Address non-performance early.

• If there is a clear performance issue, address it early.
• Trust your instincts and those of the people around you.
• What should it be? For me, 2 incidents.
• People know you are watching, that you care, and what the expectations are.

4) Tell people you are giving them a second chance.

• Error on the side of over-communicating here.

5) Use email wisely (and Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

• Stay off posting or sending things in writing when you are mad.
• Follow-up expectations with an email summary.

6) Find out if it can be fixed before losing your cool.

• Most everything can be fixed.

7) Sleep on it.

• We don’t make good decisions when we’re tired.
• We anger faster.
• We take twice and long to handle stuff.
• We don’t have perspective.
• We have the tendency to fire off emails.

8) Let other people do their jobs once you’ve raised a concern.

• Sometimes you’ll get punished for being proactive.

9) Decide how much of your time and energy this is worth.

• Dale Carnegie says, “Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth and refuse to give it more.”
• This too shall pass.
• Often I find that I am angry at myself when I feel like I am angry at others.

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