HR Besties: Coaching Difficult Coworkers (Without Losing Your Mind)
HR BESTIES
HR Besties LLC
4.8 • 586 Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's agenda:
- Yep, that's a power trip!
- Cringe corporate speak: one off
- Hot topic: coaching and dealing with difficult coworkers: how to work effectively (even when they're jerks!)
- Defining what "difficult" means is hard, especially in the HR world
- Assuming the best intent and playing dumb
- Are you okay?
- Gatekeeping and lack of consideration
- Productive conversations can make things better
- BTW: check out our Besties newsletter this week for helpful discussion guide questions and prompts
- Knowing when to document and escalate
- You can only control yourself (so don't waste your time or peace on someone else!)
- Questions/Comments
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Leigh, Jamie & Ashley
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Tune in to "HR Besties," a business, work and management podcast hosted by Leigh Elena Henderson (HRManifesto), Ashley Herd (ManagerMethod) and Jamie Jackson (Humorous_Resources), where we navigate the labyrinth of corporate culture, from cringe corporate speak to toxic leadership. Whether you're in Human Resources or not, corporate or small business, we offer sneak peeks into surviving work, hiring strategies, and making the employee experience better for all. Tune in for real talk on employee engagement, green flags in the workplace, and how to turn red flags into real change. Don't miss our chats about leadership, career coaching, and takes from work travel and watercooler gossip. Get new episodes every Wednesday, follow us on socials for the latest updates, and join us at our virtual happy hours to share your HR stories.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So I've talked before about getting angry at work, right? |
| 0:09.3 | And I mean, I can only count, definitely on one hand. |
| 0:13.4 | There's like three incidents, right? |
| 0:15.1 | I think I've shared two of them where I just got so mad. |
| 0:18.7 | Oh my gosh, so angry. |
| 0:20.3 | And one, I had to get up and walk away, the other one I growled. |
| 0:24.1 | But the other time I got really angry was with an asshole colleague in HR. |
| 0:32.3 | Surprise, I know. |
| 0:33.8 | And boy, she was just a piece of work. Oh, my goodness. Basically what happened, the short version is |
| 0:43.4 | that I was the HR leader at a remote site and I'm the business partner or the HR exec with |
| 0:52.0 | the GM of that business. |
| 0:57.7 | And we are all off in the middle of nowhere working together, right? |
| 1:04.0 | Well, corporate made the decision to realign resources and have all the functional folks kind of report in centrally as opposed to at their sites. |
| 1:09.1 | And so my team was now going to somebody else, which is okay, I guess, |
| 1:17.0 | in theory, right? I mean, you want kind of that synergy or connection between the ops, |
| 1:21.8 | HR teams. Great. Except that we're out in the middle of nowhere and we're all together and I'm an easy |
| 1:30.4 | button and, you know, so I just figured, well, I'd still help and support and whatever because, |
| 1:35.7 | you know, this HR team is supporting my business, basically, right? So we'll still be connected. |
| 1:42.3 | Anyways, TLDR, that new boss called me and told me that I wasn't |
| 1:48.7 | allowed to talk to anyone on the HR team at my site any longer. The fuck? How can you get anything done? |
| 2:00.2 | What's your first question? I mean, there's so many questions,? What's your first question? |
| 2:01.4 | I mean, there's so many questions, but what's your first question when they say that to you? |
... |
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