This book is dedicated to all who have known organizational pain and injustice and who remain committed to turning around destructive workplace dynamics.

The time is always right to do what is right.

—Martin Luther King

TROUBLED RELATIONSHIPS, PEOPLE PROBLEMS, AND problem people are a ubiquitous challenge of life in families, groups, and organizations. Failed relationships produce angst and wasted effort. They leave people feeling frustrated and helpless, wishing they knew better ways to respond to a chronic source of distress. At work, it could be a problem employee, a bully boss, or a constantly complaining coworker. Beyond work, it might be a mean-spirited neighbor or a troublesome relative. We, our students, and our clients all have stories to tell—many worthy of a TV mini-series for their power and pathos. As authors, educators, and scholars long-committed to the study of organizational effectiveness, we know from deep experience the power of relationships for good or ill. We have experienced the excitement and joy of relationships characterized by trust, respect, support, and caring—and have seen the collaboration, growth, and productivity they foster. We have also known the pain and misery of relationships that undermine best practices, erode confidence, and block us from doing the things we most care about.

In an earlier work, we included a chapter on “Leading Difficult People,”¹ and many readers told us it was one of the most useful and important parts of the book. They encouraged us to look deeper, write more, and help them acquire the skills and deeper understandings needed to transform difficult relationships into productive partnerships. We appreciated their feedback, and we listened. This book is for them—and for all who struggle to turn around destructive workplace dynamics.

Search the internet for “bad bosses,” “managing difficult people,” or “people problems at work,” and you will encounter an almost endless stream of books, articles, websites, and blogs. [We identify some of the best in our notes.] It takes very little time to verify this as a topic that has garnered an enormous amount of attention. We learned much from studying the existing literature and resources—and from some powerful ethnographic fieldwork—and understand better why many find existing resources less helpful than intended.

Too often the advice focuses on fixing whatever is wrong with someone else—the personality flaws, obnoxious behavior, character defects, or psychopathology that make some individuals impossible to live and work with. At first glance, deep change in your difficult person may seem like the obvious solution, but that usually turns out to be mission impossible. Few managers are trained mental health professionals—and even those who are lack the time, mandate, and platform from which to facilitate the complex personal development interventions that would likely be needed. Deep personal change only comes when someone recognizes the need for it and commits to all that it takes.

Playing amateur psychiatrist also courts disaster, leading you to step into more than you are prepared to handle. Some personality types cannot deal with the reality of a mirror being held up before them. You may set off an unanticipated wave of rage, aggression, and blame aimed at you or others. It can be intellectually satisfying to confirm, for example, that you work for a skilled narcissist² who cannot accept disagreement, is interpersonally exploitive, sucks up and pounds down, and lacks capacity for true empathy, but that clarity may help less than you might hope. It may even exacerbate your stress and feelings of hopelessness while providing little guidance about what to do beyond run away as fast as you can.

Advice to fix someone else also puts the emphasis on the wrong place. Human behavior always happens in a social context. Blaming others or finding a scapegoat is tempting, but too often oversimplifies the problem and steers us in the wrong direction. Sometimes bad systems bring out the worst in good people, and clarifying roles and ground rules can have immediate and seemingly miraculous impact on individual behavior. That's worth remembering.

We believe a better approach emphasizes relationships, learning, imagination, and engagement. That is what this book is all about. It offers a four-step model organized around the acronym SURE: when facing a difficult people problem, you want to follow these four rules of engagement:

1. Stop, look, and learn.
2. Unhook.
3. Revise the script.
4. Engage your difficult person—evolve or exit.

The SURE acronym makes the basic ideas easy to remember, and we have worked to distill a complex set of issues into a framework useful across a range of situations and grounded in research and best practices. When skillfully applied, we know it works—empowering you to see more (and more clearly), embrace new options for yourself and your organization, and strengthen your confidence and impact. The four steps provide a road map to guide you through the twists and turns of challenging relationships.

A road map, however, only helps if you know how to use it, and that's where our leadership story comes in. We introduce the SURE basics in the Introduction. We then offer a universal leadership tale about a manager named Vicky, entering a new work situation that looks nearly impossible—a failing operation, a troubled team, and a boss from hell. All that Vicky faces could be a recipe for failure; but she is smart, savvy, patient, and courageous. The story allows you to watch Vicky at work, see how she thinks and uses advice from others, and explore the impact of what she does and says. Our leadership tale also provides specific examples of how each of the SURE principles can be successfully applied across a range of relationship difficulties and everyday managerial challenges. The book is organized to go back and forth between Vicky's story and Interludes that illuminate key lessons as you go along. An Epilogue summarizes the model.

We have not forgotten the request from our readers, clients, and students for skill building help and guidance. That's where the Skills of Engagement Tutorial at the end of the book comes in. It offers a deeper dive into the foundational interpersonal skills at the heart of the SURE model, along with selected references and resources for further study, and suggested exercises and activities to strengthen your people skills.

Read, enjoy, and learn! Ask others to join you in your study. Develop support groups to sustain you in challenging times. Learning to work more effectively with difficult people is a set of skills that every manager needs for success. May this volume be a source of wisdom, skill building, and strength in all you do.