151 Quick Ideas to Deal With Difficult People

25Document Difficult Encounters

Leslie, manager at a fast-growing medical equipment company, laments that her company has retained so many people who are incompetent or defiant. The company is afraid of firing anyone because a couple of employees who were let go several years ago filed wrongful-termination lawsuits. The company was skittish—not because it thought the lawsuits had merit but because it lacked documentation about the employees’ shortcomings. And it continued to give short shrift to that part of management to focus on its explosive growth.

Without documentation, firings look fuzzy at best. They look downright suspicious when someone who won employee of the year is out the next because of a “poor performance” that isn’t documented. ...