The best thing about having our own businesses is that they’re ours. To the extent that we can control what happens, we have dominion over the choices and decisions and direction of the business to whatever degree we choose. That’s part of the allure of starting your own business, often the main part, and usually appealing most to those who need to be in control or who simply want to determine their own fate and be answerable to no one but themselves.
Being your own boss doesn’t mean that there aren’t compromises or unpleasant circumstances to deal with. Sure, there’s a lot under your control, but such is life that there’s an equal or greater measure of things outside of that control. Plus, any number of circumstances force us into compromises that we’d rather not make but have to out of necessity or the greater good. Often, this choice or compromise is in the form of the type of people we find ourselves having to work alongside.
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We’ve all spent enough years in business, and on this earth, to recognize that difficult, challenging people are a fact of life. We can control how many there are around us or how much time we spend with them, particularly if we’re in business for ourselves, but we can’t avoid them entirely, given that no business is an entirely insular venture. There are partners and vendors, consultants and customers, and with each new person introduced into our sphere is the increased chance that we’re going to come across someone that we don’t like and struggle to get along with. There’s even a chance that you might have someone like that on your team, despite your insistence upon building a cohesive workforce.
At this point in the article, most writers would tell you to weed out those people from your ranks and excise the offending individuals from your contact list and your life. And there might be some validity to that, particularly if they’re having a negative effect on productivity and morale. But we can often conflate “challenging” or “difficult” with “bad”, when that isn’t always the case. These same people we consider to be a pain can also be brilliant, passionate, dedicated, and loyal and can bring a great benefit to those companies and employers who have the patience and foresight to withstand and manage their more contentious qualities.
The quality of workplace harmony is often lauded, but there is a danger in too much harmony if it precludes dissenting voices willing to challenge the status quo. Wrong decisions can be reached if everyone views going along with the group more important than voicing any concerns or doubts about the matter at hand. Part of that is you as the leader encouraging an environment where everyone’s opinion matters, even when it goes against the grain. However, standing up also requires strong personalities willing to voice thoughts that might be unpopular, and those are the people that can be branded difficult, particularly in companies with founders looking for a staff willing to agree and validate everything they do.
On that point, those in power often need people who will challenge them and stand up for what they know or believe is right. There is a kind of learned acquiescence to work within the very concept: most people are working for someone else, and as such it’s easy to see it as an obligation to do what they’re told by their one or many bosses — after all, that’s the job. But it’s often the case that those in supervisory roles don’t have all of the particulars or even the expertise to know the full implications of a decision unless they’re given that information by those with more intimate knowledge. That system can break down without those willing to offer their considered and informed decisions, even if it’s done forcefully or indelicately. As a leader of a team, you should be looking for those willing to stand out from the crowd and occasionally disrupting the group in order to make sure that every opinion is heard and every option considered.
Obviously, there are caveats to this advice. There’s a difference between earnest and well-meaning people who can be at times abrasive or contentious and those who are jerks (or some stronger term not fit for this site.) It might be hard to discern between the two initially, and it’s your job to try and suss out which is which. But if you’re able to find the right person, they can be the necessary squeaky wheel that keeps you and your team honest and on its toes.#onwards.
