Appreciating the difficult members of your team

You will never become a successful leader unless others want you to be. Part of your growth as a leader is your recognition and demonstration of appreciation of help that comes from the people around you.

You will certainly give your leadership and career a huge boost by showing your appreciation not only to the folks you like and who are on the same side of the coin as you but also to those who you do not quite like; the stubborn people in your team who for right or wrong reasons take away your joy and peace of mind.

The reality is that you will meet such people during your leadership reign. Showing such folks appreciation is a very effective way of dealing with them. When you honestly appreciate such people, you will be surprised to learn how productive you can be with them.

The word “appreciation” originates from a Latin word which means “to apprehend the value of”. In a sense, your appreciation of difficult people must be focused on your honest understanding of their value to the success of the entire team.

It is not just about understanding their view point but also appreciating it. By doing so, you will be using your appreciation as an important tool for getting more results that would otherwise not come if such people were out of your life or team.

Here are four steps that you can follow to get results from your interaction with the difficult member of your team.

1. Team up

You will never get appreciation rolling unless you acknowledge that you and the difficult person are members of a team with a common goal to realize. You have to bear in mind that you are not out to get the difficult person to appreciate you. Let it be clear to you that you have very little control over the other party’s appreciation. All you have is full control of your appreciation; commit your time to exploring it. Such exploration can only happen in a team set up, between you and the other party. You do not have to like one another; all you have to do is work wholeheartedly with them regardless of your personal feelings.

2. Draw the line

It will always be tempting to get yourself caught up in strong emotions when dealing with a difficult person. Consider holding a one-on-one talk with them in order to figure out the actual cause of your difficulties. Step out of your emotions during this meeting.

Have a “break down” of what is going on between the two of you. Make this a participatory process by asking the other party to describe the exact times when you began to be on rocks with each other. Stay focused on the physical facts of those times. Identify the specific actions that flared the emotions. Do not give your side of the story before the other party does so. Starts talking about feelings that are connected to those times only after both of you have acquired clear memory of what happened and are in agreement.

3. Agreement

This is the time for both of you to agree on what is important with regards to the difficulties you are facing. Both of you must work towards closing the gap between what each of you think is important.

The test in closing this gap is in the results. Find out if the difficulty you are facing go straight to the core of the results you have to achieve.

4. Transformation

Now is the time to work on transforming words into results. This is a process which will get you increases in results. The previous steps are nothing but useless without such a transformation process. Transformation must be deliberately worked on by both of you. Keep your eyes fixed on the goal during this process.

Just like the poor, those who cause us difficulties will always be around us. No matter your level of experience or success as a leader, difficult people will always line up, pocking into your life. Instead of fighting them or keeping off their path, try appreciating them. When you do this, you may realize that they are assets rather than liabilities to your team.

Want to succeed as an entrepreneur?  Learn the skills and strategies you need to succeed as an online marketer.  Get in-depth advice on personal development, online promotion, social media, and web traffic by visiting http://www.hasseandre.com/