"She's difficult." "He's impossible to work with." After 28 years of working with teams, I can say with confidence: difficult people do not exist. What exists are people we do not understand — and that is a problem with visibility, not personality.
Date
2025-12-01
Author
Mats Soomre
"She's difficult." "He's impossible." After 28 years of working with teams, I can say it plainly: difficult people, in the way most organisations use the term, do not exist.
You have heard it in every organisation. "She's difficult." "He's impossible to work with." "That team has a personality problem."
What exists are people we do not understand, people we do not know how to work with, or — the uncomfortable one — people we have decided we do not want to work with.
The difference between these three situations is everything.
"I Don't Like Their Attitude"
This is the phrase I hear most often from leaders. And when I ask them to describe the specific behaviour behind the bad attitude, the room goes quiet.
That silence is the problem. "Attitude" is a feeling, not an observation. It cannot be discussed, challenged, or changed until someone translates it into behaviour — what the person actually does, how often, in which situations, and what effect it has on the team.
The behaviour has not changed. The interpretation has. And that is where the work begins.
Similar People Create Different Problems
I have observed a pattern that surprises most leaders: the hardest working relationships are often between people who are too similar, not too different.
When two people share the same strengths and the same approach, they compete for the same contribution. Neither can establish a distinct role. The relationship feels tense, but nobody can explain why — because on paper, they should get along perfectly.
The opposite combination — people with genuinely different behavioural strengths — feels uncomfortable at first. The creative thinker finds the detail-focused planner slow. The planner finds the creative thinker chaotic. But this discomfort is productive. The combination produces better decisions than either person would reach alone.
The principle that changes everything: do unto others what they need, not what you would want. A person who thrives on direct, fast-paced communication will frustrate someone who needs time to process. Neither is wrong. Both are behaving according to their strengths. The skill is learning to adjust — and that requires knowing what each person's strengths actually are.
The same principle applies to motivation. Read Before You Motivate, Remove What Demotivates
When "Difficult" Is Real
There is an important distinction to make. Not every case is a misunderstanding.
Some people are genuinely self-centred, unmotivated, working against the team, or creating damage for colleagues and clients. These situations exist. And the response should be clear: do not invest excessive time and energy trying to change someone whose behaviour is genuinely destructive. The interests of one person should never outweigh the wellbeing of the team.
The difference between a misunderstood contributor and a genuinely destructive presence is usually visible in the data. A misunderstood person has behavioural strengths being used in the wrong context or not recognised at all. A destructive person does not respond to adjusted expectations, clearer communication, or better role fit — because the problem is not fit. It is conduct.
Most "difficult people" situations are the first kind, not the second. And that is good news — because the first kind is fixable.
The Hidden Potential Behind the Friction
Every person has strong behavioural roles, manageable roles they can stretch into, and roles best left to someone else. Between the strong and the weak sits hidden potential — contributions that others can see but the person has not yet recognised in themselves.
This is the self-awareness gap. Read Self-Awareness: You Think You Know Yourself. Your Team Sees Something Different.
The colleague who irritates you may be sitting on exactly the strength your team is missing. Their scepticism might be the quality check you skip. Their inflexibility might be the process discipline you lack. Their quietness might contain the analysis that would have saved last month's failed project.
One Question Worth Asking
Before you label someone as difficult, ask this: do I understand their behavioural strengths well enough to know what they are actually trying to contribute?
If the answer is no, the problem is not them. The problem is visibility. And visibility is something you can fix — with honest conversation, observer feedback, and the willingness to see a colleague as a set of strengths with associated costs, not as a personality to tolerate.
A business partner once told me: "Belbin even taught you to understand people." She was not wrong. And she was not being entirely kind about it.
For the full framework of nine behavioural contributions, read Belbin Team Roles: The Practitioner's Guide to What Teams Actually Need. See also Introverts Are Not the Problem. You Are.
Every "difficult person" in your team is doing something. Before you lose them — or before they lose themselves — find out what that something is. A Belbin Team Role profile shows the behaviour behind the label. See your own profile →, then invite the person you have been calling difficult to do the same. The conversation that follows is often the one that changes the team.
Photo by Mats Soomre · #MomentsBySoomre · moments.soomre.com