The Two People You Call Difficult Are the Two You Can't Decide Without

You have met both of them

One speaks before you have finished. Direct, fast, certain. Pushes back, raises the temperature, turns a calm meeting into a debate. People call this person aggressive, combative, hard work.

The other does the opposite. Sits quiet while the room fills with enthusiasm. Asks a cold question ten minutes after everyone else has moved on. Will not be hurried to a “yes.” People call this person disengaged, negative, a brake on progress.

Two different behaviours. Same label: difficult.

I knew it years ago and I will say it plainly now: there are no difficult people. There are people we do not understand, or do not yet know how to work with. And these two - the arguer and the silent one - are the clearest case of it. Misread one and you lose a decision. Misread both and you lose the team’s judgement.

The arguer: arguing is not stubbornness

Start with the loud one, because the loud one frightens people into managing them badly.

The person who argues is usually trying to think. For some people, thought does not arrive in private and then get announced - it arrives in the friction of disagreement. They argue a position to find out whether it holds, to reach a better solution, to get to the point. Direct, driven, energetic, built to push a team toward a result. These are often the people who solve a crisis, raise the pace when it is needed, and bring the result home no matter what.

A quick word on names, because I am going to use one. The framework I work with - Belbin Team Roles - calls this particular kind of arguer a Shaper. I use names like that for a simple reason: they describe behaviour, what a person does in a team, not personality, who they are inside. Behaviour you can see, talk about, and change. Personality you mostly cannot. So when I say Shaper, I do not mean a type of person - I mean a way of behaving that some people bring more than others.

Arguing is not working against you. It is one of the ways people justify a position, test an alternative, and come to understand each other. The question is never “how do I stop them arguing.” It is “why are they arguing - to understand and find the answer, or only to win?”

That distinction is the whole thing. Healthy arguing is a louder form of open discussion, where nobody’s victory counts and the better idea is the only prize. Stubbornness is the opposite: one person’s superiority over another. If one side wins and the other loses, the team has already lost. So the skill is not silencing the arguer. It is keeping the argument pointed at the problem and away from the people.

Handled well, the arguer is the reason a weak plan dies before it costs you anything. Alone and mismanaged, they lose that positive influence fast - punished, smoothed over, told to be more diplomatic, they go quiet, and the team loses its sharpest test of its own ideas.

The silent one: silence is not ignoring

Now the quiet one, who frightens people in a different way - by giving them nothing to react to.

Silence is a way of finding the truth. It is markedly different from the arguer’s way, and just as necessary. Not every quiet person is doing this - some are bored, some are lost, some simply have nothing to add. But one kind of silent person is working hard: rational, analytical, separating fact from assumption, scrutinising a new idea coldly from every angle, untroubled by the enthusiasm around them. Often critical, frequently sceptical, and almost always right when they finally speak - because they have not spoken until they are. In Belbin’s names, this is the Monitor Evaluator, usually backed by the Specialist’s depth of expertise. Again: a behaviour some people bring strongly, not a box every quiet person sits in.

How to tell a sceptic from a pessimist

Here is a clean test. You burst in with “I have an idea.” If the response is thoughtful nodding, then ten hard questions - how will it work, what will it cost, has it been done before - you have a Monitor Evaluator doing exactly the job. If the response is “NO. NO. IT WON’T WORK, I TELL YOU” before you are through the door, you have a pessimist. The difference is logic. A sceptic builds refusal on analysis. A pessimist builds it on mood.

And notice how the good ones do it. A real sceptic stays specific - this cost, that risk, this missing fact - and does not slide into emotional argument or a debate about who is right. Calm and patient, not loud, not pessimistic for its own sake. The questions are aimed at the idea, never at the person holding it.

A sceptic’s “no” is rarely opposition. It is usually a person who does not yet have enough information to say “yes” on the evidence. Give them the facts, structured and unhurried, and the “no” often becomes the best “yes” in the room. Rush them, drown them in enthusiasm, punish the criticism - and you lose the one person who would have stopped the team chasing an expensive, lovely, unworkable idea.

The mistake is reading silence as absence. The silent one is not ignoring you. They are doing the work nobody else in the room is doing.

They are opposites. That is the point.

Put the two side by side and the tension is obvious. The arguer moves fast; the sceptic moves carefully. The arguer trusts momentum; the sceptic trusts evidence. The arguer wants a decision now; the sceptic wants it right. In behavioural terms they pull against each other - and the two almost never live, at full strength, in one person.

Look at the Belbin profiles completed in Estonia between 2014 and 2024 - 6,752 people, each with feedback from four or more colleagues. Only 103 of them are even strong at both the Shaper behaviour and the Monitor Evaluator behaviour. Just 9 are very strong at both. The drive and the brake, at full force, almost never live in the same person. Which is exactly why a team needs more than one person.

The instinct is to wish one of them away. The strong manager wants the sceptic to stop slowing things down. The careful manager wants the arguer to calm down. Both instincts are wrong, because the two roles are each other’s correction - they complete each other, each covering the other’s weakness with their own strength.

The arguer’s speed needs the sceptic’s brake, or the team charges confidently off a cliff. The sceptic’s caution needs the arguer’s push, or the team falls into what Belbin called paralysis by analysis - a good idea studied to death and never shipped. Alone, each one’s strength becomes the team’s failure mode. Together, they are a decision that is both fast and sound - the rarest and most valuable thing a team produces.

None of this is automatic.

It needs mutual understanding, real trust, and the will to use these strengths well - and not only from the manager. The whole team has to want it. That understanding is a shared working language, a way of reading each other that does not depend on where anyone grew up or which culture they came from. The greater the power a behaviour carries, the greater the responsibility to use it for the team rather than against it.

This is what people miss when they sort colleagues into “easy” and “difficult.” The two most difficult people in the room are difficult in opposite directions, and the friction between them is not a problem to remove. It is the mechanism. A team of only arguers makes loud, quick, wrong decisions. A team of only sceptics makes careful, correct decisions far too late. You want both, in the same room, irritating each other productively.

And not only these two. The arguer and the sceptic are the clearest example, not the whole team. A balanced team needs all nine behaviours - the connector, the co-ordinator, the finisher, the rest - and almost nobody carries more than two or three strongly. That is the real point: you are not looking for complete people. You are building a team where each person brings their two or three, and the gaps in one are covered by the strengths of another.

What changes on Tuesday?

Not Monday - Tuesday. Change does not happen the day you read something. It happens the day after, when you do something with it.

Stop trying to fix either of them. Their strengths do not disappear, and you would not want them to. The honest line to each is short: I am not going to fix you. There is nothing to fix.

Name the behaviour instead of judging the character. “You argue to think” is a true sentence, and a freeing one. “You go quiet to be sure” is another. Said out loud, in front of the team, these turn two “difficult people” into two understood contributors - and understood people behave differently from cornered ones. A cornered person is a person under stress, and under stress an allowable weakness can grow into one the team can no longer carry. That is how a strength becomes the thing that breaks the team.

Then design for the pair. Let the arguer open a question and the sceptic close it. Give the sceptic the facts early, in writing, with time. Keep the arguer’s heat on the problem, never on the person. And when the room goes too calm - when the arguers have stopped arguing and the sceptics have stopped asking - do not relax. That is not harmony. That is a team that has quietly stopped telling itself the truth.

And if one of them is you

Then turn the questions inward. This is the harder read, and the more useful one.

If you are the arguer, ask yourself:

• Do I argue to find the better answer - or just to win the room?

• When I push, am I testing the idea, or defending my ego?

• When did I last change my mind in an argument I started?

If you are the sceptic, ask yourself:

• Am I asking hard questions to make the idea stronger and the risks smaller - or to make it fail, so I can be right?

• Is my “no” built on analysis - or on mood?

• When did my caution last save us, and when did it just slow us down?

And one question for either of you: is my strength helping the team decide - or helping me feel important?

You went looking for the difficult person. You found the two halves of a good decision.

Where these names come from

Belbin Team Roles is a behavioural model, not a personality test. It describes nine ways people tend to contribute in a team - the arguer’s push, the sceptic’s scrutiny, the finisher’s eye for detail, the connector’s reach, and five more. It asks not who you are, but what you do when you are working with others, which is the thing a team actually feels. A Belbin profile measures which of these behaviours you bring strongly, which you bring lightly, and which you are better off leaving to someone built for them. Almost nobody carries more than two or three strongly, and that is not a flaw - it is the point. You are not meant to be all nine. You are meant to know your few, and build a team around the rest.

How much of you is the arguer? How much the sceptic? Or both - because some of us are, though not most. Bold enough to find out? You might discover your real strength is the one you have been apologising for.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How do I deal with an argumentative colleague?

Ask why they argue - to understand and reach a better answer, or only to win. Keep the argument on the problem, not the person. A colleague who argues to think is testing your ideas, not attacking you, and that test is worth having.

How do I work with an overly critical or sceptical team member?

Give them facts early, in writing, with time to weigh them. A sceptic’s “no” usually means “not enough information yet,” not refusal. Rushed or dismissed, they go quiet - and you lose the person who catches the expensive mistake.

What is the difference between a sceptic and a pessimist?

A sceptic builds refusal on analysis; a pessimist builds it on mood. Ask one for their reasoning - a sceptic gives you logic and conditions, a pessimist gives you “it just won’t work.” The first improves the idea; the second only blocks it.

Is a difficult team member always a problem?

Rarely. The behaviours most often called difficult - pushing hard, or going quiet and critical - are usually strengths read without context. The problem is almost never the person. It is the team not knowing how to use what that person brings.

Why does a team need both an arguer and a sceptic?

Because the drive and the brake almost never live in one person - in 6,752 Estonian Belbin profiles, only 9 are very strong at both. The arguer’s speed needs the sceptic’s caution, or the team rushes into a wall; the sceptic’s caution needs the arguer’s push, or nothing ships.