Bill and Megan continue their “Bringing It to Life” series, discussing how to identify and manage high conflict personalities in the workplace. They provide insights and strategies for leaders to improve workplace culture.
Bill and Megan aim to help listeners learn skills to keep conflict small and maintain healthy work environments. In this episode, they focus on limiting the damage caused by toxic employees.
Recognizing High Conflict Behavior Patterns
- Bill explains the typical behavior patterns of high conflict personalities. These include blaming others, black-and-white thinking, uncontrolled emotions, and taking extreme actions.
- Megan notes that toxic employees can split work groups and harm morale. Their behavior tends to be rigid and repetitive.
- They discuss methods to identify whether one or more employees are exhibiting these disruptive patterns.
Managing High Conflict Employees
- Bill and Megan explore options like coaching, setting limits, and imposing consequences. They note that firing toxic staff may be necessary.
- They stress the importance of intervening early before the situation escalates. Allowing bullying and chaos enables bad behavior.
- The hosts explain how removing one high conflict person can calm tensions and shift workplace culture.
Questions we answer in this episode:
- How do you spot high conflict behavior patterns?
- Should you keep or fire toxic employees?
- What happens after a high conflict employee leaves?
Key Takeaways:
- Look for patterns like blaming, black-and-white thinking, uncontrolled emotions.
- Don't wait years to address high conflict employees.
- Removing bullies can transform workplace culture.
This practical episode provides valuable insights for improving morale and productivity by minimizing the damage caused by high conflict personalities. Bill and Megan offer useful strategies to create a thriving workplace.
Links & Other Notes
Note: We are not diagnosing anyone in our discussions, merely discussing patterns of behavior.
- (00:00) - Welcome to It's All Your Fault
- (00:36) - Bring It to Life #2: Impact of HCPs on the Workplace Culture
- (01:06) - The Scenario
- (06:54) - One or Both?
- (09:38) - Contagious
- (13:05) - Resistant to Change
- (15:23) - Productivity
- (18:40) - Aftermath
- (30:26) - Reminders & Coming Next Week: High Conflict Divorce
What is It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People?
Hosted by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. and Megan Hunter, MBA, It’s All Your Fault! High Conflict People explores the five types of people who can ruin your life—people with high conflict personalities and how they weave themselves into our lives in romance, at work, next door, at school, places of worship, and just about everywhere, causing chaos, exhaustion, and dread for everyone else.
They are the most difficult of difficult people — some would say they’re toxic. Without them, tv shows, movies, and the news would be boring, but who wants to live that way in your own life!
Have you ever wanted to know what drives them to act this way?
In the It’s All Your Fault podcast, we’ll take you behind the scenes to understand what’s happening in the brain and illuminates why we pick HCPs as life partners, why we hire them, and how we can handle interactions and relationships with them. We break down everything you ever wanted to know about people with the 5 high conflict personality types: narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial/sociopath, and paranoid.
And we’ll give you tips on how to spot them and how to deal with them.