Some people are just trouble. Everything seems to be going along smoothly, and then one of them comes along and the applecart is left weeping in a corner of the market, so to speak. We’re talking social and organizational friction rather than direct acts.
Actually, very few people are actually really trouble. It’s more of a circumstantial thing, and circumstances can be changed.
Most ‘troublemakers’ or ‘troublesome people’ are not actually really intrinsically a problem.
Some are people who are in the wrong place. You get that a lot in companies, where someone is in a position or a team where they’re just not a good fit. Hence the term ‘misfit’. A misfit in the wrong place is trouble. A misfit in the right place… well, they’re no longer a misfit, they’re an asset (and usually a very happy one). Find the right place, and the person is more help than hindrance. Leave them in the wrong place, and it’s the other way around.
Most of the rest of troublemakers are matters of communication and understanding, or more properly, of miscommunication and misunderstanding. People who aren’t in possession of all the facts, or who have been incompletely understood. These folks are only trouble as long as you allow the situation to continue. If you can find the gap in understanding or knowledge or communication and fill it, the friction goes away.
And it is generally to your benefit to solve these issues for all these types as soon as possible. Everyone’s happier. Everyone’s more productive. Friction is reduced. Everyone wins.
There’s one other type, of course. They’re quite few in number but they all seem to have come out of the same vat somewhere. Now they are trouble, for about as long as you pay attention to them. They might be misinformed, or they just pretend to be. They might misunderstand, or just pretend to. It doesn’t matter if it’s a genuine position or a pose, because they’ll never dance with you.
But their power to cause you friction is only proportional to your willingness to let them do it.
It’s a talent, actually. =^-^=
(just subscribing to the comments)
@TigroSpottystripes: The blog does provide an RSS feed for comments to an individual post.
but I wanna get them on my email
We really just want attention to compensate for our low self esteem and small penises.
This might have not been intentional, but looking at the way this is written, it seems like its written from a higher-up-looking-down point of view. In many organizations, Troublemakers are also found in positions of authority. See ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointy-Haired_Boss ) as an example. Such a person doesn’t see themselves as a problem or a trouble creator, but as leader and having to put up with those lousy people who are supposed to just be doing that boss’s inane will.
I know you left a lot of leeway for who gets called a “troublemaker”, but one thing that would probably help a lot is for people to stop coming up with negative labels.
Its really easy to call someone a “problem” and label everything they do; its harder to acknowledge our own issues, and even theirs, and then move on and work together as helpful partners after labels start getting applied.
Well, well… And how do you classify Mr Brittas?.. ^__^
I’d have to go with misfit. I’ve been one myself for long enough to know