This may come as a surprise to many of you but I have occasionally been referred to as “difficult”. Fortunately, I don’t think my wife reads my articles so I don’t have to worry about her corroborating such a description. I did however go out on www.websters.com and look up “difficult” and found (at least) 3 definitions for difficult that it seems people want to apply to me: hard to deal with or get on with, hard to please or satisfy, and hard to persuade or induce. It seems that different people may have different views and standards as to how business needs to be conducted. I guess that you can paraphrase the old adage by saying “difficulty is in the eye of the beholder”.

Conducting business is the process of dealing with, and getting on with people. You can’t be successful, or accomplish your tasks and goals unless you can deal with and get on with people. The question seems to arise in exactly how you are supposed to deal with people. We should look to try and deal with most everyone in business the same way. That includes those that we report to as well as those that report to us. We need to try to take those items that we have responsibility for and do the right things for those responsibilities.

That may not mean that we can take the easy, quick or popular steps for everyone involved. Having a consensus is a good thing, but the responsibility for leadership cannot lie with a group. It may also mean that we have to tell people things that they may not have wanted to hear, both those that we report to as well as those that report to us. We are knowledge workers, and if our knowledge indicates that an unpopular direction or a contrary position is needed, then we need to give voice to it.

I don’t think that it is hard to be pleased or satisfied. We must take our word and commitment in business to be our bond and a display of our character. We must expect that others who deal with us to do the same. When a goal or make a commitment gets set we have to try to do all that can be done to achieve it. If the goal is achieved make sure that the team shares in the acknowledgement, and if it is not we leaders should take responsibility for it as it was our commitment and goal. We can give explanations, but we can’t give excuses.

I look at the effort and approach that people use in meeting their objectives and commitments. I have found that hard work invariably will lead to achievement. I like to be around and work with people who take that approach to their work. I think that if we can say that if we are satisfied with the effort the team has expended, we can be reasonably satisfied with the performance, even if the objective was not fully accomplished. If the expedient approach was taken and the goal not met then there can be further cause for concern.

I don’t think I am exceptionally hard to persuade or induce either. I can be persuaded, just make sure to bring the data and the metrics. If it cannot be expressed in numbers, it is probably just opinion. Opinions are not necessarily persuasive. Financial data is the international language of business. Show someone what they can make, save or improve financially and numerically, and just about anyone can be persuaded. Show them how the business can be improved so that they can adopt your position. Leaders don’t have the market cornered on good ideas, but we should know how to distinguish a good idea from most of the others that come around by using the available data.

Asking questions does not make someone difficult. Asking difficult questions does not make someone difficult either. We have to move and adapt to the conditions quickly, but more importantly we have to do the right thing. It may have been a long meeting or conference call, and the end solution may be in sight but that doesn’t mean that there will not be other aspects of the solution that will still need to be addressed. I have heard it said in these types of meetings that “silence is assent”.

I also suspect that most of the people, who have said this in meetings I have been in, were actually looking for silence not questions.

We are working and living in difficult times. The demands on our time, our teams, and our businesses continue to get tougher not easier. Businesses and business leaders are continually being challenged to do more, usually with less. The pressure to provide the quick and expedient solution also continues to grow. Sometimes the expedient solution is the right solution, but how will you know unless you press the issue, ask the difficult questions, demand to see the data, get the objectives set and hold those responsible to perform, in order to make sure that the right thing does in fact get done. If these are the characteristics of a “difficult” person then in these difficult times I would think that we all need to be “difficult” people.