Dream Team
- Gayle Hudson
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
Turning Frustrating Colleagues into a Dream Team
Most of us have a mental list of people we love working with – the ones who “just get it”, share our energy and don’t need endless direction. Managing them feels easy.
But real teams aren’t like fantasy football teams. We rarely get to hand‑pick people just like us. We inherit teams full of different personalities, abilities, values and confidence levels. That mix is gold dust for performance – and a nightmare if we try to lead everyone in the same way.
When someone feels “hard to manage”, it’s often a mismatch not a problem: different maps of the world, different needs, different levels of experience. Under pressure, we default to our favourite way of working, then wonder why other people react with confusion, resistance or dependence.
A helpful NLP idea is: “The meaning of the communication is the response you get.” If someone looks defensive or lost, that is the meaning they’ve taken from your message. If it isn’t landing, your communication – not the person – needs to change.
That’s where behavioural flexibility comes in. The person with the most flexibility tends to have the most influence. As leaders, our job is to flex how we explain, support, challenge and follow up, instead of expecting one style to work for everyone.
A few places to start:
Get curious about what motivates each person, what drains them, and how they like to receive feedback.
Notice how competent and confident they are with a specific task, and adjust your style – more direction, more coaching, or more autonomy – accordingly.
Experiment: change your language, your medium (talk, write, draw) or your stance (from telling to asking) and watch what happens.
If you’re stuck in a loop of moaning about someone, that’s a clue you’re in default mode. The invitation isn’t to build a team of mini‑you’s, but to stretch your range as a leader.
So, if you picked just one relationship at work to experiment with more flexibility this month – who would it be, and what’s the very first thing you could do differently in your next conversation?
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