The Great, the Good, the Dangerous, the Bizarre, and the Neurotic

Part 4 of a 5 Part Series 

The Bizarre: Disparaging Bullies, Narcissists, Liars

Note: This blog post is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Once you’ve signed a contract with a client, you’re committed. Therefore, it’s extremely important to understand the personality that you’ll be dealing with on an ongoing basis. If you sign a contract with a toxic personality, it’s almost impossible to successfully quit a job without litigation. Lawsuits are a waste of your time and energy. If you sign a contract with a toxic person, the best course is to:

Remain calm
1.    Remember it’s not about you, even when they say it is.
2.    Continue to do the best professional job.
3.    Thoroughly document conversations, agreements, meeting notes, behaviors, etcetera on a daily basis. 

However, the best course is to recognize and avoid working for toxic people in the first place. 

Let me add that I am not a psychologist. I’m not implying that I am able to clinically diagnose neuroses. Yet, I have completed over 4000 custom projects working closely with all types of people in improving their homes over 48 years. These descriptions are simply to tag behaviors that I’ve observed. I am grateful that 99% of the people I dealt with were none of the following types. However, those few who were these types certainly added to the stress in my life and the gray hairs on my head, as well as that of my employees and all our respective families.

Disparaging Bullies

“There are two kinds of leaders… those who make others bigger and those who make others smaller.”          Edgar Papke

For some reason, there’s a certain kind of personality who needs to make those people around them smaller. Perhaps it’s not that way at first. That’s because they need you. However, as soon as you don’t fulfill their needs, then they start to disparage you, your trades and your employees.  At first, it might be done in a series of condescending statements.

You’re probably taken aback because you haven’t witnessed this behavior before, at least not from this client. The rudeness and lack of respect is disturbing. Then after you’ve witnessed this behavior a number of times from a particular individual, you realize that this is a pattern for them and that this is how they operate.

So, why do they do that? Well, it’s a way to keep people off balance, a way to manipulate others. It’s an attempt to make you feel defensive, to make your trades not feel good about their work product because it’s not perfect enough. Sometimes with disparaging bullies, the only way they feel good is when everyone else doesn't. 

Perhaps the first time you see this behavior is in a job site meeting.  A schedule wasn’t met, a delay occurred or there was a mistake in a piece of workmanship. Rather than dealing with the issue at hand, the disparaging bully attacks the person and their character. There might be a tone in their voice that conveys disappointment, not with the problem, but with the people themselves. 

Now granted, we know that not all trades perform at the top of their game all the time. Someone on your team is going to let you down. Obviously, if those results are a reoccurring event, then a change has to be made. Generally, however, because it’s in your own interest to work with good people, the client’s disparaging bullying behavior is out of line.

One of the threats these kinds of clients like to use is that of damaging your reputation. They might say something like, “If you do a great job (to my impossible standards), then I’ll tell my friends that. However, if you displease me in anyway (since I’m impossible to satisfy), then I’ll tell the whole town, spreading the news far and wide.” And these folks probably look outwardly successful and are well connected, so that kind of threat might make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. 

Eventually though you realize that, despite their outward appearances of success, they’re really miserable people.  And you also realize that other successful savvy people will be onto their game pretty quickly. So, if you’ve established a reputation of doing top quality work over and over again, this threat of telling the whole town about you ends up just making the disparaging bully look bad themselves.

So, once you’re onto them, how do you deal with them when you’re in the middle of doing their project? 

First of all, remain calm. Take an outside perspective. This isn’t about you. It’s about them and their need to bully and demean others. Getting upset and responding in a similar fashion just leads to more drama. Since they have more money than you, they can outlawyer you and make your life miserable. That approach totally buys into their need. Again, lawsuits are a waste of time.

What you can do is acknowledge the emotion behind the condescending statements and then set a boundary. Condescending statements are typically veiled anger and irritation. Maybe there’s a sense of loss of control, after all they are control monsters. They get uncomfortable when they’re not in control and this is a coping mechanism. While it’s not okay, it is what they’re feeling. So acknowledging the emotion goes a long way to talking them off the ledge. For instance, you could say,

“It seems like you’re _________…. (frustrated, angry, irritated, annoyed, etc.)” 

“Damn straight I am! If that idiot drywaller could just match the approved texture, I wouldn’t be so upset. I can’t believe that he considers that quality work.”

You’ve looked at the drywaller’s work. It does match the sample, yet the client has taken a framer’s pencil and marked large swaths of drywall finish as being unacceptable.

“Okay, I see a few spots that need some work,” you say, “which we can improve on for you. Most of the finish does meet the approved sample, especially once it’s been painted.”

“Look, if Joe (your superintendent) is so blind that they can’t see how fucked up all the walls are, maybe it’s time for me to find another builder,” the client says, with a manic look in their eyes.

They don’t really want to switch builders. They just want you to re-do all the walls. 

So you say, “Well, I can see you’re really upset right now. I hear that you’re unhappy with the finishes on the walls. And we’ll deal with that.” 

And now you set a boundary. 

“However, the comments that you’re making about the trades and my superintendent are unacceptable. So rather than continue this conversation at this time, Joe and I are going offsite to have a cup of coffee and talk about our next steps. We’ll be back in 90 minutes and then continue on building your home to the best of our ability.”

While you may not be able to quit a job, you and your people also don’t have to stick around to be berated for a workmanship issue. No one has to eat shit. Critiques of workmanship can be done in a non-judgmental manner, just not by disparaging bullies

Most importantly, as the leader of the company, it’s your responsibility to protect your people. If the client has an unsolvable personality issue, it’s your problem, not your employees. If you allow your clients to berate your employees and your trades, then you’re dodging your responsibility as a leader and you’re losing respect from your team. After all, they didn’t sign up this job. You did.

 

 

Narcissists

A healthy sense of self and ego is important to be successful in life. If you don’t watch out for your own self-interests, others will walk over you. 

However, narcissists have a self-inflated sense of self. It’s all about them. They need daily jolts of unquestioning admiration. That’s their juice. If you’re providing that admiration, and you might very well be initially because narcissists are often quite successful or famous. 

Narcissistic people are vain and self-absorbed. They can be selfish and self-admiring. The issue for you in dealing with a narcissist is how to protect yourself from people who will attempt to push your boundaries aside, manipulate you through a mixture of compliments and threats in order to get their needs met.

Narcissists need “juice”, as in admiration from others. Many of them are charming and you think they’re amazing, wonderful people at first. You admire them for what they’ve accomplished, because achieving fame and fortune is indeed something they do. You think you can work with them because they’re successful, charming and accomplished.

Just watch for the little cues though on how they treat longtime associates, employees and family members. Narcissists are very aware of when others no longer admire them 100%. They’re very aware of when the “juice” isn’t flowing their way. They want, no need, accolades.

Fame can be a huge jolt of narcissistic juice, especially in today’s social media world of “celebrity-ism”. So you might think that your narcissistic clients do indeed have something special. Perhaps you enjoy being in their sphere of the limelight. Narcissists do tend to attract groups of “hanger-ons”, people who want to be around them, because they enjoy being on the periphery of “stardom”, whether it’s in business or culture. Think of all those folks who travel with a posse and entourages. 

Some narcissists need constant feedback. One that I knew had a 6 way text conversation going most of the time. It was like, “I have a thought. Let me immediately share that thought with these 6 other people.” Then there’s a constant barrage of ongoing texts as the entourage all has to pipe in with their comments supporting the narcissist’s thinking. It’s exhausting and it’s never ending because the narcissist can never get enough.

In fact, they often think they’re so special that everyone who works for them, including your trades, should discount their fees for the honor of working for the narcissist. A common tactic is to mention to the trades that if they cut the narcissist a special deal, that they will sing their praises far and wide to all their friends. But, if they don’t, then they will also disparage them just as far and just as wide. And they say this as a matter of fact, perhaps even with a smile on their face. 

Since most trades rely on word-of-mouth for business, many times a trade will capitulate. As the general contractor on these projects, one aspect of my job was to protect my trades from predatory clients. At the same time, I had to navigate the entire job from soup to nuts and maintain a working relationship with a tough client over several months, sometimes years. Some give and take always came into play. 

The good thing about having solid long term relationships with your trades is that generally everyone understands that you might end up with a Client from Hell  once in a while, but the good and great clients you get make up for it. It just comes down to what percentage of your jobs are with Clients from Hell. While ours was only 1%, sometimes it felt a lot higher than that.

So, not to typecast here, but I am…Pro athletes, former beauty queens, aging B movie actors and actresses, entertainers, talk show hosts are all people used to getting lots of regular, even daily, accolades, who sometimes think they’re pretty special and deserve special consideration from any service people. I found out the hard way that working for many “celebrities” is a painful business experience.

On the other hand, I’ve also met many stars and pro athletes who were the salt of the earth and very appreciative of those who worked for them. Now, those are true celebrities in my opinion.

I have a theory that many narcissists are created by their parents. Not intentionally, of course, but because their parents are damaged and self-absorbed human beings themselves. The narcissists that I’m thinking of had parents that wanted to deny their child’s existence. Therefore, the child, as he grew up into an adult, had to always have attention and adulation, to be admired, to justify their existence. It was a survival mechanism from childhood that becomes an unhealthy way of life as an adult.

Ultimately, working with a narcissist is extremely hard on your staff, your trades and yourself. Narcissists are unhappy people who feel entitled to happiness. Therefore, since they’re not happy, it must be your fault. It’s certainly not theirs. So then, you and your trades must suffer. 

The clues of a narcissist are: A need for attention. An entourage. An enabling spouse. Little hints of numerous acts of dis-satisfaction with other service providers. Multiple issues with multiple service providers. A condescending tone. 

Hopefully, you see these clues early on before you’ve signed a contract, because trust me, you definitely don’t want to sign a contract with a narcissist. Even if you don’t have any other contracts or business, your mental and emotional health is worth way more than signing a contract with a narcissist. 

 

Liars

I think most people have been known to stretch the truth a bit, embellish a story, and tell a white lie. Heck, some of us are forgetful and just remember things differently. Yet, the liars I’m talking about are the ones who are consistently challenged by the truth. They’re the ones who change the story of past events to fit their immediate needs. 

Usually, you’re not aware that you’re dealing with a liar until you’re contracted and well into the project. And by the way, it’s not always clients. Sometimes it’s design professionals.  

A system of weekly documentation of job site issues, schedule and decisions is the best way to keep the liar in a box. Ideally, after every meeting, there are follow up minutes to the agenda sent out to the team, stating decisions made and by who, any delays and what caused them, and any design changes that add additional work and/or costs to the job. 

It’s imperative that there be consistency in this process. It has to be done weekly. The minutes need to go to everyone and give them an opportunity to re-state or correct a minute. However, once that opportunity has been given and no changes were made, then the minutes reflect the agreed upon next steps.

This documentation gives you the ammunition you need to hold the liar accountable, be paid for extras, note unapproved but demanded changes, and provide a rationale for time extensions.

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The bullies, narcissists and liars of the world make for tough contracts to fulfill. Yet, many of these folks are successful people and seemingly have nice projects to build. 

The bottom line though is you’re a home builder or a remodeler, not a psychologist. You can improve people’s homes, but you can’t improve people’s lives.  Except perhaps your own, your employees and your trades, by not taking on these types of clients in the first place.

Here’s to your success!

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For more, click on: Clients and Contractors Part 5 - The Neurotic: Borderline, OCD & Paranoia