How to deal with difficult team mate/s; business associate/s?

I think the best way to manage this kind of team is utilizing the team member's strength effectively e.g utilize the team member who has inclination towards innovation to similar kind of tasks(where ideas are required) and the team member without inclination to innovation to some regular routine defined tasks where there is not much scope of innovation. ie deploy a team member to a task where he is good at and accomplish the team's goal jointly. Hence in this case task assignment should be done very judiciously and becomes challenging naturally.

On the other hand one more responsibility of the leader would be concentrate on the weakness of the team member just to coach them and helping them to overcome their shortcomings and thus help them to become better professional.

In my opinion a balanced team actually should be mix of diff qualities(strong areas) possessed by the team members (definitely a basic skill must be there in place) and the leader's task is how effectively he/she utilizes the strong areas of the team members.

You are in a matrix like situation, where you are swayed because of intractable nature of your colleague.It suggests that you can be easily distracted.The matrix provides you solution to remain focused. 

I think you should first define the meaning of 'difficult' :

1.  Is that person rude / abusive ?

2.  Does he undermine you in front of your subordinates / peers / bosses ?

3.  Is he uncooperative ?

4.  Does he not deliver on his commitments ?

There may be other reasons why you have termed a colleague difficult.

The first step is to look into yourself. Why do you find him difficult ? What is it about him that upsets you ? In some cases , it happens that our own prejudices are reflected in our impression of how others look at us ; when we have a haircut or when we wear a new dress or do something new , it is our impression that others are looking more closely at us. This may or may not be true. But our thinking makes it so. The more self-conscious we become , the more attention we draw to ourselves.

Having analyzed your own behaviour , if you are honestly convinced that it has been correct and proper , then it is time to look at your colleague. Is it that he behaves differently to you alone , or is he like that with a lot of people ? If he is like that with a lot of people , you can still try and make your relationship a pleasant one , but it becomes more difficult. But if he is like that only with you , then you have a responsibility to try and mend fences.

If you do decide to repair your relationship , then it starts with sitting down together. Have a frank discussion with him. Start off by asking him what he feels are your bad points ; changing oneself is always easier than changing others. If you can eliminate what he thinks are your bad points , he will be more likely to reciprocate and try and eliminate his bad points , when you point them out to him.

I think there are literally dozens of things you can do , but it all starts with introspection , and then dialogue.

In fact , these two qualities , if practised sincerely and regularly , will prevent almost all relationship problems.

Its impossible to please everyone and when its about a difficult person in a team this makes the job much more difficult.

The solution I could suggest is to try to think the importance of that person in your work environment and then try to analyse while in solitude or with a person you trust that if the difficulty that is rising due to this person is genuine. Use your conscience to understand if this person is the only one to point out flaws or warning you of a situation, that we as a team are either unaware of or due to patriarchal-ism is not being pointed out.

Or if this is not the case if this difficult person respects someone, ask that person to talk to this guy and extract the reason for his not so friendly acts. Everybody opens up only to people who they trust, so this might help you to garner something unforeseeable which could be of a greater good.

If all this doesnt help and this person is found to cause this difficulty for his selfish notorious reasons, its better to get rid of him because its difficult for such people to change and if they have a track record of such activities in past they might even never change.

We should always remember that somebody who seen as problem and raises an alarm or an alarm raiser is sometimes the one not paid attention to and though to be a problem-child. So we must act cautiously.

Difficult people come in every variety and no workplace is without them. Dealing with difficult people is easier when the person is just generally obnoxious or when the behavior affects more than one person. Dealing with difficult people is much tougher when they are attacking us or undermining our professional contribution. Remove the person from our life. This is a bit extreme, but sometimes it’s the best option. Confront the person about his/her behavior directly. Raise our standards for what we are willing to accept in our life, and enforce them. This strategy is my personal favorite, but some people aren’t comfortable with it.

Management is greatly a man-management. This is an art. There are many tools which depend upon situations & charectors of the person to be handled. First & foremost requirement is the credibility of thehandler.

Thanks for being here,,,Agreed with u all,,,yes Shiuli it can be manageable if are in a position to supervise,,if u r a Jr./subordinate/team mate etc things becomes quite difficult I suppose to retain your positive energies & enthusiasm against the negativity or neutrality,,perhaps Gilbert's view to deal case to case with might have answers. Still if we all believe of such situations to be there,,there can be expert solutions, hope a few more..especially HR/psychosocial guys might throw some light.......

Ujjval, a worth-while question. If you do recall the movie Lagaan, the movie very explicitly solves this problem and makes a team to play and win.

Lagaan for sometime has done its rounds in PPTs and in some mgmt institutes to teach team building and team operations workable in diversified group.

As the fundamental factor goes in all mgmt, is the team leader, his ability, his qualities and very important factor is having a vision. If the team leader possess leader-ship as well as he is a good visionary, a team with diverse factors can work objectively.

Thats a tough one Ujval.

The reason is simple: These kind of people are unpredictable!! You can see here that in such cases all your assumptions will go for a complete toss and you would be stumped as to how??? Back to square one... Important rule: Never underestimate the friend, adversary ever. they may yet surprise you again and again. The best possible way to go forward in such scenario is to do your thing without a second thought to people around you. As long as you keep ethics a part of your working!!

Dealing with difficult, aggressive colleagues is not a set of rules that you need to follow; you need to take it one day at a time and every situation at a time. It also depends on the work relationship that you may share: Boss, Co worker or peer!! Each of these relationships has a different work ethic. Its really difficult to explain the how and why here like Gilbert has pointed out Ujval but you could make this more interesting by maybe citing an example like a role play!! That would be an eye opener here and also a sort of of online training for a lot of young students!! thanks for the referral though :))