How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 163

 Get leverage, and use that leverage to force action. This can
be risky, but sometimes it’s the best option. You might need to
see if you can get another person fired if they really are hurting
productivity. In software companies it isn’t uncommon for a
team to petition management to fire a weak member that’s
holding them back. I use this a lot myself when dealing with
difficult people in business in cases of willful misconduct. You
contact everyone who does business with that person to let
them know what’s happening. And if it’s a big enough deal,
throw in local govt reps and members of the press too. You
might think of this as the whistleblower strategy.
 Let it go. Sometimes this is the best option if someone injures
you in some way. Just let it go and move on.
There’s a deeper issue here too… Are the reasons you’re allowing
this difficult person to remain in your life valid? For example, if
you make money a higher priority than quality of life, then how
can you complain when you get the former but sacrifice the
latter?
I think people often have a hard time making quality of life a high
enough priority — we’re taught to just suck it up and tolerate it if
we have a difficult boss (and then die of a heart attack or stroke).
The one time I was an employee, I didn’t particularly like my
boss; he behaved like a jerk and didn’t seem too bright either.
But I also figured that if I was a lifelong employee, I might have
other bosses like this too, and it wouldn’t always be convenient
to quit. So I decided not to be an employee. Then when I worked
with retail game publishers, I encountered dishonesty and
incompetence, and this was so common that I felt it would be
hard to run that kind of business and not have to deal with such
people, so I decided not to work with those people either. When I
switched to doing game development independently, I loved the
people and really enjoyed it, so I stuck with that for years. I chose
not to base my career around working with difficult people. And

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