1.1 What Makes an Employee “Difficult”? The Two Aspects (Start Here)
A “difficult” employee is a label, not a diagnosis. It describes how a situation feels to the manager, not what is actually happening. In this course, an employee becomes “difficult” when there is a persistent gap between what is expected and what is delivered, and that gap is not being closed. A defined gap can be worked on; a label cannot.
The two aspects
| Aspect | What to look at | The key question |
|---|---|---|
| Aspect one: the employee’s side | Performance, conduct, attitude and behaviour | What exactly are they not doing, how do we know, and was it clearly expected? |
| Aspect two: the manager’s side | Managing ourselves, managing them, and the system: role, targets, induction, culture | How much of this have I created, allowed or failed to address? |
Where the two aspects meet
| Who is doing their part | Manager doing their part | Manager not doing their part |
|---|---|---|
| Employee doing their part | No problem | A manager-created problem |
| Employee not doing their part | A genuine employee problem | A shared problem: fix the management side first |
Most real cases sit in the bottom right. The principle: put your own side in order before any formal step. Formal action is fair, and defensible if challenged, only once the manager’s side is in order.
What the evidence says
The CIPD’s survey report Managing conflict in the modern workplace (September 2024) found, in our words, that only about a third of employees who had experienced conflict said it was fully resolved; that nearly half of employers said line managers can cause conflict; and that disciplinary action and grievances were the routes employers used most.
How the course works
The diagnosis chooses one of three routes: a capacity problem goes to support and the performance route; a trust problem to a conversation and, if needed, discipline; a dispute about what was agreed to clarification, never discipline. Each module ends with a toolkit.
| Toolkit | Lesson |
|---|---|
| Diagnosis sheet | 1.4 |
| Task track record ladder and expectations check | 2.4 |
| Conversation planner and record | 3.4 |
| Improvement plan and fair discipline pack | 4.4 |
| Last Door Checklist, decision flow and course reference | 5.4 |
Teaching lessons close with Two Aspects and Three views (the employee, the manager and HR). Toolkit lessons end with a Last Door tracker through five doors: diagnosis, management, conversation, the formal route and, last, dismissal, opened only if the problem remains after the other four.
Meet the case
Lorato Kgosimore, Loan Administration Manager at Kuvanya Bank Botswana in Gaborone, was promoted from a Kuvanya Bank Zambia team and started on 1 June 2026. Her team of eight administrators includes Kabelo Ditshwene, Senior Loans Administrator, who has 14 years’ service and gets his colleagues’ hardest files. A new loan-origination system went live on 6 April; his two training sessions fell in month-end cut-off weeks and he missed both. By June his returned files had risen sharply, he was often late to the morning huddle and his replies were curt. Lorato makes mistakes of her own, and her first instinct is to ask HR for a warning.
Before and after B1: Lorato’s first message to HR
| Before | After | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| I need help with Kabelo. He has become impossible: careless, rude and always late. I think it’s time for a warning. | I’d like advice on a senior administrator whose returned files rose from about 2% to 17% after the new system went live, and who has been late to nine of 21 huddles this month. Before anything formal, I want to check my own side: whether he was trained, what he was told, and how I have reacted. Can we meet this week? | A label replaced by facts; both aspects named; the manager’s own side checked first; advice sought before any formal step. Length: 21 words before, 62 after. |
Practise it: Think of someone you have called difficult. Write three sentences to HR: the gap in facts, the employee’s side and your own side, and one question you want answered before anything formal.
Finding the cause of a slip is taught in First-Time Manager Toolkit: From Doing the Work to Leading the Team (course 50), lesson 3.3, When Performance Slips: Support First, Then Fair Process; this course adds the manager’s side.
This course is independent. It draws on openly published research and guidance, and on the International Labour Organization’s international standard on ending employment, explained in its own words. It does not use or endorse any proprietary assessment, model or training programme, and it is not endorsed by any institute, publisher or organisation named in it. The course teaches general fair-process principles, not the law of any country, and it does not prepare you for any certification exam.
About the case company: Kuvanya Group, its subsidiaries (Kuvanya Bank, KuvaTel, KuvaPay, Kuvanya Mining Supplies and Kuvanya Shared Services), its client “the Power Authority” and every person named in this course are fictional. They were created by EunoiaData for teaching purposes only. Any resemblance to real organisations or people is coincidental. Countries, laws and regulators are real and are described as they stood in 2026.
Example: At a fictional lodge in Livingstone, the head of housekeeping calls a long-serving room attendant “difficult” because her rooms keep failing inspection. On the grid it is a shared problem: nobody explained the new room checklist, so she was working to the old one. Once it is explained, the failures stop.
Two Aspects
| Aspect | In this lesson |
|---|---|
| The employee’s side | A real gap in results or behaviour, described in facts rather than labels. |
| The manager’s side | What the manager created, allowed or left unaddressed, put right before any formal step. |
Three views
| View | What it means here |
|---|---|
| The employee | Describe the problem in facts, and check whether I was trained and told. |
| The manager | Before asking for a warning, I list what I created or allowed. |
| HR | Facts and both aspects give us something to act on; a label does not. |
Check before you act: Examples use fictional Kuvanya people and figures for illustration only. Adapt each tool to your team, your organisation’s policies and the support your HR team provides.
Key takeaway
“Difficult” is a label. Define the gap in facts, look at both aspects, and put your own side in order before any formal step.
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