As long as you live, you will at least encounter some pointless disagreement with others, one you don't want to have. There will always be difficulties to navigate, even in the best of relationships. Employee problems in troubled relationships overshadow those relationships, significantly impacting morale and productivity. Generally speaking, employee problems are more difficult to resolve than any of the problems we face in our lives. Despite the difficulty of task-related problems, many of us would consider them less difficult than employee problems. Furthermore, when we encounter difficulties in dealing with a task, it's usually because the task has been overshadowed by one or more employee problems.

Employee problems often have the greatest impact on each of us. These problems lead to psychological problems, such as sleep disturbances. These problems often persist indefinitely, worsening over time without any improvement. Undoubtedly, disagreements between employees are not the only source of interpersonal stress. However, they are the ultimate factor in most cases of misunderstanding and conflict.

Therefore, it's no wonder that each of us encounters problems with employees. Behavioral researchers have discovered that 75% of the population is significantly different from you, and many of these people are critical to your success. They:

- Think differently

- Read differently

- Spend their time differently

- Work at different rates

- Communicate differently

- Handle emotions differently

- Manage stress differently

- Deal with differences of opinion differently

They aren't necessarily better or worse than you, but behaviorally, you are just one person, and they are a group.

As we all know, in the workplace, there are problems associated with being different from all your colleagues. Social psychologists have found that people who are different from one another:

- Don't get along quickly.

- They often miscommunicate.

- They rarely persuade each other.

- They misinterpret each other, simply to express themselves.

These facts demonstrate that just as it takes effort to work effectively with many colleagues, it also takes some effort to get along with them. The more you reflect on the truth, the less surprised you are that everyone has problems with employees at work.

Spencer Knoblock learned this from experience. He maintained an excellent working relationship with his manager, Jan White, for over three years. Then Jan was transferred and Bill Freed was appointed as the new manager. However, Spencer didn't get along with him as he had with his previous manager. This wasn't because Bill wasn't popular; he was actually very well-liked. Spencer was puzzled... Why didn't his work with Bill go as smoothly as it had with Jan?

Jan was a very focused manager who believed that detailed information was essential in decision-making. He liked to have his employees prepared to keep him informed of all the key details of the work. This was his way of knowing what was going on in his department, and naturally, Spencer was inclined to provide his new manager with the best available information, following his previous approach. Since Spencer valued detailed information, he covered every detail of any project.

What worried him was that during his weekly meetings with Bill, the latter was always irritable. He noticed the following recurring patterns: Bill would get irritable when Spencer presented a report on a project, then start smoking one cigarette after another and pace back and forth around the room, bored and seemingly thinking about something else. It was clear that Bill was frustrated by something Spencer was doing that he couldn't figure out. In any case, Bill wanted to know what was going on in Spencer's department. Spencer gave him the same reports he had given his previous manager and had been accepted.

Bill would sometimes say to Spencer, "I just want you to give me a general overview of this point. I trust you've considered it from all angles, as is your wont."

However, Spencer was uncomfortable providing reports that he felt were incomplete, so he continued to provide his own comprehensive reports. After all, that was exactly what he would have wanted if he had been Bill's manager.

The problem, of course, was that Spencer wasn't in Bill's position, and Bill's style was very different from his own. Even when Spencer found his meeting style frustrating, he stuck to the same approach. Because neither of them adapted to the other, their working relationship continued to deteriorate.

When there is no harmony between employees' work styles, we find that the feeling of work pressure increases, at the same time that productivity decreases. There is no doubt that you have faced this problem at one time or another, as there is a rough statistic that indicates that three out of every four employees differ greatly from you, and you will inevitably find these human differences present among many of your colleagues.