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Note: all mediations are confidential. This case study is a composite of several mediations.

The Difficult Employee

The client was on the phone, angry that her Web site wasn't finished. Management was threatening pay cuts. And Lorraine was in the bathroom again, crying. Richard, her manager, didn't know what to do.

When Lorraine started working at the company six months ago, she had been a wonderful team member. She got along well with Richard and everyone on the team, her code always worked to spec, and she always met deadlines. Richard was impressed with the suggestions she made for improving the usability of the Web sites they designed. In fact, he thought so highly of her skills and experience, that he knew she could deal with their most difficult client, the one no one else could work with.

At first, everything went well. But gradually, things began to change. Lorraine frowned more. She missed a deadline, then another. She sounded bewildered and unhappy when she talked to the client. In meetings, she stopped making useful suggestions. When Richard would smile at her in the hall, she would frown and avoid making eye contact. When Richard would make pleasant conversation with her, she would snap at him. She would apologize, but she didn't look sorry. Worse still, she began questioning the direction he gave her.

Lorraine was constantly massaging her shoulders and neck, and she spent time in the break room with an ice pack on her eyes. She began leaving work for appointments with physical therapist.

Other team members complained to Richard that she was hyper-sensitive to criticism, and impatient when they didn't do things exactly the way she thought they should. They were avoiding her.

The company scheduled a training session for Richard's team. Afterwards, Lorraine did better for a while, but soon the same problems cropped up all over again.

What Richard didn't know was that the client was far more difficult to work with than Lorraine had been told. The client was funny and charming and lulled people into a false sense of security before bullying them nearly to tears. She felt Richard had sent her into a lion's den without warning her. Her previous experience as a project manager was not enough for this client.

On top of that, when Richard tried to cheer her up, she felt he was dismissing the difficulties she was facing. He never wanted to hear about problems, no matter how carefully she expressed them.

Richard, meanwhile, was getting complaints from his manager. Lorraine was supposed to have been such a wonderful employee, she should be making the client happy and retaining a valuable contract. Why didn't Richard fire Lorraine?

Richard got in touch with his HR department, who called me. After talking with them to make sure the situation was appropriate for mediation, I gave Richard a call.

As Richard talked about Lorraine, I could tell he was at his wits' end. The more he tried to clear up the problems, the worse they seemed to get. He was beginning to think management was right, he should fire Lorraine. But then he would lose headcount, and he wanted her to be the productive, valuable employee she had been.

Richard and I set up a time for me to come in for a three-hour mediation session with him and Lorraine. I explained to Richard that, as a mediator, I would help the two of them have a productive, problem-solving conversation, in which they would make all of the decisions about what should be done. I told him that I would facilitate keeping the conversation civil and professional.

The mediation started with first Richard, and then Lorraine, telling me their perspective on the situation. Knowing that the mediation was confidential, each of them could express all of their frustration and anger to me freely.

As Richard spoke to me, Lorraine was clearly astonished to hear that Richard valued her as an employee, and wanted to keep her on the team and in the company. And when Richard expressed his frustrations with her, I made sure he was able to talk without interruption, encouraging her to write down what she wanted to say so she could talk about it later.

When it was Lorraine's turn, Richard was astonished to hear that he had exaggerated his smiles and pleasant words to the point where Lorraine no longer trusted them. In fact, he could feel himself smiling, right then, even when he thought he was angry.

When Lorraine and Richard began to talk to each other, he felt that the conversation quickly bogged down, into irritation, resentment, and unhappiness. He was disconcerted when I asked him what he might be doing to contribute to the problem. Eventually, he was able to see that he had been trying to "nice" the problems away. He began to speak more frankly, and the tone and productivity of the conversation improved immediately. Contrary to his fears, Lorraine was not offended at his frankness; in fact, she moderated her tone and spoke to him more in the professional way she had at first.

Richard was surprised to learn from Lorraine that she had liked working with him, and with the company, when she had first started, and she wanted to be happy and productive again. That part of the reason for her poor performance was fear that she would lose her job because she couldn't work with this client. When Richard finally acknowledged to Lorraine that he had put her in an impossible situation, Lorraine's face lit up, she sat up straighter, and her tense shoulders relaxed. With my encouragement, she thanked Richard for telling her, and for the first time in the mediation, Richard was able to relax. For her part, Lorraine acknowledged that, as her supervisor, Richard had the right to give her direction.

I helped Lorraine and Richard come up with a list of concrete steps they would take to ease the situation and restore their good working relationship. They included: that Richard and Lorraine would meet twice a week for half an hour to discuss the client and what needed to be done to make her happy; that Richard would smile at her only half as broadly as he thought he ought to; that Lorraine would not take out her frustrations with the client on Richard; that Lorraine would talk to HR about three strategies she could use to deal better with the client.

As the mediation ended, Richard and Lorraine were speaking easily to each other for the first time in months. When I followed up with Richard a month later, he was happy to report that Lorraine was standing up to the client's bullying much better, that Lorraine was once again productive and happy, and – surprisingly – the client was less difficult to work with. Richard's manager no longer wanted Lorraine fired, Richard was not dreading talking to Lorraine anymore, and Lorraine was returning to being a functioning, productive, happy member of the team.