Stop Calling It "Challenging Workplace Training" When You Actually Mean "How to Deal with Dickheads 101"

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There's something fundamentally dishonest about the way we discuss workplace training in Australia. We dance around the elephant in the room with euphemisms like "challenging situations" and "difficult personalities" when what we're really talking about is simple: some people are just bloody impossible to work with, and most training programs are doing sweet bugger all to fix it.

After 18 years of running workplace training programs across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, I've seen every flavour of corporate dysfunction you can imagine. The bloke who interrupts every meeting to explain why everyone else is wrong. The manager who takes credit for your work then throws you under the bus when things go sideways. The colleague who's somehow managed to weaponise passive-aggression into an art form.

And here's what really gets my goat: we keep pretending these are "communication challenges" that can be solved with a half-day workshop and some role-playing exercises.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Workplace Behaviour

Let me tell you something that HR departments don't want to hear. Roughly 73% of workplace conflicts aren't caused by misunderstandings or poor communication skills. They're caused by people who fundamentally don't give a toss about anyone but themselves.

But we can't say that in corporate training, can we? So instead we create these sanitised programs about "managing challenging personalities" where we pretend that Kevin from Accounts is just "results-oriented" rather than acknowledging that he's a sociopathic narcissist who makes everyone's life miserable.

I learned this lesson the hard way about six years ago when I was brought in to help a tech startup in Sydney. The CEO had asked me to design a program to improve team dynamics because their turnover rate was astronomical. Eighteen people had quit in eight months.

The real problem? The head of engineering was a brilliant coder who treated junior developers like they were personally responsible for every bug in the universe. But instead of addressing his behaviour directly, management wanted me to teach everyone else how to "communicate more effectively" with him.

Complete waste of everyone's time.

What Actually Works (And Why Nobody Wants to Hear It)

The companies that genuinely solve their challenging workplace issues do three things that most organisations are too gutless to attempt:

First, they stop protecting the difficult people. I don't care if Sharon from Marketing has been with the company for fifteen years or if she "gets results." If she's making three other people miserable enough to consider leaving, she's costing you more than she's worth. Do the maths.

Second, they invest in proper conflict resolution training that acknowledges reality. None of this "let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya" nonsense. Real training that teaches people how to set boundaries, document problematic behaviour, and escalate issues without looking like a whinging sook.

Third, they create consequences that actually matter. Amazing how quickly behaviour improves when people realise their actions might affect their bonus or promotion prospects.

The Australian Way of Avoiding Hard Conversations

We Australians are particularly terrible at this stuff. We'll complain about someone behind their back for months, but the moment we're in the same room with them, it's all "no worries, mate" and forced smiles. Then we wonder why nothing changes.

I watched this play out beautifully at a mining company in Perth where the safety officer was notorious for his condescending attitude during training sessions. Everyone knew he was a problem. The workers hated him. The supervisors complained about him. But nobody actually addressed it with him directly.

Instead, they brought me in to do "communication enhancement training" for the entire safety team. Cost them twelve grand and achieved precisely nothing because the real issue wasn't communication—it was one bloke who thought he was smarter than everyone else and wasn't shy about letting them know it.

The Role-Playing Fallacy

Don't get me started on role-playing exercises. Nothing makes my blood boil quite like watching grown adults pretend to have difficult conversations in a training room while speaking in hushed, respectful tones that bear no resemblance to how these situations actually unfold in the real world.

Real challenging workplace conversations happen when you're already stressed, probably running late, and dealing with someone who's being deliberately obtuse. They don't happen in a quiet conference room with flipchart paper and motivational posters about teamwork.

The most effective challenging workplace training I've ever delivered involved actual scenarios with real consequences. No scripts. No predetermined outcomes. Just people working through genuine workplace friction with practical tools they could use the next day.

What Your Training Should Actually Cover

If you're serious about addressing challenging workplace behaviour, your training needs to cover stuff that makes people uncomfortable:

How to call someone out without destroying the relationship. How to document conversations properly. How to escalate issues through proper channels. How to protect yourself when working with difficult people. How to recognise when someone is deliberately undermining you versus when they're just having a bad day.

Most importantly, how to distinguish between people who are genuinely trying to improve and people who are just better at hiding their problematic behaviour after attending a workshop.

The Melbourne Experiment

Last year, I convinced a client in Melbourne to try something different. Instead of the usual "challenging personalities" workshop, we ran sessions called "Dealing with Workplace Assholes." I know, I know—HR nearly had a heart attack.

But here's what happened: attendance was the highest they'd ever seen for a workplace training session. People actually participated instead of checking their phones. And six months later, their internal satisfaction surveys showed measurable improvement in team dynamics.

Why? Because we stopped pretending that difficult workplace behaviour is always the result of misunderstanding or poor communication skills. Sometimes people are just difficult, and you need practical strategies for dealing with that reality.

The Bottom Line

Here's what twenty years in this industry has taught me: you can't train away genuine personality disorders, narcissism, or basic lack of empathy. What you can do is teach people how to protect themselves, set appropriate boundaries, and create workplace cultures where challenging behaviour has actual consequences.

Stop wasting money on feel-good training programs that avoid addressing the real issues. Start having honest conversations about workplace behaviour and what you're actually willing to tolerate.

Because at the end of the day, your good people are watching how you handle your difficult people. And if you're not handling them at all, well, don't be surprised when your best employees start looking for the exit.

The choice is yours: keep pretending that every workplace challenge can be solved with better communication, or start dealing with reality.

I know which approach actually works.