Elizabeth Harris: Dealing with difficult people in the workplace

Posted by Nina Raoult

We were excited to talk to one of the Met Office Executive Team, Elizabeth Harris, in our July meeting. We were able to dive into her career, negative experiences in a male-dominated environment, use of terminology and lots of great advice for overcoming barriers in the workplace. 

Elizabeth Harris is the first Programmes Director at the Met Office, joining the Met Office in November 2020 from DSTL (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory).  She began her career over 40 years ago as an electronic engineering apprentice and completed her degree by day release with her employer.  She is now a Chartered Project Professional, with decades of experience leading the delivery of cutting-edge research within government. As the Programmes Director, Elizabeth has accountability for programme delivery within the Met Office. Elizabeth is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

When Elizabeth started as one of 2, maybe 3, women in a cohort of 500 apprentices it was a “brutal environment”, full of physical workplace bullying towards women, something thankfully we are unaccustomed to today.  “Don’t show emotion” was her motto which followed her career, making it hard to show emotion even today. 

Elizabeth kindly shared a story of entering a difficult work situation where she had to diffuse tension with a customer. From there, Elizabeth was able to pass on some very useful advice for anyone in a similar situation.  

1. Is this behaviour in character or not?  Dig deeper if it is not.
2. Look at all communications, both verbal and non-verbal. Are they aligned?
3. If appropriate, do start with an apology as this will often diffuse a situation.
4. Listen, discuss common interests, and build rapport to move on and make progress.

Other useful tips for more subtle difficult workplace situations are:

1. Chat one-to-one to try to understand what the problem is. 
2. Don’t assume the worst in a person’s behaviour as there could be multiple reasons for a person appearing to be difficult.
3. Understand yourself – what fuels you & what deflates you? Recognise this in advance of difficult conversations with other personalities. 
4. Take opportunities for ‘being assertive’ and ‘managing conflict’ training, as these skills may be some of the most helpful in your career.
5. If you are unexpectedly facing a challenging if you can it may help to delay a reaction & come back to the issue with a considered response. Respond rather than react.
6. Voice problems & share it with allies, build a supportive network.

We had an interesting discussion including the use of the wording of ‘soft’ skills, implying weak or unimportant which we do not think is true. Perhaps ‘inter-personal’ skills would be a better term? How to deal with challenging behaviours from above in a hierarchical organisation; who can we turn to? We acknowledged that feelings can be hard to talk about at work, so sharing a problem can be very difficult. And finally, we discussed how to use your work friends and networks as allies to support you through your career. 

To finish I’ll leave you with a few words on the zero-tolerance bullying policy at the Met Office: Elizabeth wants everyone to be able to “come to work & be themselves”.