Sick direct report lashing out

Salvarado,

Situations that involve medical conditions can be tricky from a management standpoint if you are not careful.  There are laws in place in the U.S.  that you should be cautious to navigate, yet the position your direct holds requires certain behavior and results from him so it puts a manager in a place where you need to try to strike a balance while doing the right thing for the person involved.  I recommend a couple of things...

• Treating co-workers disrespectfully and without courtesy is unacceptable, regardless of medical condition.  You can still have empathy for his situation, and care about him as your employee yet still hold him accountable to being civil and working as a team member through feedback and addressing it in your one-on-ones. 
   
• If his performance is being driven by his medical condition, I would encourage you to have your direct work with your HR department to apply for FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act).  In the U.S., this law is mainly designed to protect the employee from losing their job due to a medical condition.  I feel that this also helps protect the manager too.  If the employee is approved, work within the guidelines from your HR department on scheduling, adjusted responsibilities, etc.  If they are not approved, I would continue to manage that employee as you would if they had no medical condition-- hold them accountable to their behaviors through one-on-one's, feedback and coaching.  It helps protect you from a legal standpoint, and shows that you've done all you can to help a direct with their situation.

This is the old "love the sinner, hate the sin" approach as it applies to managing direct reports.  It sounds like you have a relationship with this person and care about their well-being.  This is absolutely appropriate as their manager, but it is equally as appropriate for you to expect a certain level of behavior from them, including how they treat others.  Continuing following the management trinity to help this person.

Hope this helps!  (It is late as I'm typing this, so I hope it all comes across the right way.)

Maestro -

Hi there,

Just noticed one thing in your comments. You said you've told him, " he has been very angry and impatient with other team members." Which he denied to you.

Being angry and impatient are not behaviors. As Mark and Mike point out in their Feedback casts, behaviors are "the words one says, how one says them (tone and inflection), facial expressions, body language, and work product (timeliness, quality, documents, delivery, etc.)"

You might want to review the Feedback casts, including "Shot across the Bow" to brush up on how to let him know what he's doing. If he's interupting and raising his voice, that's the behavior to focus on, not being angry and impatient.

Best, Joel BC

This could be a temporary phase that he's going through as he learns to cope with his disease even though I see that he may have been arrogant to begin with. I'm neither a psychologist nor a social worker, but it seems to me he needs more support than he thinks. If your company has some sort of Employee Assistance Program, I would gently suggest he seek them out.  There are also online communities where he can chat with others who have been down the same road. A starting point would be the Cancer Survivors Network http://csn.cancer.org/