Excerpt

Key Concepts

This book is designed to be a practical, accessible introduction to the very broad topic of dealing with difficult people and difficult behaviors. Since every difficult situation is different, the focus here will be on building a basic understanding of how you interact with difficult people, what makes difficult people tick, and the most fundamental skills you can bring to the table to help change these encounters for the better.

By keeping the orientation of this book general, I hope this will allow you to gain a knowledge that will apply to a far-reaching spectrum of difficult situations. From there you will have the foundation upon which to build your knowledge and skills through further reading and study in more specific areas relating to difficult people.

This introduction presents what I feel are some of the most important concepts you will need to know to be successful in difficult people situations. You will see these ideas interspersed throughout the book. Keeping these key concepts in mind will help you keep the many ideas throughout the book in focus.

The Seven Keys to Understanding and Working with Difficult People

Self-Awareness
Self-worth
Self-confidence
Self-control
Honesty
Kindness
Positivity

A Difficult person?
After contemplating many descriptors for a ‘difficult person,’ I decided that the most fundamental perspective is best –

A Difficult Person: Anyone who causes anyone else angst.*

*Irritation, upset, stress, anguish, anxiety, perturbation

….which, when you think about it, means all of us.

The point we ultimately want to focus on is ‘what behaviors they exhibit that cause us angst.’ When we can do this, we have a far better chance of succeeding with them, than succeeding with a ‘difficult’ person.

There are as many types of difficult people as there are difficult people.

Reading through the literature you will find many attempts to delineate specific categories of difficult people by assigning labels like: Tank (bully), Thumper, Exploder, Snake, Bossy, Grudge, Ape, etc. While these are very useful toward focusing our attention on what drives these “types,” it is the behavior of these difficult people ‘types’ that affects us; and labels, no matter how useful, tend to narrow our thinking. Toward the end of this book we will discuss behaviors that tend to be found in many ‘difficult’ people and the skills you can bring to bear to help deal with these behaviors.

By focusing on behaviors we can begin to understand what motivates a person’s ‘difficulty.’ This understanding then allows us to develop and direct specific strategies and skills for being successful with them.

You can only change yourself; you cannot change other people...

We should add the word directly to the end of that sentence: “You cannot change other people directly, however...”

often, when you change your own behavior, it causes the difficult person to change his/her behavior.

Difficult people, like all of us, have regular patterns of behavior. We use these patterns because they get us what we want. If we, as the victim, move from reacting (we surrender our control) to responding (we gain control of ourselves, and often the situation), the difficult person will NOT get what they wanted and may change their behavior toward us as a result.

Most difficult people do not know they are being difficult.

Think about this one for a minute, because if we feel we have to deal with a REALLY difficult person on a regular basis, it is difficult to comprehend that they don’t have a clue about how they come across to others. This statement is true even when most people see them as hard to get along with.

From my own experience, many people who exhibit difficult behaviors are oblivious to the pain and frustration they perpetrate on a daily basis. I truly believe that some of the most aggravating personalities I have met have no idea how they are affecting or coming across to other people. In fact, typically they see themselves in an entirely different light.

Finding out what the difficult person wants, needs or cares about is KEY to understanding and working successfully with them.

The better you understand what is important to the person/people you are dealing with, the easier your task will be to move from being a victim to being in control of your own destiny with that difficult person.

The difficult person is getting a reward for his/her behavior.

We all do things for a reason. It feels good or it helps us feel less bad. When we do things for others, we do it because we want to help others and because it feels good to help others.

Difficult people are using learned behaviors because the behaviors have worked for them in the past to help fulfill a need, want, or desire. However strange that might seem to us, they are getting something from their difficult interactions with others.

People are different
This is the most common cause of difficulties between people!
When we are willing to bring to the table a compassion for the differences in people, we are miles ahead of the game in dealing with a person who is causing us upset. Prejudice, bias, and narrow-mindedness are the cause of too much pain and suffering in the world, and are far too often at the root of problems with difficult people. You can afford to be magnanimous, because you are self-aware and in-control.

Honesty IS the only choice
Tempered with kindness, honesty is the only way you can successfully work with difficult people. Anything short of this is asking for more trouble. Yes, sometimes it is difficult being completely honest, but it does pay, BIG TIME!
There are always ways to be honest AND kind when communicating with others.