Rhonda Scharf - Dealing With Difficult People

It is so easy to feel that we run into difficultpeople everywhere we turn. Some days we feel as if the world isganging up on us. We run across the person on the highway thatdeliberately rides our bumper, the person on the bus that has loudpersonal telephone conversations for everyone to hear, and thatsomeone in the office who seems to think that it is just fine forthem to eat a lunch they did not bring into the office!

And, lets behonest, some days we feel like our face is on a target andeverywhere we turn, everyone is taking aim.

Those days,hours and situations can be draining. We can feel like the light atthe end of the tunnel is a train coming straight for us. It makesgoing to work a chore sometimes not worth doing, and certainlyaffects our sleep, our stress and eventually our sanity.

This book isyour hope. The hope that with the right skills you can deal withthose difficult situations. The hope that you can overcome thosedays that break us down into a blubbering mess and the hope thatsomeday those difficult people will just leave us alone.

Well exploreexactly how to create your strategy to deal with your difficultperson and by the end of this book youll have the confidence youneed to face those challenging situations head on, without coweringaway, and with the professionalism to make sleep at night easy.

Dictionary.comdefines difficult people as those people who continually andchronically get in your way of you doing your job and living yourlife effectively.

That means it'snot just on Fridays, it's not just when they're in a cranky mood,it's not just when they've got you in their targets, it's everysingle time. It's almost as if they go home and plot how to ruinyour next day. Of course they don't, but it sure feels like thatdoesnt it?

Now accordingto some experts, that's only 2% of the population. That is a reallysmall percentage which I don't happen to agree with. Because welive in an age where so much communication is done virtually, Ibelieve that not only is that number much higher, but that it isrising exponentially daily. There is so much communication done onemail, message boards, text, Facebook, etc., and people can beincredibly difficult and mean when they arent face-to-face withthe person they are attacking. You also know that if your jobrequires you to deal with people over the telephone, your averagewill be higher than 2% as well. Once you take away the humanconnection, people tend to be far more difficult than when they areface-to-face. For some it is a license to be difficult.

That beingsaid, working with someone who continually and chronically gets inyour way isnt as common as we think it is. They can be difficultat times, just not all the time. They can be swayed by bad moods,jealousy or sometimes you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.They dont fall into the technical definition of difficult people,they arent difficult really, and instead it is conflict you aredealing with.

Conflict

Let's go backto the dictionary for a moment, where we see that "conflict" is astate of being that occurs over a prolonged period during whichissues are not addressed, thereby, adding to distance. (I oftenjoke that sometimes when you look up a word in the dictionary youstill dont know what it means!)

Conflict istension. Most of the time, what people will refer to as dealing with difficultpeople is actually tension in a relationship. You mighthave had a really good friendship with somebody at one time, andthen over time the little things start to get in your way. Youthink maybe they're sabotaging you and you call them difficult, butthey're not really.

It's just moreof a tension.

Now, the goodnews is the solution is pretty much the same for both of oursituations, but it's good to recognize that it is actually fairlyrare to be dealing with difficultpeople . Yes, they exist. There's no question that theyexist, but most of the time it's tension and we have to learn todeal with that.

What we need isa strategy on how to work with this person, how to live with thisperson or to deal with what you perceive to be very difficultbehaviour.

Its useful toknow that if you identify someone as a difficult person, they willoften see you as the difficult one! Difficult relationships arealways two-way, and it's as if we get in each other's way. It feelsdeliberate too.

One person willblock another person from doing something they need to do, or talkbad about them, or they'll say they're not capable of doing thatthing and they won't give them any good assignments. Then the otherperson will do the same or similar thing back!

In my liveprogram, Dealingwith Difficult People , I do the following exercisethat's usually an eye-opener for participants. Here's how thatworks.

1. I put themin pairs and ask them to imagine they are playing the childhoodgame of pattycake. Standing up and facing each other, they puttheir hands against their partners' hands.

2. In each pairthere is a Partner A and a Partner B and we quickly assignroles.

I give thefollowing instructions very quickly:

On the countof three, I want Partner A to push as hard as possible on PartnerB. 1-2-3 Go!

Of course,Partner A pushes as hard as possible, which is exactly what I toldthem to do. Note, I don't tell Partner B what to do.

After just afew seconds I tell them to stop. Then I'll say, "Partner A,congratulations. You did what you're supposed to do. Youve earneda raise. You followed instructions well and youre getting apromotion! Partner B, I didn't tell you what to do. What did youdo?"

Now, you knowthat every single Partner B pushed back! It's an instinctivereaction that when somebody pushes, we feel threatened (literallyand figuratively). We feel threatened and so we push back.

Here's how theconversation goes:

Me: So, Partner B, why did you pushback? You weren't told to push back.