The Cool, Calm And Professional Way To Manage Difficult People

Difficult people are an inevitable part of life and work.

The good news is that only 20% of people are difficult. The bad news is that they take up 80% of our time and energy as we try to work with their personalities, moods and attitudes.

They cause us stress and anxiety. We lay awake at night worrying about how to deal with them. They induce a crisis of confidence in our abilities that disempower us. They have a powerful, negative impact on team morale. Many of us leave our organisations because we cannot work with them and our managers don’t seem able to manage them so the situation can be improved. It doesn’t have to be that way.

This workshop will help you:

  • to identify the reasons why people might be difficult,

  • to reflect on why you are finding them especially difficult,

In other words, is the problem yours or theirs?

Secondly, it will help you clarify how important it is to engage with this difficult person. Do you act or do you manage yourself and your feelings about this person, in other words, engage in psychological separation?

Thirdly, if you do engage, it will give you strategies for relating with and managing them in a professional way that actually empowers you rather than drains you. It will facilitate discussion on how to:

  • address the difficulty when it is an observation and before it becomes a problem,

  • think it through before you approach the person,

  • make it a conversation, not a threatening interaction,

  • engage without blaming, criticising or put downs,

  • seek first to understand, then to be understood,

  • deal with the issue, not the personality,

  • go for win/win outcomes.