How to Deal With Difficult People Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Part One: Dealing With Difficult People

  Chapter 1: Difficult People and Their Difficult Behaviour Openly hostile, aggressive behaviour

  Disguised hostility: Passive aggressive behaviour

  Passive behaviour

  Chapter 2: Is It You? Resigned, accepting responses

  Indirectly confrontational, hostile responses

  Direct, confrontational, hostile responses

  Blaming other people

  Is it you?

  Expectations, values and rights

  Positive expectations

  Begin again: Change how you respond to other people

  Your personal rights

  The role of self-esteem and confidence

  Building courage and confidence

  Chapter 3: Communicating With Difficult People Active listening

  Minimal encouragers

  Reflective listening

  Questions about feelings

  Identify and learn from good listeners

  Non-verbal communication

  Talking to difficult people

  Chapter 4: Standing Up to Difficult People How to be assertive

  Building the confidence to be more assertive

  Choosing how to respond

  Part Two: Putting It Into Practice

  Chapter 5: Dealing With Direct Hostility The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  Use tact and strength

  Chapter 6: Dealing With Indirect Hostility The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  Recognize the warning signs

  Refuse to engage

  Chapter 7: Dealing With Passive People The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  The difficulty

  Is it you?

  Your aim

  What to do and say

  Get them to participate and contribute

  Part Three When All Else Fails

  Chapter 8: Dealing With Impossible People Critical, impossible-to-please impossible people

  Persistently negative impossible people

  Drama queens

  Self-centred impossible people

  Bullies

  How to deal with impossible people

  Let them go and move on by focusing on what you have to gain

  Impossible people

  Conclusion Positive people

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  End User License Agreement

  How To Deal With Difficult People

  Smart tactics for overcoming the problem people in your life

  Gill Hasson

  This edition first published 2015

  © 2015 Gill Hasson

  Registered office

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hasson, Gill.

  How to deal with difficult people : smart tactics for overcoming the problem people in your life / Gill Hasson.

  pages cm

  Includes index.

  ISBN 978-0-85708-567-2 (paperback)

  1. Interpersonal conflict. 2. Conflict management. 3. Interpersonal relations.

  4. Interpersonal communication. I. Title.

  BF637.I48.H384 2015

  158.2–dc23

  2014029780

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-857-08567-2 (pbk) ISBN 978-0-857-08571-9 (ebk)

  ISBN 978-0-857-08572-6 (ebk)

  Cover design: Wiley

  Introduction

  Difficult people are everywhere.

  Theodore Roosevelt once said, ‘The single most important ingredient of success is knowing how to get along with people.’

  Of course, Roosevelt never met that difficult person at work that you have to deal with every day, did he? And he certainly didn't have your in-laws.

  When people are nice to you, you can't help but feel good and be nice back. But when they're difficult, you're bound to be unhappy about it and react badly.

  Why do other people get to us so easily?

  The reason our happiness and well-being depend so much on our relationships is because humans are social beings; we seek and enjoy the company of other people, in particular other people who are easy to get along with and whom we like.

  In fact, most of us would rather experience an unpleasant event – watc
h our team lose, for example – with someone who shares our negative opinions about the team than experience a pleasant event – watching our team win – in the company of those who are disagreeable and difficult.

  But some people know exactly how to be difficult. They're the people who bring you down with their negativity, criticism or anger. They refuse to cooperate. They're irritating, frustrating and often infuriating. And if you respond to someone else's difficult behaviour with anger and blame, withdrawal or compliance, you may end up feeling guilty, stressed or depressed.

  What to do? One obvious solution is to calmly walk away from them. This is easier said than done. (But not impossible: see Chapter 8.) While you can always walk away from a rude shop assistant or hang up on an irritating sales call, it's not so easy to cut yourself off from a parent, sibling, partner, colleague or friend.

  A more practical approach to dealing with them is to start by understanding how and why other people can be so difficult. Chapter 1 will help you do just that. You'll see that difficult behaviour occurs on a continuum. At one end of the scale, difficult behaviour can be overt (hostile and aggressive); at the other end, it can be passive (uninvolved and inactive).

  In the middle of this continuum is behaviour in others that can be the most difficult to deal with: passive aggressive. It is covert (dishonest and manipulative). In Chapter 1, we'll explore these patterns of behaviour in more detail.

  However, knowing and understanding what's wrong with someone's behaviour doesn't change it. The thing is you can't directly change other people's behaviour; the only thing you can change is how you respond and deal with it.

  In Chapter 2, we will look at the different ways you may currently deal with difficult people and help you to understand why you react to them in the way you do.

  We consider the expectations and beliefs you may have about the ways other people ‘should’ behave towards you. Perhaps you blame other people for making you respond or behave in particular ways.

  You'll learn that other people can't make you do anything; they're not responsible for how you feel or respond. You are. So taking responsibility for your reactions to difficult people will help you better manage them. Why? Because if you can take responsibility for your responses then, like anything else that belongs to you, those responses are yours to manage: to influence and direct.

  Having thought about how and why you and other people behave and respond to each other as you do, the next step is to learn skills, strategies and techniques to manage difficult people: to know what to say and what not to say. A good way to know what to say and what not to say to a difficult person is to start by listening to them. Really listening.

  In Chapter 3, you'll learn what ‘reflective listening’ skills are and how to use them to your advantage. As well as learning how to listen to other people, you'll learn to ‘read’ other people; you'll learn how to actually ‘see’ what other people's motives and intentions are.

  By this point in the book, you'll certainly be ready to get on with dealing with difficult people. In the past, you may have thought that there was only one or two ways to do this: either grit your teeth and hope that they'll stop being so difficult, that things will improve, or get the difficult person to see just how difficult they're being.

  Both of these approaches are unlikely to fix the problem. In the case of gritting your teeth and hoping things will improve… they won't. In the case of getting them to see just how difficult they're being, that's unlikely too.

  You need to deal with the difficult behaviour – not the person. Chapter 4 will really help you here. It explains how to deal with other people calmly, directly and honestly using assertiveness skills and techniques.

  You'll learn that there are several aspects to being assertive. Being assertive means being honest, clear and specific about what you feel, want and don't want. You have to acknowledge and often clarify the other person's point of view. You'll need to negotiate, compromise and, when necessary, stand your ground. You need to be able to identify solutions and consequences for when the other person refuses to cooperate. You'll need to avoid ‘losing it’: accusing and blaming or insulting the other person when they're being difficult. Finally, you need to know how to come across with certainty and confidence.

  Sound like there's a lot to learn? There is. But you don't have to learn it all at once. You don't have to put it all into practice at once either, in an encounter with a difficult person. The good news is that you only need to remember to focus on one or two assertiveness techniques at any one time to make progress.

  In Part Two of this book, you can see how, in a range of situations with a range of difficult individuals, people have only needed to use a couple of assertive strategies and techniques each time to deal with a difficult person.

  However, some people aren't just difficult, they're impossible! They drain you and can even destroy you. In order to preserve your physical and mental health, your stability and spirit, there is really only one thing for you to do: withdraw completely. Chapter 8 will explain how you can do this in the third and final part of the book.

  So, as you can see, this book can help you to handle all kinds of people in all sorts of situations – to make your life less stressful and a lot easier.

  Once you've read this book, you'll no longer feel that other people make you feel or behave one way or another. Instead, you'll feel that you are in control. You'll see that you can choose whether to tell other people what you think, how you feel and what you believe.

  Even if an encounter with a difficult person doesn't turn out the way you hoped, you'll be less likely to feel guilty, angry or resentful, because you'll know to simply reflect on and identify what you would do differently next time, in a similar situation.

  In short, How to Deal With Difficult People will help you to develop strategies to respond calmly, be able to confidently stand up to others and know when to walk away.

  The result? Other people are more likely to treat you in the way you want: with respect.

  Part One

  Dealing With Difficult People

  Chapter 1

  Difficult People and Their Difficult Behaviour

  Who or what is a difficult person? It's anyone who leaves you feeling upset or let down, frustrated or angry, humiliated or confused, drained or despairing.

  A difficult person can be someone who behaves in an exploitative or unethical manner; they may be someone who creates a sense of distrust because they avoid saying what they really think or feel.

  A difficult person may be someone who refuses to cooperate with you. They may avoid taking responsibility and duck out of commitments.

  A difficult person can also be someone who is negative and critical; they find fault easily without offering any constructive or helpful alternatives.

  Whether it's a manager who keeps moving the goalposts, an uncooperative colleague or the difficult-to-please client, your negative friend, sarcastic brother-in-law, critical parent or the infuriating person at a call centre, they all have one thing in common: they can be difficult to deal with.

  There are probably times when you wonder how an encounter can go awry so quickly; you start to doubt your own perceptions, feel thrown off balance by the other person and find yourself acting crazy when, actually, you're quite a nice person!

  Is it you or is it the other person? It's not always easy to tell if someone is deliberately being difficult or if it's just you who is struggling to deal with that person.

  You may have no trouble dealing with a hostile teenager but you have real difficulty with a colleague who finds fault in everything you do. Perhaps you find it easy to accept your sister's negativity (the rest of the family find her draining) but find a friend's inability to be enthusiastic about anything the most challenging.

  What is difficult in one context may seem as nothing in another; an uncooperative colleague is a real struggle to deal with in a meeting, but one to one you find it quite easy to negotiate with him
or her.

  Sometimes, it's not clear what exactly it is you're having to deal with. For instance, although it's not pleasant, when someone is being openly aggressive and hostile, you know just what you're dealing with. Too often, though, someone else's difficult behaviour is difficult to identify; it's hard to nail down what exactly it is they're doing or saying that's so infuriating.

  When does someone else's behaviour move from being irritating to infuriating? It can range from mild or transient to difficult behaviour that is significant and persistent.

  Difficult behaviour occurs on a continuum. At one end of the scale, difficult behaviour can be overt (hostile and aggressive); at the other end, it can be passive (uninvolved and inactive).

  In the middle of this continuum is behaviour in others that can be the most difficult to deal with: passive aggressive. It is covert – dishonest and manipulative.

  Let's look at these patterns of behaviour in more detail.

  Openly hostile, aggressive behaviour

  Aggressive behaviour is the most overt, open type of difficult behaviour. At its most extreme, openly hostile, aggressive behaviour is harsh and forceful. It can be intimidating; when someone is being openly hostile, they may shout, swear and be abusive. They often overreact, even to things that have little or no consequence to them.

  An openly hostile person may talk over and interrupt you or oppose you by dismissing your ideas and opinions. They are unable to compromise with you and frequently ‘lose it’. He or she usually feels they have to prove things and push a point. They insist they are right. You are wrong. It's a ‘my way or no way’ approach.

  They are domineering and controlling and view the world through a self-centred lens. The more self-centred they are, the more difficult they are. Their steamroller tactics can leave you feeling like you've been flattened!

  Why do people behave like this?

  When someone is behaving in an aggressive, hostile way, it's because they want to make sure that things happen the way they want them to happen. Sometimes, it's because their expectations have been thwarted and they are trying to claw back some control. Some people respond aggressively if they think they are being undermined or criticized; they may feel ignored, insecure, misunderstood, cheated or put upon. They may be feeling impatient, upset or just plain angry.